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> More plausible first users would be things like CAD & 3D modelling applications, which need high performance but also don't have 80GB+ installs. These sorts

> More plausible first users would be things like CAD & 3D modelling applications, which need high performance but also don't have 80GB+ installs. These sorts of applications are already inching their way onto the web. Photo editors, video editors, 3D modelling software, game dev tools (like Godot and Play Canvas). We're just starting to move past the "toy" stage and into the "native apps which don't have a web plan need start worrying" stage, I think. If you think this trend isn't going to continue to progressively heavier applications, including games, well... you're just wrong. You haven't been watching closely enough. > Why would an AAA game, which typically wants every ounce of performance and control it can get, ever jump onto a web platform and lose all of that? "Why would an AAA game, which typically wants every ounce of performance and control it can get, ever jump onto smartphones and lose all of that?" Because they don't care about performance - they care about revenue. Performance is just a means to that end. Call of Duty Mobile was one of the largest mobile game launches in history - more than a hundred million downloads in the first month. I'm not sure if anything has beaten it yet. They had to trade off performance, resolution, latency, bandwidth, screen real estate, and basically everything else. But the benefits were obvious: Increased accessibility and on-the-go playing being perhaps the main two. The web offers a similar set of benefits. Arguably a super-set of those, since it encompasses mobiles too. > And since modern consoles are the same architecture & ISAs as gaming PCs are, why would they want to figure out a WASM backend with lagging hardware support & high overhead when 100% of their users are x86-64 with the entirely same set of SIMD features? Compilers. Even a 50% perf hit (or even more) is fine for now. The trade-offs are worth it. > but also don't have 80GB+ installs Asset streaming. It's the web. We stream 4GB HD movies now while we're watching them. Networks speeds are still exponentially improving. This is an engineering problem. You don't actually need the 80GB all at once - game dev tooling will adapt, or be replaced by web-first tooling which has done lazy-loading of assets from day 1. > This use case comes up a lot, but if (and that's a big if) All I'll say is that I'd be willing to be a lot of money that you're wrong. Really-big-budget browser games are going to land well within the next decade. Everything is basically already in place. We're already seeing web-first garage-made games like krunker.io with player counts larger than some AAA first person shooters. Basically all mass-market consumer applications will end up as web applications. You might not like that (there are certainly down-sides), but you'd need to do a lot of explaining to explain away the very clear trends that we're seeing across the industry.

kllrnohj 6y ago
Smartphones were a new market. The web isn't. The web is the current market, just worse in every way. You haven't addressed any of the motivation here. Why would games go to the web? And AAA smartphone games are also non-existent anyway. AAA games are widely understood to be big budget, fancy graphics blockbusters. Those aren't on mobile today. > Asset streaming. It's the web. Hahahahaha this is a bad joke, right? A game's working set for a level is regularly >4GB. With reliable I/O games currently have 30-40 second load times and use asset streaming. You can't just wave this away or pretend it's an engineering problem. You want AAA games, you pay the AAA disk sizes. And that's just not compatible with the web. Not today, not next year, and network trends here aren't that great, either. Even fiber would struggle, and next gen consoles are about to raise the requirements here well beyond even that. And if networks are that robust, then why wouldn't we just all jump on game streaming instead and embrace the thin client life? There doesn't seem to be any room here for needing powerful local computing and needing world class internet quality? > Basically all mass-market consumer applications will end up as web applications. You might not like that (there are certainly down-sides), but you'd need to do a lot of explaining to explain away the very clear trends that we're seeing across the industry. Current trends are everything is a native mobile app. Apps are bigger than ever. There's no zero-sum game here as you're claiming anyway. Web isn't eating everything up.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I think a couple of studios would disagree given their franchises on iOS and Android, or Stadia/xCloud/PlayStation Now/GeForce Now like games with most of their engines being cloud based.
- rewq4321 6y ago
  > Smartphones were a new market. New-ness doesn't matter. What matters is perf/features and audience. The web has traditionally been held back by the former. > And AAA smartphone games are also non-existent anyway. I'm talking about big-budget games that push the limits of the devices they run on, and there are lots of them on mobile. > > Asset streaming. It's the web. > Hahahahaha this is a bad joke, right? It's not a bad joke. This sort of condescension does not help persuade people. In fact it probably hurts your case because it's what people do when they're scraping the bottom of their argument barrel. > Even fiber would struggle 1 Gbit plans just launched one suburb over from me. They're getting speeds of 100 MB/s. That's a 4GB level download in 40 seconds - easily hidden by an intro video/cut-scene. But again, the studios will be happy to make some trade-offs here, so expect asset sizes to be smaller (akin to big smartphone). > And if networks are that robust, then why wouldn't we just all jump on game streaming instead and embrace the thin client life? Yep, agreed here. I was going to mention this at the end of my comment but it was getting too long. This definitely could be the "dark horse" which makes AAA web-platform gaming irrelevant. Although, from the consumer's point of view, they'll still end up accessing it from the web.

kllrnohj 6y ago

Smartphones were a new market. The web isn't. The web is the current market, just worse in every way. You haven't addressed any of the motivation here. Why would games go to the web? And AAA smartphone games are also non-existent anyway. AAA games are widely understood to be big budget, fancy graphics blockbusters. Those aren't on mobile today. > Asset streaming. It's the web. Hahahahaha this is a bad joke, right? A game's working set for a level is regularly >4GB. With reliable I/O games currently have 30-40 second load times and use asset streaming. You can't just wave this away or pretend it's an engineering problem. You want AAA games, you pay the AAA disk sizes. And that's just not compatible with the web. Not today, not next year, and network trends here aren't that great, either. Even fiber would struggle, and next gen consoles are about to raise the requirements here well beyond even that. And if networks are that robust, then why wouldn't we just all jump on game streaming instead and embrace the thin client life? There doesn't seem to be any room here for needing powerful local computing and needing world class internet quality? > Basically all mass-market consumer applications will end up as web applications. You might not like that (there are certainly down-sides), but you'd need to do a lot of explaining to explain away the very clear trends that we're seeing across the industry. Current trends are everything is a native mobile app. Apps are bigger than ever. There's no zero-sum game here as you're claiming anyway. Web isn't eating everything up.

pjmlp 6y ago
I think a couple of studios would disagree given their franchises on iOS and Android, or Stadia/xCloud/PlayStation Now/GeForce Now like games with most of their engines being cloud based.
rewq4321 6y ago
> Smartphones were a new market. New-ness doesn't matter. What matters is perf/features and audience. The web has traditionally been held back by the former. > And AAA smartphone games are also non-existent anyway. I'm talking about big-budget games that push the limits of the devices they run on, and there are lots of them on mobile. > > Asset streaming. It's the web. > Hahahahaha this is a bad joke, right? It's not a bad joke. This sort of condescension does not help persuade people. In fact it probably hurts your case because it's what people do when they're scraping the bottom of their argument barrel. > Even fiber would struggle 1 Gbit plans just launched one suburb over from me. They're getting speeds of 100 MB/s. That's a 4GB level download in 40 seconds - easily hidden by an intro video/cut-scene. But again, the studios will be happy to make some trade-offs here, so expect asset sizes to be smaller (akin to big smartphone). > And if networks are that robust, then why wouldn't we just all jump on game streaming instead and embrace the thin client life? Yep, agreed here. I was going to mention this at the end of my comment but it was getting too long. This definitely could be the "dark horse" which makes AAA web-platform gaming irrelevant. Although, from the consumer's point of view, they'll still end up accessing it from the web.