8 ms·

UK regulators were objecting the deal because they were concerned that the takeover would reduce competition in cloud gaming. Microsoft gave game streaming rig

• w0m 3y ago
  well, assuming there's actually a cloud gaming market. A fact that's still up for debate I think.
  • WorldMaker 3y ago
    Right. Microsoft is just about the only player left in cloud gaming because Sony, Amazon and Google all tried and gave up in different ways, in part because none of them really found a market nor an audience. I heard Sony is trying again but leasing some cloud servers from Microsoft Azure's white box version of xCloud, ironically. That last part is also why I think the Ubisoft deal is probably funny. Rumors are Ubi is also leasing much of their cloud gaming from Azure's white box version of xCloud, so Microsoft is likely still going to get paid for people playing Activision things through Ubi's so far unfinished cloud gaming app.
    • wlesieutre 3y ago
      Nvidia still has GeForce NOW https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/
    • giancarlostoro 3y ago
      Doesn't EA still have theirs?
      • WorldMaker 3y ago
        Do they? I genuinely don't know and a quick search only adds confusion. I see a lot of news from when they went Beta in 2019 and then a lot of radio silence and I don't see any links to the service that don't have a "Technical Preview" or "Beta" next to them. That probably doesn't bode well as a signal for an active player base even if it is technically running.
        • giancarlostoro 3y ago
          Looks like they still do: https://www.ea.com/ea-play https://www.ea.com/ea-play I think they rebranded Origin or whatever it was called, didn't even realize.
          • mepian 3y ago
            EA Play is not cloud gaming, it's a download subscription service.
            • giancarlostoro 3y ago
              I guess Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass is the same thing then.
              • SSLy 3y ago
                it's both
    • SalimoS 3y ago
      Sony just relanced their streaming service this month with on paper better spec than Microsoft (4K streaming)
      • kridsdale3 3y ago
        Latency is 90% of what matters in these products. Does higher resolution impact the latency?
    • jedberg 3y ago
      Amazon has Luna https://luna.amazon.com/ https://luna.amazon.com/
      • WorldMaker 3y ago
        Apologies, I thought it had shut down already; I must have been confusing the shut down of game studios dedicated to it as the first step in a shutdown in the so-called "Stadia playbook" and thought they were further along it.
    • sandworm101 3y ago
      >> so far unfinished cloud gaming app. As a gamer, few things would turn me away from a potential purchase more than the phrase "cloud gaming app". It sounds like DRM-infected bloatware ready to kick me from a server the moment my connection even hiccups. Only "cloud gaming app, now by Microsoft" could be worse.
      • WorldMaker 3y ago
        xCloud (Microsoft's) and Geforce Now (nVidia's) both allegedly have large player bases. The "neat" thing about xCloud is that you can try it for free under most Game Pass subscriptions. I think that is actually where "cloud gaming" currently excels, as a faster/better/glorified replacement for the old "Demo" games and modes. (Try a Game Pass game for a bit without downloading it, on a day where you expect few connection hiccups, to see if it is worth the hour or so wait while it downloads.) I think that is also part of why xCloud probably does have large MAU numbers. I've tried to see if xCloud is also useful on my mobile devices for on-the-go gaming, but the connection issues have mostly tanked that for me. (I do know people using it to play games on the Steam Deck that the Steam Deck doesn't as well support; but they generally play at home on home connections even if they prefer the "mobile-like" form factor of the Deck.) But yeah, the argument is that the audience for "cloud gaming" is incredibly limited (needs a strong internet connection, doesn't want to invest in up-to-date gaming hardware, or wants stranger form factors) and always will be, which is why it is fascinating that Microsoft got so much flak from the UK commissioners about controlling the current "cloud gaming" marketplace: Microsoft seems to be the most successful mostly just because it is an incredibly limited audience with few gamers interested. Most everyone else who has tried to enter the market, including Google, has failed to find players. (nVidia seems the next most successful and even they admit it is a niche side-project for them. They've been partly so successful by how much money they haven't spent and how cheap they've managed to run it so far, comparatively to the investments of their peers and bigger companies like Amazon and Google.)
        • tonyhart7 3y ago
          that actually make a good reason to use cloud gaming honestly, trying game for 2-3 hours before downloading 100gb for it and not to make refund if you buy themselves is pretty neat
    • amarant 3y ago
      And here I thought GeeForce Now was the de-facto leader in the cloud gaming market. I use it regularly for single player games and it's quite nice! AFAIK they have the biggest supported library yet that is still my biggest issue with it: it doesn't support some of the games I'd like to play on it!
    • lostmsu 3y ago
      Coincidentally, I am building a peer-to-peer one: https://borg.games https://borg.games
    • Spivak 3y ago
      Sony's PS+ is really good, I was really impressed at how smooth the whole experience was. The ability to play titles all the way back to PS2 in an officially supported manner is really nice!
  • giancarlostoro 3y ago
    I think the fact Steam / Valve has not jumped into that bandwagon speaks for itself. Its fine when Microsoft does like Xbox Game Pass because they have nothing to lose with it, and they gain people who may want to own some of those games, or who want it for the Microsoft games on the subscription.
    • kridsdale3 3y ago
      A big part of Xbox Cloud Gaming, and also about ChatGPT, is MSFT built this huge cloud product and needs customers occupying its capacity to justify the capital expenditure.
    • stubish 3y ago
      I'd thought Steam not offering a subscription service points more to Valve being ossified, or Valve having enough insight to know it is a terrible business move and will lose money in the long term. It would not be much effort at all to allow publishers to opt-in their titles, and they already have all the playtime metrics to share out revenue and DRM to control access. The biggest headache would be picking a price point and the revenue sharing algorithm, much like Amazon with its ebook library subscription.
  • bparsons 3y ago
    I think the technology is about 80% there. To my eye, the graphics and performance are the same as running the game locally. Provided you have a good internet connection, if you could just run a AAA game off of your crummy computer or tv, why would you buy an expensive graphics card? It is definitely where things are going.
    • nobodyandproud 3y ago
      It depends on the game. Latency concerns, connection reliability, and bandwidth are all potential factors.
    • enlyth 3y ago
      You can't just have a "good" internet connection. For some games the difference between 30ms and 100ms latency is a great experience vs being almost unplayable. This is not exaggeration, this is fact and millions of gamers who actually measure their ping will tell you the same.
      • cjsawyer 3y ago
        The latency between peripheral input and visual feedback is much more important than the latency between a game client and server. The servers have all sorts of mitigation strategies to compensate. For inputs, it’s all on the human. Which feels bad.
        • rrix2 3y ago
          The latency between a peripheral input and the visual feedback includes that latency between the client and server in a streaming scenario. The TV isn't smart enough to implement rollback netcode for every game.
        • ElectricalUnion 3y ago
          > The servers have all sorts of mitigation strategies to compensate. I haven't seen any papers where cloud gaming servers implement rollback logic on your inputs in behalf of the game developer. Even assuming games that do support native rollback, most rollback netcode implicitly considers you're local to your game client, not in some relay box 7 frames or more in the past.
  • wilg 3y ago
    I have gigabit fiber and somehow Xbox Cloud Gaming looks like shit. I don’t know how anyone uses it! (On Ethernet, in LA)
    • nirav72 3y ago
      I have 1 gbps as well and it has worked fine for me. Especially if I'm sitting close to the my AP or even better when connected via ethernet. In some cases, I couldn't tell the difference between locally installed game or cloud. Games like Lego Star wars Skywalker saga or Ghost Recon Wildlands work really well. Although I haven't tried any fast paced online FPS games yet.
      • ihumanable 3y ago
        I've been playing Starfield and it's been fine for me. Occasionally the quality degrades and you can see this very obvious vertical wipe as it syncs back up, but it happens rarely enough for me that I don't mind it.
    • teamspirit 3y ago
      Exactly right. For what it's worth, Nvidia's GeForce Now is (and has been) substantially better. Interestingly, since this deal, you can now play a number of GamePass games on GeForce Now. There was a several minute long wait time to play Starfield on GamePass but it was available on GFN via my GamePass subscription - with no wait time. Same goes with a number of UbiSoft titles. I had the best experience, quality wise, with Stadia though.
    • meowtimemania 3y ago
      I have 100mbs internet and it works near perfectly for me. For me graphics are better on xbox cloud gaming because my xbox one s can't run games with the highest graphics settings. Maybe I'm geographically close to one of the xbox cloud data centers while you're far away?
      • redox99 3y ago
        You're probably less sensitive to the compression.
  • nobodyandproud 3y ago
    Here's one usecase where I see cloud gaming adding value: esports. With cloud gaming it's possible to playing field far more, because competitions can now force the same latency by introducing artificial latency. Cloud gaming also eliminates cheats like wall hacks (or fog of war removal), which is currently possible because the game client and rendering engine all run on a local machine.
    • twiceaday 3y ago
      Reasonable but irrelevant arguments. Esport games are essentially defined by their demand for low network latency which is precisely the main difficulty with cloud gaming.
      • nobodyandproud 3y ago
        I disagree with this as a given: > Esport games are essentially defined by their demand for low network latency It’s only a given because circumstances force and/or allow this. Also, how do leagues and competitions account for a 30 ms vs 70 ms latency difference? I ask this as someone middle-aged who immediately notices this difference, when playing ladder PvP games.
    • Draiken 3y ago
      I can't see how that will ever fly with actual gamers. Playing a game with latency is horrible, be it artificial or not. If you want the pinnacle of any esport, it will be played on LANs and never streamed. It's a subpar experience that almost exclusively casual gamers deem acceptable.
      • kridsdale3 3y ago
        This same argument could be made for forcing all professional athletes to compete while severely drunk. It would be hilarious though.
      • munk-a 3y ago
        It would fly for mid-tier e-sports. A lot of those matches are played remotely and the difference between a Chinese player playing an Argentinian player and a Chilean player playing an Argentinian player can be quite noticeable. Being able to level that playing field would be excellent. Most e-sports events don't fly players into an arena - that's only for really high budget events.
  • newsclues 3y ago
    As a gamer, I view the cloud gaming market to be an odd thing to argue over because I don’t care about it all. It’s the opposite of what I want!
  • didibus 3y ago
    15 years is a long time though. I suspect we're not far away from being able to sell a 100$ device, that can AI reconstruct and upscale a super compressed video feed, so that you can stream with lower latencies or even with worse connections. Nvidia seems to be leading the way here. But imagine in the cloud, they only needed to render games at 320p, and then they'd stream it compressed at low bitrate using H266 (assuming it's out in a few years). Then your "console", only needs to AI regenerate and upscale the feed, and it ends up looking photo-real or close to it. You could even explore methods of compression on the video that the AI is best as reconstructing from.
    • s1artibartfast 3y ago
      I want some of what you're having. That makes absolutely no sense. There is no possibility for a AI algorithm to be more efficient than a simple compression and decompression.
      • hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
        I think op was talking about AI powered lossy ups along, but I imagine AI would be able to generate better compression algos for highly targeted use cases too.
      • didibus 3y ago
        I'm talking about better versions of this for example: https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/10/nvidia-video-bandwidth/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/10/nvidia-video-bandwidth/
• MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  Does this mean World of Warcraft will eventually be playable on Ubisoft's competitor to Nvidia's GeforceNow?
  • KeplerBoy 3y ago
    Does Ubisoft even have a competitor to Geforce Now? But presumably they could sell their rights or license them to others, so who knows how this will actually play out.
    • slaymaker1907 3y ago
      Yeah, I think the key downside for Microsoft is they can't just make them exclusive to Xbox cloud gaming and they have to treat the Activision titles as if they were buying them from a 3rd party studio.
    • c0pium 3y ago
      Yes, Ubisoft’s competitor is xCloud. That’s what the deal that the CMA forced Microsoft to make does.
  • saghm 3y ago
    I don't think "cloud gaming" would include it just because it's a multiplayer game with shared servers; my understanding of cloud gaming is that it refers to games being installed only on the server side with the "UI" being streamed to the player rather than the game itself running locally. I could see some potential ambiguity around what constitutes a full local game versus a client streaming a cloud game, but the World of Warcraft installer requires downloading around 100 GB of data files, which seems pretty clearly not a "cloud" game. That said, I think I remember hearing that Overwatch (or maybe Overwatch 2, I honestly haven't played either and don't have strong enough associations to differentiate between them in what I've read) either is already or is going to be made available to play via Steam, which would be a pretty stark departure from Blizzard's usual insistence on using the Battle.net client for their games, and I wouldn't be surprised if in the long run things get more streamlined between former Blizzard properties and other Microsoft owned games. When the initial deal was announced (back before all of the process around approvals started), I remember a lot of people half-joking that it wouldn't take long for Microsoft to just make WoW subscriptions part of Gamepass, which still doesn't seem _that_ far fetched to me, and I certainly wouldn't be at all surprised if some Blizzard games end up being available through the Microsoft store on Windows. If this does happen, I hope that they don't complete deprecate the "old" ways of launching the games mostly because Blizzard games often work extraordinarily well via Wine, and at least as far as I'm aware, there isn't any super reliable way to install and run games from the Microsoft store on Linux.
• physicsguy 3y ago
  They also forced resale of those games as part of it - so Ubisoft is allowed to sell Activision games. Originally MS proposed only playing games you’d already bought on Ubisoft’s platform