Not into game streaming...
Gaming Google Stadia | rcoobc (2019): "Don't be surprised if Google Stadia comes to Xbox One." | RIP: 2019 - 2023
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
If this helps get rid of another box in my house and brings and end to the stupidest of all wars, CONSOLE WARS, then great.
I want to play games with my friends, regardless of what hardware they own and I want these best games to be available to all and not hoarded as exclusives.
No longer should a young person have to nail their colours to the mast and enter into online flame wars about which faceless corporation is the best.
Obviously, yes, Internet speeds ect, ect, ect. That can all be fixed now and for most people it will in the next few years. Obviously there will always be a small community in Yorkshire or Wales who still don't have fast Internet, that's more symptomatic of a poor government than a reason to stop progress.
I want to play games with my friends, regardless of what hardware they own and I want these best games to be available to all and not hoarded as exclusives.
No longer should a young person have to nail their colours to the mast and enter into online flame wars about which faceless corporation is the best.
Obviously, yes, Internet speeds ect, ect, ect. That can all be fixed now and for most people it will in the next few years. Obviously there will always be a small community in Yorkshire or Wales who still don't have fast Internet, that's more symptomatic of a poor government than a reason to stop progress.
What if multiple companies do their own thing offering different games each? Just look at tv streaming, the market is also getting increasingly fragmented. Would you pay for several subscriptions or keep flaming, my faceless corporation streaming service has better games than yours, sucker!
Console wars?
The gaming industry has been a bigger total market in terms of revenue than movies and music compared for a few of years now, so despite Fortnite being profitable I don't imagine it's a knee-jerk reaction to one game:
The biggest hurdle for a streaming setup is bandwidth and that has probably been what has forced their timeline. I wouldn't have thought we are quite there yet with the average speeds in most countries (the average UK speed is only 18.57Mb/s, which ranks as #35 globally: link), but even so the era of physical consoles is nearing an end.
Incidentally, this is a cool map that shows the average broadband speeds per country:
https://www.cable.co.uk/broadband/speed/worldwide-speed-league/
It will initially suck, but it is the future of gaming IMO. No reasons to own a console when you can just stream games.
It needs to be significantly better than PSNow for it to have any chance of success, and it needs to have a large library of games. Google new ideas are very hit and miss, though they have a very large fanbase which will give them a nice start even if it is shit (see Tensorflow). Curious to see how this develops, and how especially MS, Sony and possibly Valve react. I guess it is gonna be a few companies who have a lot of exclusives, which mean that you need to subscribe in all of them if you want to access all great games. If it is cheap (like 10-15USD for month), it should be okay by doing so (the total will be like buying a new game every month which many gamers do anyway).
It needs to be significantly better than PSNow for it to have any chance of success, and it needs to have a large library of games. Google new ideas are very hit and miss, though they have a very large fanbase which will give them a nice start even if it is shit (see Tensorflow). Curious to see how this develops, and how especially MS, Sony and possibly Valve react. I guess it is gonna be a few companies who have a lot of exclusives, which mean that you need to subscribe in all of them if you want to access all great games. If it is cheap (like 10-15USD for month), it should be okay by doing so (the total will be like buying a new game every month which many gamers do anyway).
There is actually a book on them (has been in my to read list since forever): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_Wars_(book)Console wars?
If it is anything like shadow in terms of price then look towards £25 per month.
Unless one or two companies create monopoly on this, 25 pounds is expensive.
Yeah brother I know it's a thing, it just made me laugh as a reason this is a good thing
Bandwidth is unlikely to be a problem tbh, it'll be latency and connection stability that matter in the internet connection. I have a home server that I need to ping from time to time for various reasons, and its noticable how much the latency can change from place to place.
I was having major issues with multiple games disconnecting and lagging despite having fibre.
Instead of using wifi I then got a pair of homeplugs and wired my pc into one. Instantly fixed.
Let's also add the death of modding, which is really only possible if you have access to the game files. Though that is of course a problem with traditional consoles as well.
Yeah I have a similar set up on my server, they're pretty neat.
Something like this would be far better served on a PC with a platform like Steam where you have every available title on it anyway. It should also be an optional venture - if you only want to buy games outright because you're not a heavy gamer, you can still do that, but if you are a heavy gamer with good internet who goes through 2 or 3 games a month then it would be perfect.
Google have no backlog of games (beyond those in the play store) or affiliations with any major companies, I really don't see how they can kick this off successfully from the get go. It would require a lot of patience and initial losses on their side and google are not in any way known for their patience with all their new ideas.
Google have no backlog of games (beyond those in the play store) or affiliations with any major companies, I really don't see how they can kick this off successfully from the get go. It would require a lot of patience and initial losses on their side and google are not in any way known for their patience with all their new ideas.
Will be interesting to see how it performs as my experience with PS Now was quite horrible. I remember I had a trial for it and wanted to play RDR 1 but it was impossible due to crazy delay even with my 500mb/s internet.
Sounds like less and worse product for the same money to me
I just (today) gave PS Now ago on my 50 mbps
A few frame drops and you can tell its not perfect, but I was having fun on RDR and other games.
I'm not comfortable with the idea of losing all control over your games. You could argue that's already the case to a certain extent with Steam, PS Store, et al. but this is still a step further. In a world where streaming games has completely replaced home hardware, if Google decide to stop supporting a certain older game, that's it, you're not playing that game anymore, ever. What if your local connection is down or your ISP is having issues? In the current situation, you'd be unable to play games like Destiny and The Division but beyond that you'd just be able to play whatever single player game you want. Not so with streaming. Then there's the modding scene, how will they be impacted?
Still, it's an interesting idea and probably a logical next step in gaming. If they can pull it off from a techincal point of view it could be a brilliant service. But I don't believe in it as the main gaming platform, rather something that can exist next to the more traditional hardware at home, where the concept of game ownership still exists to an extent. I'm skeptical but intrigued to see how this will develop nonetheless.
Still, it's an interesting idea and probably a logical next step in gaming. If they can pull it off from a techincal point of view it could be a brilliant service. But I don't believe in it as the main gaming platform, rather something that can exist next to the more traditional hardware at home, where the concept of game ownership still exists to an extent. I'm skeptical but intrigued to see how this will develop nonetheless.
At the same time though, let's say Sony give us a better PS Now which gives you a small subscription of games (like they do now) but also allows you to play any PS3/PS4/PS5/Vita/PSP games you own through the cloud - as long as you have an active PS Now subscription.
So let's say you want to play Uncharted 5 and the Last of Us 3. You can either fork out £350 for a PS5 plus £50 each for those two games - or pay £10 a month and play the two games on your PS4.
And then let's say you are stuck somewhere for 5 hours. You are bored as hell, so you decide to pay for 1 months PS Now subscription and play your Playstation games streamed to your phone.
I get what you are saying about not "owning" the games, but I've lost almost all my PC games I bought 20 years ago. They no longer play on modern Computers or I've lost the discs or booklets with the activation codes.
Except 1 - I still have Half Life 2 because that *made* me install it on Steam
The day I no longer have the option to play physical media on a local device not connected to the internet, is the day I start looking at other hobbies. Fortunately, I can't see that happening... Options are good.
I played TLOU and the first two Uncharted there, and while my experience wasn't terrible, I must say that it didn't come close to playing the games in a real console.
Dynamic games like Shadow of the Colossus are more or less unplayable there.
The advantages are obvious, I won't dispute that. And these days, with so many digital game purchases, game ownership is already a bit of an illusion. Certainly in my case, if I had to guess I'd say well over 90% of my purchases have been digital in the last +-5 years. But at the same time, I still have a working PS1 lying around with a decent collection of working games. I will admit I almost never touch them, but still, I feel comfortable in the knowledge that if I feel like it, I could simply fire it up again. Just as I don't feel comfortable in the knowledge that, if they would choose to, Google could shut down a 5 year old game if it was really unpopular or something. It might never happen, but it's still an uneasy situation.
And one other case to consider: PT demo. This was pulled from the PS Store, so you can't get it anymore. Yet I'm still able to play it, as I have it installed on my PS4 HDD. I even transfered it to my new HDD when I upgraded to PS4 Pro. In the world of game streaming, the decision to pull the game would mean I'd never be able to play the game anymore. That's something I just can't accept.
Depends.
If it is a full library of all games and you are a heavy gamer then it will be worth the cost, no? No new hardware needed either so consoles/PC's can be sold on etc.
Streaming is inevitable and with it the costs of subscriptions. I've relatively decent internet and when I tried streaming (can't remember if it was ps4 or ps3, think it was ps4) it was utterly bollocks and unplayable. They've got a mighty task on their hands, the demand for bandwith is going to increase unknown folds.
This is as much a console as Netflix is a blu-ray player. It’s not. It’s a service. It’ll make massive waves in the gaming industry for sure, but it’ll probably be the first nail in the coffin of actually ‘owning’ games.
Will be interesting to see how Sony responds, because everyone knows Microsoft has been touting streaming as the future of gaming for a long time, and if Google gets a jump start on both of them it could be big trouble for PlayStation.
Will be interesting to see how Sony responds, because everyone knows Microsoft has been touting streaming as the future of gaming for a long time, and if Google gets a jump start on both of them it could be big trouble for PlayStation.
I can imagine the near future is just going to be horribly expensive to legally watch/play everything available.
There will probably be 3 or 4 different streaming services for games, the same for television. Then you have music streaming and we'll probably end up with 3/4 different sports streaming services too.
Then they'll have the nerve to keep bemoaning piracy.
Google's history of entering markets with new products suggests otherwise.
You're totally right, but I think the wind has been blowing in this direction for a while in terms of streaming services for games, and the industry is too big for companies like Google to ignore.
Imagine a family plan similar to Netflix so £25 / 4 = £6.25 each per month for access to the full Google Stadia Library, could work very well imo.
As for worries about bandwidth and internet speeds... IF 5G takes of as well as expected then there will be no requirement for traditional home broadband, it will be a router with a 5G sim and all the speed glory that comes with that.
A lot of IF's but would be great if they could make it work that way.
To be fair, legally playing everything available is pretty expensive at the moment as well. You'd have to own a PS4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One or capable PC (these are somewhat interchangeable, though I think there are actually a few games on Xbox One that aren't on PC). That's a hefty investment and that's just the hardware. Of course, in the current climate, there's so much overlap in terms of multiplatform games that just owning a PS4 or just owning an Xbox One gives you access to all of those (Switch is another matter), you just miss out on each platform's exclusives. Not sure how that would work in a game streaming future.
True. It is expensive, although you can buy bargain games in sales and sell games and consoles to get some of your money back etc. Sometimes it can even work out as an investment if you keep them long enough. The whole streaming model takes all that away and it's money for use of a service, rather than ownership of a game. If there's no box to download it to, what happens to your favourite game if it gets pulled from their service?
I'm of an older mindset, but the increasing prevalence of multiple companies trying to tie people into subscription models for access to different types of media just seems to be a bit much to me.
I see the lack of game ownership (which I expressed my own concerns about in this thread) as a separate issue to the financial side of it. If you're a heavy gamer, playing a good number of different games each year, possibly across different platforms, streaming them might turn out significantly cheaper. On the other hand, if you put hundreds of hours into a single game which you play months on end, it's not going to work out in your favour. At least not if it's a flat fee. We'll have to wait until we get some details on pricing.
Sony are far from behind in this field.
I felt the exact same way about owning physical versions of albums or movies as CDs or DVDs, until relatively recently, for the same reasons. Now they’re all gathering dust in the attic and I’ll never buy one again.
Only a matter of time before games go the same way, surely?
They obviously bought OnLive, and PlaystationNow is a thing but I'll be very interested to see if Sony can compete with Google on a pure infrastructure basis.
They have deals with third parties, decades of industry knowledge and great first-party support, but do they have everything in place to make a service that is scaleable in the way Google is promising?
Since they've been working on it since the early 00's, you'd expect them to be at the forefront.
Google are doing what they always do and pushing earlier than possible to claim first, but it'll be the like of Sony, M$ and EA that have been dealing in this and planning for a lot longer on how to make it work that will ultimately usher in the new era.
I like the idea of subscription based gaming, but at a reasonable pricing, something I'm not sure Google could offer at the moment unless they take a big hit. Have to take into consideration that it's Google, they come up with a good idea, half-arse it and then close it down.
Microsoft are in a good place with the Gamepass plan in place already and more importantly they have Azure.