22 ms·

Luna – Cloud gaming service

267 points by metahost 6y ago

echelon 6y ago
This was always Amazon's play with Twitch. Amazon will be able to make a much more compelling attempt at the market than Google with Stadia. I still worry about these streaming platforms. Ease of use goes up, but it turns the industry into a subscription economy. Maybe attention fulfillment maps better to subscription than to purchase, as there's less buyer's remorse? I still don't like it.
- mmcdermott 6y ago
  That's kind of where my headspace is as well. I tend to view subscription services as a way to look for stuff I like and when I've found stuff I like, I want to add it to my own library. Luna may be technically superior, but I will avoid it as long as I possibly can.
  - neaden 6y ago
    I'm the opposite I think. With the exception of video and board games, I don't own much of the media I consume. I read probably over a dozen books from the library for every one I buy and I think I've probably bought maybe 5 DVDs in the past decade. I listen to the radio a lot, but rarely buy an album.
    - echelon 6y ago
      I think this is where the disconnect lies for me. I don't buy much, but when I do, I purchase things and use them often. I don't rent much at all. Moviegoing and attending concerts are my biggest "rental" purchases.
- dubcanada 6y ago
  Let's say you have a game, say you are Ubisoft. You distribute with Amazon Luna, I assume you get some sort of money, something like for every hour played on X game you get $0.0000005 or something silly like that. Basically you get a rough amount of money from people playing your game every month. I fail to see how that is any different then a Steam or GameStop based distribution. Which is... You find a publisher, they setup and get all the boxes/discs/what ever figured you and every month you get a cheque of all your sales. From a game developer point of view, it's the exact same.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    The difference is that players don't need to invest anything to play your game, just like I don't need to buy or rent a specific DVD to watch a movie anymore. They don't need to pay additional money, they don't need to install it. One advantage is that there's no barrier to trying out your game. The other is that your game now runs on anything.
    - dubcanada 6y ago
      It's different for the end-user, yes. But from a developer/game business point of view it's the exact same. Maybe less earnings, but there isn't any details on that to confirm so it's just speculation.
      - hombre_fatal 6y ago
        Well, those UX considerations in my post are also business considerations. Just look at all the games people never even get to entertain the idea of playing because they only own a tablet, macbook, underpowered computer, wrong/no console, etc. Getting your game into their hands through a service like this surely impacts your business.
  - defen 6y ago
    > You distribute with Amazon Luna, I assume you get some sort of money, something like for every hour played on X game you get $0.0000005 or Even better than that, you could get $0.0000005 for every hour spent playing or watching on twitch. Or maybe separate numbers for twitch vs plays, but in theory does Amazon care if a million people play alone and don't broadcast, or if one person plays and a million people watch?
- ehsankia 6y ago
  > This was always Amazon's play with Twitch Then they're pretty damn slow at making it, considering Stadia's first demo came out almost 2 years ago.
neaden 6y ago
Interesting. Disregarding my issues with Amazon as a company, on paper this looks like a better system then Google's Stadia, by actually having a netflix style access games for a monthly fee that I think most people expected Stadia to do.
- dubcanada 6y ago
  Looks like they are going to have channels? Something like you pay $3 for Ubisoft games, or $5 for Blizzard games a month.
- teaswift 6y ago
  It does feel like a improvement over Stadia. However the channels strategy does feel a bit like cable TV versus Xbox Game Pass Ultimate which is closer to a true Netflix style all you can play. I do think the post early access price, which will likely be higher then the current $5.99, will be the real deal breaker between this and Game Pass Ultimate.
dubcanada 6y ago
Not to take away from the launch, it's only available in main land US. Sadly no Canada at the moment :(
- dzhiurgis 6y ago
  It’s kinda lame all competing streaming services are launching in same market.
  - pb7 6y ago
    It'd be cool if something innovative launched in Europe for once. Nearly a billion people with very few global consumer technologies originating there.
    - ebalit 6y ago
      Shadow [0] launched a cloud gaming offer in 2017. Jean-Baptiste Kempf, one of the lead developer of the VLC project just joined as CTO. The problem isn't to create consumer technologies but to be commercially competitive against major players like Google or Amazon with deep pockets. [0] https://shadow.tech https://shadow.tech
    - swebs 6y ago
      America is just a goldmine. 300 million people with GDP comparable to Norway and Switzerland, that all speak the same language, and are covered by a single set of federal regulations. Plus taxes are much lower and there are fewer consumer protection laws in general. It's a businessman's dream. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
scarface74 6y ago
I noticed that there are web apps for iOS to get around Apple’s rules. Why couldn’t MS and Google do this.
- wayneftw 6y ago
  Probably because they rightfully feel that they shouldn’t have to resort to that and they would rather just fight Apple. As a consumer, I hope they win. It’s my pocket computer, I paid for it and I own it, so I should be able to do whatever the fuck I want with it.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Neither Microsoft nor Google are fighting Apple on either the 30% cut nor to open up the App Store. Why would they? They are doing the same thing. I thought Google was suppose to be a proponent of PWA’s?
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      Microsoft is. They publicly sided with and are helping to support Epic. Google didn’t do a mobile PWA for Stadia even on Android. I thought there was a comment about some technical limitations on iOS Safari in some previous thread but I can’t remember. They probably want the same experience everywhere.
      - scarface74 6y ago
        Microsoft specifically sided with Epic with regards to Apple trying to deny Epic from developing the Unreal engine on iOS. Nothing else.
        wayneftw 6y ago
        Microsoft has definitely spoken out about app stores and their 30% cut. Here's a quote: > “If you look at the industry today, I think what you’ll find is increasingly you’re seeing app stores that have created higher walls and far more formidable gates to access other applications than anything that existed in the industry 20 years ago,” says Smith. “They impose requirements that increasingly say there’s only one way to get onto our platform, and that is to go through the gate that we ourselves have created. In some cases they create a very high price for a toll, in some cases 30 percent of all your revenue has to go to the toll keeper if you will.” - Microsoft’s chief legal officer Brad Smith [0] [0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/19/21296657/microsoft-apple-app-store-antitrust-comments https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/19/21296657/microsoft-apple-...
swarnie_ 6y ago
Only available in the US and i can't find a link to the launch library. Judging by the background images not a single game i want is included. Not a great start....
QuixoticQuibit 6y ago
This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while. It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense. Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want? Will we move away from being able to purchase games to run them locally? Moreover, if Games as a Service (GaaS) becomes the de facto way to release games, is it going to encourage longer titles with lots of grinding/farming to ensure people stay engaged for months at a time? Will it slowly kill off sub-20h, more story-focused experiences that can be completed in a fraction of one month’s subscription price? Also, it really bothers me to see that almost every single one of the FAANGs feels the need hop on the bandwagon. First it was music streaming, then movies/TVs, and now it looks like gaming is next. You can argue that competition is good but really we just have exclusive content siloed across various services and priced in such a way that likely only the large tech companies can subside it with their other offerings (e.g., ad revenue or premium phone sales).
- rayhendricks 6y ago
  Well if you play borderlands 3 or another AAA title inside stadia and purchase you are already paying for game + gaming service + DLC...
- dzhiurgis 6y ago
  I wouldn’t mind if subscription was something like 10 cents per hour played, not 30 bucks a month plus one off $50 fee.
- neaden 6y ago
  I find this odd because I think historically most people haven't purchased entertainment. Libraries have always been common for books, more people listen to a song on the radio then on a CD they own, people watched TV on broadcast or cable before Netflix, and most movies are watched in the theaters or rented then on a DVD they own. Games have been weird for being something you have to buy.
polytely 6y ago
Feel like this going to kill any chance Stadia might have had, if they have enough games and they give you a couple of months for free / reduced price if you have a Twitch Prime this will probably own the game streaming market.
- Axsuul 6y ago
  Not necessarily, it will also come down to exclusives. Google has already been buying up game studios and the games they release will never be on Luna. I anticipate we're going to see the same fragmentation as we're seeing in the streaming world.
- LegitShady 6y ago
  I know a lot of people who game I don't know anyone with stadia. Even Microsoft's Xbox streaming is better. Stadia was a solution looking for a problem that can't justify its own subscription costs. The recently launched Xbox streaming is a better solution with a ton of included games and I don't think that's any good either it's just an add on to their game pass ultimate subscription. Google will either have to dump a ton of money into it while looking at what their competition is offering, or let the time on their contractual obligations run out and shutter it.
rococode 6y ago
Has anyone tried a Stadia before? I've remained doubtful about game streaming because it seems like the latency is such a hard problem to overcome. In any game that requires even a bit of precision and fast reaction, 30-100ms of latency can feel pretty bad. Seems to me like the only way this could possibly work is if the games are designed with streaming in mind, but even then it seems hard... Remote Desktop in Windows, for example, feels laggy even on LAN (connecting to another computer in the same house).
- adamnemecek 6y ago
  Not stadia but geforce now and I like it a lot.
  - verst 6y ago
    I also like GeForce Now a lot. Works great with Gigabit Fiber. Can't wait for them to upgrade their servers to Ampere GPUs. Another game streaming experience: I sideloaded the XBox Game Pass app on Nvidia Shield TV Pro and stream the xCloud games that way. Input lag feels acceptable in this unsupported environment.
  - sntran 6y ago
    Same here. I like their model, as I can play most of my already-bought games on my MacBook. I don't want to buy another copy of a game on a new platform.
- boardwaalk 6y ago
  I believe there is (was?) a trial for Stadia Pro if you want to try it. Having tried it myself, I don’t think you’re off point on anything you’ve said. The latency is substantial (and I’m on Google Fiber) and my wi-fi caused regular hitches. Which could be my hardware, but it’s not like my hardware (Unifi gear) or situation (typical suburban environment) is odd.
  - verst 6y ago
    Can't comment on Stadia, but my Unifi UDM and WiFi routers weren't good enough for reliable game streaming. Had to go wired. With Gigabit Fiber (Centurylink in my case) it works extremely well on several cloud game streaming services.
boardwaalk 6y ago
The Venn diagram for target audience and situational use cases of these services has always seemed very small to me. At least the subscription model and game selection seems better than Stadia. edit: Also, it seems to me like the target audience is for the same sort (and I’m not trying to denigrate) that watch movies on their TV with internal speakers or can’t fathom why you’d pay more than 30 bucks for headphones or earbuds. Some people just don’t care about the latency, hiccups, or compression artifacts. And that’s fine, but I’m not part of that group.
- MikusR 6y ago
  Hawe you actually tried Stadia or Geforce Now?
  - chaostheory 6y ago
    I don't have fiber, so I'm at the mercy of how much demand there is for Comcast at any given time. Sometimes it works great, other times not so much. I'd rather just install games locally like with Game Pass, Steam, or EPIC. My local computer can handle these games just fine. I'm definitely not the target audience since I can afford the hardware. The only place I can think of in the US with fiber are university dorms. Outside of providing a cheap substitute for hardware, the only other use case I can see this for is for MMO's that have drastically changing environments like Rec Room, VR Chat or anything like 2nd Life
    - MikusR 6y ago
      You don't need fiber. As for use cases, i just now played an hour of The Division 2 on my laptop (with intel integrated gpu) using 4g connection from my phone.
      - chaostheory 6y ago
        You do if you don't want lag or weird graphical artifacts. You need fiber if you want a local install experience.
oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
Does anyone know the basic tech stack behind Luna? This landing page doesn't mention anything, and I'm dying to know if they're also going the Linux and Vulkan route of Stadia.
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  Since Lumberyard doesn't support Vulkan I doubt that this is using Vulkan at all. Most likely DirectX 12 or maybe OpenGL.
- teaswift 6y ago
  I read on another site they're using Windows and DirectX to maximize the amount of games that can be played without porting.
mattfrommars 6y ago
Anyone know how this infrastructure works? What are these servers running on? Java web app? Virtual machine on a single machine?
kristianpaul 6y ago
This ideas are good as long as they have good game catalog and game development companies behind right? Dont think is a technology capacity problem anymore.
canada_dry 6y ago
You would think this would be a fairly logical extension of Newell's game delivery system (Steam) too.
- easton 6y ago
  They are working on connecting Steam to cloud providers instead who will provide the horsepower and billing, etc. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming
asou 6y ago
>Unlike streaming movies or music, cloud gaming can consume up to 10GB/hr at 1080p Jesus Christ. So of I want to go to game on my phone while I take the bus for an hour I've blown 10gbs from my data plan. The only thing keeping me on Xbox Gamepass is the fact I can download games locally. At first I really liked it, but then connection dropped so much games where unplayable ( on WiFi )
- franklampard 6y ago
  I think 5G can definitely help here, assuming it provides faster and more reliable connection. It used to be unthinkable before 4G for people to watch videos everywhere on their mobile phones.
  - asou 6y ago
    Most providers softcap at 50 to 100 gb . At best I'd get 10 hours of gaming here. Don't get me wrong, I want this to succeed. I want to be able to play COD or Halo from anywhere with a 5g connection. But with such high data usage it's DOA
    - franklampard 6y ago
      Given the mobile connectivity history, I am pretty optimistic the cap is going to increase. It’s not that long ago that I had a few mega bytes per month.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      > At best At best you don't use high quality 1080p on a bus. That's 3.5x the max bitrate twitch uses.
- dx87 6y ago
  > Experience gaming anywhere there's high-speed wifi. They don't talk about playing it on mobile data, just wifi.
- outworlder 6y ago
  >Unlike streaming movies or music, cloud gaming can consume up to 10GB/hr at 1080p Makes sense. It is also a problem on many internet providers (including Comcast), not just mobile.
hello_tyler 6y ago
Pay to beta test Amazon's stadia ripoff? No thank you.
abakus 6y ago
I like strategy games and I enjoying modding / editing various aspects of these games. I don't think Cloud gaming will allow me to do these.
- camone 6y ago
  no, you're SOL on that one, but fortunately strategy games don't (usually) have very high spec requirements. I have geforce now and used Stadia before, and use them to play the high-end games I have on steam that I wanted to play but would never bother getting an actual machine for. A decent gaming rig is worth more than I'm willing to pay for, so this is a good compromise.
  - abakus 6y ago
    A lot of strategy games are very CPU hungry but not picky about GPU.
scott31 6y ago
It will also insta ban you when Alexa hears you use n-word or f-word.
layoric 6y ago
Ubisoft obviously has some kind of special deal to be able to sell their own subscription “coming soon”, does anyone know what the profit share for game developers is for this kind of cloud gaming? Or will it only be large publisher titles available for these kind of services with behind closed door deals? I get that this type of services reduces friction (somewhat) for playing graphically demanding games at the cost of network bandwidth (10gb/hour), but trying to work out what kind of possible Epic vs Apple shit fights this kind of silo platforms might start if it is rolled out to all AWS regions around the world and becomes dominant platform.
yepthatsreality 6y ago
I love waiting for an install, something in the mail, water to boil, etc. It’s a good time to slow down and reflect on anything else. I don’t want things now. I just want. Once I’m satisfied...the journey is over. People are so concerned with self optimizing time or the perfect experience that they forget you don’t have to hurry. Having said that, in modern society you can have it all, but can you consume it all? Why would you want to?
- yepthatsreality 6y ago
  Also that ad devolves into mostly non-sense, the whole middle section. You can't play at half those places on those screens.
smcleod 6y ago
Note that it's USA only
CGamesPlay 6y ago
I'm not sure I would get back on one of these. I used OnLive back in the day, but now I can't play those games any more. It was a subscription with lock-in, and now that it's out of business I can't even choose to be locked in. Now, I have recently started playing on GeForce NOW, nVidia's offering. However there it's much closer to an EC2 model: I'm renting a machine, and I log into my Steam profile and play games that I purchased there. If I want to move that to my own PC, I can. I like that pattern much more.
- lowiqengineer 6y ago
  If this is a buffet option I don't mind possible obsolescence myself.
- freehunter 6y ago
  I have tons of PC games I "own" but can't play anymore. One of my favorite tycoon games was Sid Meier's Railroads, but it can't run stable on any machine with more than 4GB of RAM. Sure I could spin up a Windows XP VM but that's not a reasonable solution in any way. Same thing with Full Spectrum Warrior, just doesn't run on modern OSes. I can play Unreal Tournament 2003 or older Call of Duty games or... if I can find someone to play with, playing the maps and modes I want to play. I also have more than a handful of online and MMO games that I "own" but can't play because the servers are shut off. The days of owning a game and playing it forever are so far gone that there are adults graduating college who don't remember a time when you could expect to own a game and play it forever.
  - detaro 6y ago
    If "doesn't run on newer systems" is your criteria, those days never existed (and any point in time is probably the one with the most options to run past games, due to emulation/compatibility fixes improving). Games relying on servers are a newer issue though indeed.
  - bstar77 6y ago
    My Steam account has 282 game going back 15 years. I'm sure there's a few that don't work anymore, but I've never come across one. PC has a great compatibility track record even if a few games from the early 2000's don't work.
kumarvvr 6y ago
Interesting to note that the controller connects to Amazon servers directly. Is that something new or has it been done before?
- 0xCMP 6y ago
  Stadia's controller is also supposed to work like this
  - kumarvvr 6y ago
    Ohh, didn't know that.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Yup Stadia did it first, it actually makes a significant difference because bluetooth is quite slow, which is also why you can't really use bluetooth headphones for gaming. It connects directly through wifi so you can quickly switch between PC, chromecast and android without connecting it to any individual device.
  - gustavetd 6y ago
    Well it's true that bluetooth actually induces latency but in the case of audio there is a lot of codec encoding / decoding shenanigans that produces a significant part of the perceived audio lag, which does not occur on controller / mouse / keyboard
mraza007 6y ago
Looks direct competitor to Google’s stadia Just out of curiosity how does cloud gaming works and don’t we need high bandwidth for that
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Stadia needs roughly 20mbps, which these days is fairly average for most places in the world. Actually data transfer can become an issue if you don't have unlimited data transfer and play more than a few hours a day. 720p is 4.5gb per hour, whereas 1080p is 9gb. 4K is even higher.
  - mraza007 6y ago
    Dang Outside of US you usually pay for the data I think this can be expensive for some people
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      It really depends. Some places like Canada and Australia it's a bit rough, but in europe and both internet speeds and caps are much much cheaper. Honestly even in Canada I have a 1TB cap, which would be a problem if I played a ton of Stadia, but a few hours a week is not an issue. 50 hours would be maybe half my cap.
wraptile 6y ago
I wonder why don't any of these game streaming services every launch in developing countries like SEA. Affording gaming PC is quite difficult here, that's why Gaming Cafes are still so popular and even more so mobile games, however most people do have TVs because they are so cheap. I'd imagine 5$/month game streaming service would be much more attractive here than anywhere else.
- philliphaydon 6y ago
  Most of the games played in internet cafes are LoL, Dota2, Fortnite, CS:GO... All these can run on a potato for cheap. Looking at facebook for used parts you could prob build a desktop to play those games at ~$200 sgd.
axaxs 6y ago
I hope Amazon has plans for better distribution than their current datacenters. They have absolutely nothing in the US south or mid/mountain west. Maybe they'll run in some edges like Stadia?
_sveq 6y ago
The intro vid on the landing page is very well done.
_sveq 6y ago
Why back in my day we had to hike five miles in the snow to the brick and mortar store...
mNovak 6y ago
This pairing up with a library of free Prime games seems like it could draw in a big crowd of casual gamers. Don't know if this is still the case, but I remember on Fire tablets getting third party apps for free that cost money on other platforms.
xkfm 6y ago
I wonder how this one will go. I wish I lived closer to most of these companies data centers. It'd be great living in Spookville, Virginia right about now if you were into these game streaming services.
Aeolun 6y ago
Ah, of course. Only in the US. For a change it would be nice if they started literally anywhere else.
- system2 6y ago
  Not to be offensive, how many countries out there with big tech companies shaping the technology? Maybe Sony from Japan a little and except their PlayStation, I can't think of anything they do these years, unlike in 80s.
- ffhhj 6y ago
  Great, there is a business opportunity for global game streamming.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  You mean, anywhere other than the world's largest unitary single-language market not subject to government censorship? Europe has too many languages. China requires you to give up 50% or more of your company for the "privilege" of doing business there, plus you must deal with censorship with respect to the type of content your game(s) can include. India has an extremely heavy tax burden. Japan and Korea are too small. Latin America, as a whole, is generally a rounding error in terms of video game sales, for various reasons. The U.S. is the only place where it makes sense to launch. Especially when you're a U.S. company, with U.S. employees.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Is supporting multiple language matter? They should localize apps and games as usual. I suspect that fast internet connection and putting servers near users are matter. Seoul and Tokyo looks good place for connection and population density.
deleted 6y ago
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resfirestar 6y ago
The price looks really good compared to Stadia, and being able to use a dirt cheap Fire Stick that many already have instead of a $100 hardware investment is a huge plus. To really drive adoption they could cut the price of the controller and make some games available for Prime members. That said, I think there's a tendency to pooh-pooh the "gamer" concerns about streaming far too much in the rush to declare that the state of technology couldn't possibly be an obstacle to launching a product. Just from this year two of the most popular games with non-gamer audiences were a samurai adventure that sells itself on its HDR visuals that wouldn't look so great compressed (Ghost of Tsushima) and a party game where you wouldn't need to be a stereotypical FPS gamer to notice and be infuriated by relatively small amounts of input lag (Fall Guys). Yes, people who don't play games all the time will be less demanding, but don't forget we're still talking about them playing games.
- smoe 6y ago
  I agree that we should not declare it as without obstacles. But neither as useless because it doesn't meet the demand of "gamers" I used to be a gamer, playing hours competing online every day around the Diablo 2/Warcraft 3 times but have since largely lost interest in it as a hobby. These days I'm more interested in killing a half hour here and there, sometimes a rainy sunday afternoon. Almost exlusively more narative driven or not very mechanically demanding single player, often turn based games and couch coop. I'm pretty happy with my Switch as the only gaming device, but I find it a hassle to look up which games are out, check reviews to see if their worth buying, maybe wait for a discount and wait for download. Then feeling bad for not having finished most. So a service which I can just pull up when I feel like it, and click on a random game and immediately start playing for a while then either move on or come back is very attractive to me, and unlike other streaming services I don't care much about owning the product. That said, I have never tried cloud gaming service, but for the convenience I'd be willing to make quite some concessions. E.g. keeping the Switch for the 2-3 fast paced party games I play.
- binaryjay 6y ago
  >The price looks really good compared to Stadia, and being able to use a dirt cheap Fire Stick that many already have instead of a $100 hardware investment is a huge plus. I don't get this statement. Don't you need to purchase an Amazon Controller for $50 and if you want a good SoC and 4K capability you'll also need to purchase a Fire Stick 4K at about $50 which brings the total to $100. As for Stadia - there's no need to purchase a Stadia controller or Chromecast 4K. I've used an Xbox controller and Chrome to play just fine.
voltagex_ 6y ago
Ah damn, only available in the US. I was hoping that there'd be a streaming service available in Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne so I could actually have a chance of trying it with decent latency.
pier25 6y ago
Apple modified Safari so that Amazon was able to launch Luna on iOS: > “We worked with the Safari team to ensure that some of the things that weren't there are there, and that allowed us to kind of get to where we are today,” Luna head of engineering and technology George Tsipolitis said. https://www.engadget.com/luna-amazon-cloud-gaming-interview-pwa-apple-173948922.html https://www.engadget.com/luna-amazon-cloud-gaming-interview-...
- 0xCMP 6y ago
  Curious what it is. I'm guessing it's not WebGL cause the game isn't running locally. Maybe they're treating it as some kind of special real-time video stream?
  - pier25 6y ago
    My first hunch was that it's something related to input. Maybe making sure input is not delayed when streaming video.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  I was really surprised to see "iOS" in the promotional stuff, considering game streaming on AppStore has been a huge issue in the past few months. Turns out, another Apple team has been helping them bypass the AppStore entirely! I'm surprised Stadia on iOS is not out yet, considering iOS 14 adds vp9 and by some account, it actually works right now if you spoof your user agent. Maybe very soon.
- Terretta 6y ago
  Imagine if more devs used the original vision for iOS to release apps: open technologies delivered to the home screen. So much that's in the app store has, essentially, no need to be a DRM protected binary distributable. (Unless, maybe, the app store channel brings some significant value.)
  - pier25 6y ago
    That'd be great if Apple hadn't been sabotaging the web on iOS for years.
ndavis 6y ago
The latency metric seems baked. As a long time PC FPS player where latency is king, I'd like to know if there is a real advantage versus USB or 2.4/5ghz dongle and a PC/console connected to the streaming server. I'm imagining a lot of thought went toward the back end architecture for the service and will definitely be giving it a go. Was not impressed by Google's attempt. If the latency issues with streamed games can be overcome through a direct device connection to streamlined infrastructure at Amazon, something like what Riot has done on their backend for League and Valorant, then it would be a real game changer (haha) for these services. The power to be had offloading rendering could totally kill console and PC one day just from a technical angle. Imagining a Pixar like experience coming soon, straight from AWS. Can a home PC or console ever compete with a render farm?
TonyTrapp 6y ago
Can we please stop giving human names to devices and services? It may not be as popular as Alexa as a real-name but it will just repeat the bully cycle for even more people now.
Sistrixirri 6y ago
I'm not a gamer but I find this interesting... So as far as I understand I could get access to unlimited amount of games without even having a gaming console or pc for few dollars a month? I guess that's the dream deal to any gamer..
mijoharas 6y ago
Since it hasn't been posted here, it looks like amazon have "productised" AppStream[0] and added a subscription based model a-la prime video. Interesting that they positioned it as a new product and not a prime offering, as increasing prime subs was always one of amazon's main drives recently (keep spinning that flywheel). They had a similar streaming integration with their games engine lumberyard[1] iirc, and used it for some of their first party titles[2] though as far as I remember, none of their first party games have taken off. Interestingly, in googling I found there is a "prime gaming"[3] option that amazon has, so I'm surprised this offering wasn't folded into that. Maybe the low uptake of prime gaming means they need to position it as a separate service to get press for it, or maybe the increased cost to serve can't be justified without charging an additional subscription. [0] https://aws.amazon.com/appstream2/?blog-posts-cards.sort-by=item.additionalFields.createdDate&blog-posts-cards.sort-order=desc https://aws.amazon.com/appstream2/?blog-posts-cards.sort-by=... [1] https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ [2] https://www.amazongames.com/en-gb/games https://www.amazongames.com/en-gb/games [3] https://gaming.amazon.com/ https://gaming.amazon.com/
mcintyre1994 6y ago
> Play on PC, Mac, Fire TV and web apps for iPhone and iPad Is an equivalent service already available on their own Fire tablet hardware? That seems like a weird omission.
- walrus01 6y ago
  the majority of fire tablets use bottom of the barrel CPU/GPU combos that wouldn't be capable of streaming low-latency (sub-40ms) 1080p in a truly smooth way. when your whole BOM for building a tablet is probably $40 in parts, it doesn't go very far towards much CPU heavy lifting.
  - mcintyre1994 6y ago
    That makes sense actually, I was comparing to the Fire Sticks which are cheaper than the tablets but I guess the sticks can dedicate a lot more of the hardware budget to those internals.
jl2718 6y ago
Will games eventually take over the TV/movie market? They seem superior to all forms of passive entertainment. I can still see TV Newsertainment because that’s basically just LARPing for old people.
- loktarogar 6y ago
  I'm a heavy gamer. Sometimes i'll watch TV while i'm gaming. Other times i'd rather take a break and just sit and watch something. There's definitely going to be a market for passive entertainment.

267 points by metahost 6y ago

This was always Amazon's play with Twitch. Amazon will be able to make a much more compelling attempt at the market than Google with Stadia. I still worry about these streaming platforms. Ease of use goes up, but it turns the industry into a subscription economy. Maybe attention fulfillment maps better to subscription than to purchase, as there's less buyer's remorse? I still don't like it.

mmcdermott 6y ago
That's kind of where my headspace is as well. I tend to view subscription services as a way to look for stuff I like and when I've found stuff I like, I want to add it to my own library. Luna may be technically superior, but I will avoid it as long as I possibly can.
- neaden 6y ago
  I'm the opposite I think. With the exception of video and board games, I don't own much of the media I consume. I read probably over a dozen books from the library for every one I buy and I think I've probably bought maybe 5 DVDs in the past decade. I listen to the radio a lot, but rarely buy an album.
  - echelon 6y ago
    I think this is where the disconnect lies for me. I don't buy much, but when I do, I purchase things and use them often. I don't rent much at all. Moviegoing and attending concerts are my biggest "rental" purchases.
dubcanada 6y ago
Let's say you have a game, say you are Ubisoft. You distribute with Amazon Luna, I assume you get some sort of money, something like for every hour played on X game you get $0.0000005 or something silly like that. Basically you get a rough amount of money from people playing your game every month. I fail to see how that is any different then a Steam or GameStop based distribution. Which is... You find a publisher, they setup and get all the boxes/discs/what ever figured you and every month you get a cheque of all your sales. From a game developer point of view, it's the exact same.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  The difference is that players don't need to invest anything to play your game, just like I don't need to buy or rent a specific DVD to watch a movie anymore. They don't need to pay additional money, they don't need to install it. One advantage is that there's no barrier to trying out your game. The other is that your game now runs on anything.
  - dubcanada 6y ago
    It's different for the end-user, yes. But from a developer/game business point of view it's the exact same. Maybe less earnings, but there isn't any details on that to confirm so it's just speculation.
    - hombre_fatal 6y ago
      Well, those UX considerations in my post are also business considerations. Just look at all the games people never even get to entertain the idea of playing because they only own a tablet, macbook, underpowered computer, wrong/no console, etc. Getting your game into their hands through a service like this surely impacts your business.
- defen 6y ago
  > You distribute with Amazon Luna, I assume you get some sort of money, something like for every hour played on X game you get $0.0000005 or Even better than that, you could get $0.0000005 for every hour spent playing or watching on twitch. Or maybe separate numbers for twitch vs plays, but in theory does Amazon care if a million people play alone and don't broadcast, or if one person plays and a million people watch?
ehsankia 6y ago
> This was always Amazon's play with Twitch Then they're pretty damn slow at making it, considering Stadia's first demo came out almost 2 years ago.

neaden 6y ago

Interesting. Disregarding my issues with Amazon as a company, on paper this looks like a better system then Google's Stadia, by actually having a netflix style access games for a monthly fee that I think most people expected Stadia to do.

dubcanada 6y ago
Looks like they are going to have channels? Something like you pay $3 for Ubisoft games, or $5 for Blizzard games a month.
teaswift 6y ago
It does feel like a improvement over Stadia. However the channels strategy does feel a bit like cable TV versus Xbox Game Pass Ultimate which is closer to a true Netflix style all you can play. I do think the post early access price, which will likely be higher then the current $5.99, will be the real deal breaker between this and Game Pass Ultimate.

dubcanada 6y ago

Not to take away from the launch, it's only available in main land US. Sadly no Canada at the moment :(

dzhiurgis 6y ago
It’s kinda lame all competing streaming services are launching in same market.
- pb7 6y ago
  It'd be cool if something innovative launched in Europe for once. Nearly a billion people with very few global consumer technologies originating there.
  - ebalit 6y ago
    Shadow [0] launched a cloud gaming offer in 2017. Jean-Baptiste Kempf, one of the lead developer of the VLC project just joined as CTO. The problem isn't to create consumer technologies but to be commercially competitive against major players like Google or Amazon with deep pockets. [0] https://shadow.tech https://shadow.tech
  - swebs 6y ago
    America is just a goldmine. 300 million people with GDP comparable to Norway and Switzerland, that all speak the same language, and are covered by a single set of federal regulations. Plus taxes are much lower and there are fewer consumer protection laws in general. It's a businessman's dream. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

scarface74 6y ago

I noticed that there are web apps for iOS to get around Apple’s rules. Why couldn’t MS and Google do this.

wayneftw 6y ago
Probably because they rightfully feel that they shouldn’t have to resort to that and they would rather just fight Apple. As a consumer, I hope they win. It’s my pocket computer, I paid for it and I own it, so I should be able to do whatever the fuck I want with it.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Neither Microsoft nor Google are fighting Apple on either the 30% cut nor to open up the App Store. Why would they? They are doing the same thing. I thought Google was suppose to be a proponent of PWA’s?
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    Microsoft is. They publicly sided with and are helping to support Epic. Google didn’t do a mobile PWA for Stadia even on Android. I thought there was a comment about some technical limitations on iOS Safari in some previous thread but I can’t remember. They probably want the same experience everywhere.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Microsoft specifically sided with Epic with regards to Apple trying to deny Epic from developing the Unreal engine on iOS. Nothing else.
      - wayneftw 6y ago
        Microsoft has definitely spoken out about app stores and their 30% cut. Here's a quote: > “If you look at the industry today, I think what you’ll find is increasingly you’re seeing app stores that have created higher walls and far more formidable gates to access other applications than anything that existed in the industry 20 years ago,” says Smith. “They impose requirements that increasingly say there’s only one way to get onto our platform, and that is to go through the gate that we ourselves have created. In some cases they create a very high price for a toll, in some cases 30 percent of all your revenue has to go to the toll keeper if you will.” - Microsoft’s chief legal officer Brad Smith [0] [0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/19/21296657/microsoft-apple-app-store-antitrust-comments https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/19/21296657/microsoft-apple-...

swarnie_ 6y ago

Only available in the US and i can't find a link to the launch library. Judging by the background images not a single game i want is included. Not a great start....

QuixoticQuibit 6y ago

This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while. It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense. Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want? Will we move away from being able to purchase games to run them locally? Moreover, if Games as a Service (GaaS) becomes the de facto way to release games, is it going to encourage longer titles with lots of grinding/farming to ensure people stay engaged for months at a time? Will it slowly kill off sub-20h, more story-focused experiences that can be completed in a fraction of one month’s subscription price? Also, it really bothers me to see that almost every single one of the FAANGs feels the need hop on the bandwagon. First it was music streaming, then movies/TVs, and now it looks like gaming is next. You can argue that competition is good but really we just have exclusive content siloed across various services and priced in such a way that likely only the large tech companies can subside it with their other offerings (e.g., ad revenue or premium phone sales).

rayhendricks 6y ago
Well if you play borderlands 3 or another AAA title inside stadia and purchase you are already paying for game + gaming service + DLC...
dzhiurgis 6y ago
I wouldn’t mind if subscription was something like 10 cents per hour played, not 30 bucks a month plus one off $50 fee.
neaden 6y ago
I find this odd because I think historically most people haven't purchased entertainment. Libraries have always been common for books, more people listen to a song on the radio then on a CD they own, people watched TV on broadcast or cable before Netflix, and most movies are watched in the theaters or rented then on a DVD they own. Games have been weird for being something you have to buy.

polytely 6y ago

Feel like this going to kill any chance Stadia might have had, if they have enough games and they give you a couple of months for free / reduced price if you have a Twitch Prime this will probably own the game streaming market.

Axsuul 6y ago
Not necessarily, it will also come down to exclusives. Google has already been buying up game studios and the games they release will never be on Luna. I anticipate we're going to see the same fragmentation as we're seeing in the streaming world.
LegitShady 6y ago
I know a lot of people who game I don't know anyone with stadia. Even Microsoft's Xbox streaming is better. Stadia was a solution looking for a problem that can't justify its own subscription costs. The recently launched Xbox streaming is a better solution with a ton of included games and I don't think that's any good either it's just an add on to their game pass ultimate subscription. Google will either have to dump a ton of money into it while looking at what their competition is offering, or let the time on their contractual obligations run out and shutter it.

rococode 6y ago

Has anyone tried a Stadia before? I've remained doubtful about game streaming because it seems like the latency is such a hard problem to overcome. In any game that requires even a bit of precision and fast reaction, 30-100ms of latency can feel pretty bad. Seems to me like the only way this could possibly work is if the games are designed with streaming in mind, but even then it seems hard... Remote Desktop in Windows, for example, feels laggy even on LAN (connecting to another computer in the same house).

adamnemecek 6y ago
Not stadia but geforce now and I like it a lot.
- verst 6y ago
  I also like GeForce Now a lot. Works great with Gigabit Fiber. Can't wait for them to upgrade their servers to Ampere GPUs. Another game streaming experience: I sideloaded the XBox Game Pass app on Nvidia Shield TV Pro and stream the xCloud games that way. Input lag feels acceptable in this unsupported environment.
- sntran 6y ago
  Same here. I like their model, as I can play most of my already-bought games on my MacBook. I don't want to buy another copy of a game on a new platform.
boardwaalk 6y ago
I believe there is (was?) a trial for Stadia Pro if you want to try it. Having tried it myself, I don’t think you’re off point on anything you’ve said. The latency is substantial (and I’m on Google Fiber) and my wi-fi caused regular hitches. Which could be my hardware, but it’s not like my hardware (Unifi gear) or situation (typical suburban environment) is odd.
- verst 6y ago
  Can't comment on Stadia, but my Unifi UDM and WiFi routers weren't good enough for reliable game streaming. Had to go wired. With Gigabit Fiber (Centurylink in my case) it works extremely well on several cloud game streaming services.

boardwaalk 6y ago

The Venn diagram for target audience and situational use cases of these services has always seemed very small to me. At least the subscription model and game selection seems better than Stadia. edit: Also, it seems to me like the target audience is for the same sort (and I’m not trying to denigrate) that watch movies on their TV with internal speakers or can’t fathom why you’d pay more than 30 bucks for headphones or earbuds. Some people just don’t care about the latency, hiccups, or compression artifacts. And that’s fine, but I’m not part of that group.

MikusR 6y ago
Hawe you actually tried Stadia or Geforce Now?
- chaostheory 6y ago
  I don't have fiber, so I'm at the mercy of how much demand there is for Comcast at any given time. Sometimes it works great, other times not so much. I'd rather just install games locally like with Game Pass, Steam, or EPIC. My local computer can handle these games just fine. I'm definitely not the target audience since I can afford the hardware. The only place I can think of in the US with fiber are university dorms. Outside of providing a cheap substitute for hardware, the only other use case I can see this for is for MMO's that have drastically changing environments like Rec Room, VR Chat or anything like 2nd Life
  - MikusR 6y ago
    You don't need fiber. As for use cases, i just now played an hour of The Division 2 on my laptop (with intel integrated gpu) using 4g connection from my phone.
    - chaostheory 6y ago
      You do if you don't want lag or weird graphical artifacts. You need fiber if you want a local install experience.

oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago

Does anyone know the basic tech stack behind Luna? This landing page doesn't mention anything, and I'm dying to know if they're also going the Linux and Vulkan route of Stadia.

whoisjuan 6y ago
Since Lumberyard doesn't support Vulkan I doubt that this is using Vulkan at all. Most likely DirectX 12 or maybe OpenGL.
teaswift 6y ago
I read on another site they're using Windows and DirectX to maximize the amount of games that can be played without porting.

mattfrommars 6y ago

Anyone know how this infrastructure works? What are these servers running on? Java web app? Virtual machine on a single machine?

kristianpaul 6y ago

This ideas are good as long as they have good game catalog and game development companies behind right? Dont think is a technology capacity problem anymore.

canada_dry 6y ago

You would think this would be a fairly logical extension of Newell's game delivery system (Steam) too.

easton 6y ago
They are working on connecting Steam to cloud providers instead who will provide the horsepower and billing, etc. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming

asou 6y ago

>Unlike streaming movies or music, cloud gaming can consume up to 10GB/hr at 1080p Jesus Christ. So of I want to go to game on my phone while I take the bus for an hour I've blown 10gbs from my data plan. The only thing keeping me on Xbox Gamepass is the fact I can download games locally. At first I really liked it, but then connection dropped so much games where unplayable ( on WiFi )

franklampard 6y ago
I think 5G can definitely help here, assuming it provides faster and more reliable connection. It used to be unthinkable before 4G for people to watch videos everywhere on their mobile phones.
- asou 6y ago
  Most providers softcap at 50 to 100 gb . At best I'd get 10 hours of gaming here. Don't get me wrong, I want this to succeed. I want to be able to play COD or Halo from anywhere with a 5g connection. But with such high data usage it's DOA
  - franklampard 6y ago
    Given the mobile connectivity history, I am pretty optimistic the cap is going to increase. It’s not that long ago that I had a few mega bytes per month.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > At best At best you don't use high quality 1080p on a bus. That's 3.5x the max bitrate twitch uses.
dx87 6y ago
> Experience gaming anywhere there's high-speed wifi. They don't talk about playing it on mobile data, just wifi.
outworlder 6y ago
>Unlike streaming movies or music, cloud gaming can consume up to 10GB/hr at 1080p Makes sense. It is also a problem on many internet providers (including Comcast), not just mobile.

hello_tyler 6y ago

Pay to beta test Amazon's stadia ripoff? No thank you.

abakus 6y ago

I like strategy games and I enjoying modding / editing various aspects of these games. I don't think Cloud gaming will allow me to do these.

camone 6y ago
no, you're SOL on that one, but fortunately strategy games don't (usually) have very high spec requirements. I have geforce now and used Stadia before, and use them to play the high-end games I have on steam that I wanted to play but would never bother getting an actual machine for. A decent gaming rig is worth more than I'm willing to pay for, so this is a good compromise.
- abakus 6y ago
  A lot of strategy games are very CPU hungry but not picky about GPU.

scott31 6y ago

It will also insta ban you when Alexa hears you use n-word or f-word.

layoric 6y ago

Ubisoft obviously has some kind of special deal to be able to sell their own subscription “coming soon”, does anyone know what the profit share for game developers is for this kind of cloud gaming? Or will it only be large publisher titles available for these kind of services with behind closed door deals? I get that this type of services reduces friction (somewhat) for playing graphically demanding games at the cost of network bandwidth (10gb/hour), but trying to work out what kind of possible Epic vs Apple shit fights this kind of silo platforms might start if it is rolled out to all AWS regions around the world and becomes dominant platform.

yepthatsreality 6y ago

I love waiting for an install, something in the mail, water to boil, etc. It’s a good time to slow down and reflect on anything else. I don’t want things now. I just want. Once I’m satisfied...the journey is over. People are so concerned with self optimizing time or the perfect experience that they forget you don’t have to hurry. Having said that, in modern society you can have it all, but can you consume it all? Why would you want to?

yepthatsreality 6y ago
Also that ad devolves into mostly non-sense, the whole middle section. You can't play at half those places on those screens.

smcleod 6y ago

Note that it's USA only

CGamesPlay 6y ago

I'm not sure I would get back on one of these. I used OnLive back in the day, but now I can't play those games any more. It was a subscription with lock-in, and now that it's out of business I can't even choose to be locked in. Now, I have recently started playing on GeForce NOW, nVidia's offering. However there it's much closer to an EC2 model: I'm renting a machine, and I log into my Steam profile and play games that I purchased there. If I want to move that to my own PC, I can. I like that pattern much more.

lowiqengineer 6y ago
If this is a buffet option I don't mind possible obsolescence myself.
freehunter 6y ago
I have tons of PC games I "own" but can't play anymore. One of my favorite tycoon games was Sid Meier's Railroads, but it can't run stable on any machine with more than 4GB of RAM. Sure I could spin up a Windows XP VM but that's not a reasonable solution in any way. Same thing with Full Spectrum Warrior, just doesn't run on modern OSes. I can play Unreal Tournament 2003 or older Call of Duty games or... if I can find someone to play with, playing the maps and modes I want to play. I also have more than a handful of online and MMO games that I "own" but can't play because the servers are shut off. The days of owning a game and playing it forever are so far gone that there are adults graduating college who don't remember a time when you could expect to own a game and play it forever.
- detaro 6y ago
  If "doesn't run on newer systems" is your criteria, those days never existed (and any point in time is probably the one with the most options to run past games, due to emulation/compatibility fixes improving). Games relying on servers are a newer issue though indeed.
- bstar77 6y ago
  My Steam account has 282 game going back 15 years. I'm sure there's a few that don't work anymore, but I've never come across one. PC has a great compatibility track record even if a few games from the early 2000's don't work.

kumarvvr 6y ago

Interesting to note that the controller connects to Amazon servers directly. Is that something new or has it been done before?

0xCMP 6y ago
Stadia's controller is also supposed to work like this
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  Ohh, didn't know that.
ehsankia 6y ago
Yup Stadia did it first, it actually makes a significant difference because bluetooth is quite slow, which is also why you can't really use bluetooth headphones for gaming. It connects directly through wifi so you can quickly switch between PC, chromecast and android without connecting it to any individual device.
- gustavetd 6y ago
  Well it's true that bluetooth actually induces latency but in the case of audio there is a lot of codec encoding / decoding shenanigans that produces a significant part of the perceived audio lag, which does not occur on controller / mouse / keyboard

mraza007 6y ago

Looks direct competitor to Google’s stadia Just out of curiosity how does cloud gaming works and don’t we need high bandwidth for that

ehsankia 6y ago
Stadia needs roughly 20mbps, which these days is fairly average for most places in the world. Actually data transfer can become an issue if you don't have unlimited data transfer and play more than a few hours a day. 720p is 4.5gb per hour, whereas 1080p is 9gb. 4K is even higher.
- mraza007 6y ago
  Dang Outside of US you usually pay for the data I think this can be expensive for some people
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    It really depends. Some places like Canada and Australia it's a bit rough, but in europe and both internet speeds and caps are much much cheaper. Honestly even in Canada I have a 1TB cap, which would be a problem if I played a ton of Stadia, but a few hours a week is not an issue. 50 hours would be maybe half my cap.

wraptile 6y ago

I wonder why don't any of these game streaming services every launch in developing countries like SEA. Affording gaming PC is quite difficult here, that's why Gaming Cafes are still so popular and even more so mobile games, however most people do have TVs because they are so cheap. I'd imagine 5$/month game streaming service would be much more attractive here than anywhere else.

philliphaydon 6y ago
Most of the games played in internet cafes are LoL, Dota2, Fortnite, CS:GO... All these can run on a potato for cheap. Looking at facebook for used parts you could prob build a desktop to play those games at ~$200 sgd.

axaxs 6y ago

I hope Amazon has plans for better distribution than their current datacenters. They have absolutely nothing in the US south or mid/mountain west. Maybe they'll run in some edges like Stadia?

_sveq 6y ago

The intro vid on the landing page is very well done.

_sveq 6y ago

Why back in my day we had to hike five miles in the snow to the brick and mortar store...

mNovak 6y ago

This pairing up with a library of free Prime games seems like it could draw in a big crowd of casual gamers. Don't know if this is still the case, but I remember on Fire tablets getting third party apps for free that cost money on other platforms.

xkfm 6y ago

I wonder how this one will go. I wish I lived closer to most of these companies data centers. It'd be great living in Spookville, Virginia right about now if you were into these game streaming services.

Aeolun 6y ago

Ah, of course. Only in the US. For a change it would be nice if they started literally anywhere else.

system2 6y ago
Not to be offensive, how many countries out there with big tech companies shaping the technology? Maybe Sony from Japan a little and except their PlayStation, I can't think of anything they do these years, unlike in 80s.
ffhhj 6y ago
Great, there is a business opportunity for global game streamming.
gamblor956 6y ago
You mean, anywhere other than the world's largest unitary single-language market not subject to government censorship? Europe has too many languages. China requires you to give up 50% or more of your company for the "privilege" of doing business there, plus you must deal with censorship with respect to the type of content your game(s) can include. India has an extremely heavy tax burden. Japan and Korea are too small. Latin America, as a whole, is generally a rounding error in terms of video game sales, for various reasons. The U.S. is the only place where it makes sense to launch. Especially when you're a U.S. company, with U.S. employees.
- fomine3 6y ago
  Is supporting multiple language matter? They should localize apps and games as usual. I suspect that fast internet connection and putting servers near users are matter. Seoul and Tokyo looks good place for connection and population density.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

resfirestar 6y ago

The price looks really good compared to Stadia, and being able to use a dirt cheap Fire Stick that many already have instead of a $100 hardware investment is a huge plus. To really drive adoption they could cut the price of the controller and make some games available for Prime members. That said, I think there's a tendency to pooh-pooh the "gamer" concerns about streaming far too much in the rush to declare that the state of technology couldn't possibly be an obstacle to launching a product. Just from this year two of the most popular games with non-gamer audiences were a samurai adventure that sells itself on its HDR visuals that wouldn't look so great compressed (Ghost of Tsushima) and a party game where you wouldn't need to be a stereotypical FPS gamer to notice and be infuriated by relatively small amounts of input lag (Fall Guys). Yes, people who don't play games all the time will be less demanding, but don't forget we're still talking about them playing games.

smoe 6y ago
I agree that we should not declare it as without obstacles. But neither as useless because it doesn't meet the demand of "gamers" I used to be a gamer, playing hours competing online every day around the Diablo 2/Warcraft 3 times but have since largely lost interest in it as a hobby. These days I'm more interested in killing a half hour here and there, sometimes a rainy sunday afternoon. Almost exlusively more narative driven or not very mechanically demanding single player, often turn based games and couch coop. I'm pretty happy with my Switch as the only gaming device, but I find it a hassle to look up which games are out, check reviews to see if their worth buying, maybe wait for a discount and wait for download. Then feeling bad for not having finished most. So a service which I can just pull up when I feel like it, and click on a random game and immediately start playing for a while then either move on or come back is very attractive to me, and unlike other streaming services I don't care much about owning the product. That said, I have never tried cloud gaming service, but for the convenience I'd be willing to make quite some concessions. E.g. keeping the Switch for the 2-3 fast paced party games I play.
binaryjay 6y ago
>The price looks really good compared to Stadia, and being able to use a dirt cheap Fire Stick that many already have instead of a $100 hardware investment is a huge plus. I don't get this statement. Don't you need to purchase an Amazon Controller for $50 and if you want a good SoC and 4K capability you'll also need to purchase a Fire Stick 4K at about $50 which brings the total to $100. As for Stadia - there's no need to purchase a Stadia controller or Chromecast 4K. I've used an Xbox controller and Chrome to play just fine.

voltagex_ 6y ago

Ah damn, only available in the US. I was hoping that there'd be a streaming service available in Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne so I could actually have a chance of trying it with decent latency.

pier25 6y ago

Apple modified Safari so that Amazon was able to launch Luna on iOS: > “We worked with the Safari team to ensure that some of the things that weren't there are there, and that allowed us to kind of get to where we are today,” Luna head of engineering and technology George Tsipolitis said. https://www.engadget.com/luna-amazon-cloud-gaming-interview-pwa-apple-173948922.html https://www.engadget.com/luna-amazon-cloud-gaming-interview-...

0xCMP 6y ago
Curious what it is. I'm guessing it's not WebGL cause the game isn't running locally. Maybe they're treating it as some kind of special real-time video stream?
- pier25 6y ago
  My first hunch was that it's something related to input. Maybe making sure input is not delayed when streaming video.
ehsankia 6y ago
I was really surprised to see "iOS" in the promotional stuff, considering game streaming on AppStore has been a huge issue in the past few months. Turns out, another Apple team has been helping them bypass the AppStore entirely! I'm surprised Stadia on iOS is not out yet, considering iOS 14 adds vp9 and by some account, it actually works right now if you spoof your user agent. Maybe very soon.
Terretta 6y ago
Imagine if more devs used the original vision for iOS to release apps: open technologies delivered to the home screen. So much that's in the app store has, essentially, no need to be a DRM protected binary distributable. (Unless, maybe, the app store channel brings some significant value.)
- pier25 6y ago
  That'd be great if Apple hadn't been sabotaging the web on iOS for years.

ndavis 6y ago

The latency metric seems baked. As a long time PC FPS player where latency is king, I'd like to know if there is a real advantage versus USB or 2.4/5ghz dongle and a PC/console connected to the streaming server. I'm imagining a lot of thought went toward the back end architecture for the service and will definitely be giving it a go. Was not impressed by Google's attempt. If the latency issues with streamed games can be overcome through a direct device connection to streamlined infrastructure at Amazon, something like what Riot has done on their backend for League and Valorant, then it would be a real game changer (haha) for these services. The power to be had offloading rendering could totally kill console and PC one day just from a technical angle. Imagining a Pixar like experience coming soon, straight from AWS. Can a home PC or console ever compete with a render farm?

TonyTrapp 6y ago

Can we please stop giving human names to devices and services? It may not be as popular as Alexa as a real-name but it will just repeat the bully cycle for even more people now.

Sistrixirri 6y ago

I'm not a gamer but I find this interesting... So as far as I understand I could get access to unlimited amount of games without even having a gaming console or pc for few dollars a month? I guess that's the dream deal to any gamer..

mijoharas 6y ago

Since it hasn't been posted here, it looks like amazon have "productised" AppStream[0] and added a subscription based model a-la prime video. Interesting that they positioned it as a new product and not a prime offering, as increasing prime subs was always one of amazon's main drives recently (keep spinning that flywheel). They had a similar streaming integration with their games engine lumberyard[1] iirc, and used it for some of their first party titles[2] though as far as I remember, none of their first party games have taken off. Interestingly, in googling I found there is a "prime gaming"[3] option that amazon has, so I'm surprised this offering wasn't folded into that. Maybe the low uptake of prime gaming means they need to position it as a separate service to get press for it, or maybe the increased cost to serve can't be justified without charging an additional subscription. [0] https://aws.amazon.com/appstream2/?blog-posts-cards.sort-by=item.additionalFields.createdDate&blog-posts-cards.sort-order=desc https://aws.amazon.com/appstream2/?blog-posts-cards.sort-by=... [1] https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ [2] https://www.amazongames.com/en-gb/games https://www.amazongames.com/en-gb/games [3] https://gaming.amazon.com/ https://gaming.amazon.com/

mcintyre1994 6y ago

> Play on PC, Mac, Fire TV and web apps for iPhone and iPad Is an equivalent service already available on their own Fire tablet hardware? That seems like a weird omission.

walrus01 6y ago
the majority of fire tablets use bottom of the barrel CPU/GPU combos that wouldn't be capable of streaming low-latency (sub-40ms) 1080p in a truly smooth way. when your whole BOM for building a tablet is probably $40 in parts, it doesn't go very far towards much CPU heavy lifting.
- mcintyre1994 6y ago
  That makes sense actually, I was comparing to the Fire Sticks which are cheaper than the tablets but I guess the sticks can dedicate a lot more of the hardware budget to those internals.

jl2718 6y ago

Will games eventually take over the TV/movie market? They seem superior to all forms of passive entertainment. I can still see TV Newsertainment because that’s basically just LARPing for old people.

loktarogar 6y ago
I'm a heavy gamer. Sometimes i'll watch TV while i'm gaming. Other times i'd rather take a break and just sit and watch something. There's definitely going to be a market for passive entertainment.