[dyeje]

I don't think it will work for multiple reasons.

1. Google doesn't have gaming in their corporate DNA. They will commit a bunch of faux pas that will alienate the gaming community.

2. Streaming games adds latency. Latency problems ruin the experience.

3. Gamers are a very fickle community and if they don't feel your company 'gets' them, they will not engage with you.

[DCKing]

1 and 3 are basically the same reason are they not? Yet corporations like EA and Ubisoft are still very successful despite having famously horrible reputations amongs the "community". Moreover, Google looks willing to fix any lack of expertise/culture/"DNA" just by acquisitions (if such a thing is possible).

As for 2, Digital Foundry tested how bad the latency of Google's services was (though not in a home setting), and were able to show that it's actually on par with playing on an Xbox One X locally.

I'm not thrilled about this development, but I don't think these are reasons they'll be unsuccessful.

[dyeje]

Yeah 1 and 3 are related but a little different, let me clarify. 1 is about how Google will inevitably goof some stuff up because they don't know the space. 3 is about how gamers will react to these goofs way harsher than your average user.

[basch]

"gamers" are a small portion of the game buying community, especially very profitable more casual games.

What percent of mobile game sales do you think go to "gamers?"

Conversely, gamers are probably a high percent of the medium-high end hardware community. Those companies manufacturing physical products do need to cater to gamers.

[mreome]

Casual games are a huge market, but Stadia is marketing itself as being for "playing AAA video games" and using graphics processing power as a selling point. It doesn't appear to be targeting the causal market.

A pretty sizable subset of AAA games are heavily effected by reaction/latency time. It could be a solution for some kinds of MMO games though, where high latency is already designed for, and not having to distribute content updates would both be a plus for the players and allow the developers to keep "secret" content/events secured before they were intended to be made available.

[basch]

id argue by virtue of being AAA games they are games that have MASS appeal to a large portion of society, not just "gamers." The population of people who played Halo/COD/Fortnight is quite a bit bigger than people who identify with gaming subculture. googles move has everything to do with commoditizing high performance hardware FOR THE MASSES.

to the same effect, plenty of people want 4k and hdr, but arent film critics, nor videophiles, and dont actually care about data compression, bitrates, or banding.

[mreome]

I'd disagree that AAA has to do with mass appeal, as the industry uses that term to distinguish games in terms of development and marketing budgeting, not target audience. Many AAA games are specifically targeted at only the hardcore "gamer" demographic, because while that's a smaller group they are usually willing to pay much more for a game then a casual gamer will. I would of course agree that AAA can be targeted at, and appeal to, a much larger and somewhat more casual demographics as well.

My point was less about demographic and more about the network-latency concerns for specific common game-types. You cite correctly that they want to commoditize high performance hardware for a mass market, and note games like Halo/COD/Fortnight seem to have a very broad appeal. My question then becomes, can their solution commoditize high performance for the masses for these kinds of games? I'm curious to see how their solutions pan out, but there are a lot of road-blocks to achieving their goals. Graphical quality is only part of what qualifies as high performance in a game. In any FPS games like these game-play/graphical latency is a huge issue for play-ability. Developers go as far to take specific monitor hardware into consideration to shave down the latency. Stadia effectively adds a network loop connection between the keyboard and screen -- that's A LOT of a extra latency. Also, if this is going to target the mass market, then it has to work for the mass market and I think (in the US at least) there is going to be a large percentage of the population who's internet will lack either the necessary bandwidth, or network latency to Stadia's servers, in order to achieve a playable/desirable experience.

[valker43]

I would argue that there is a huge segment of users that would technically be interested in playing actual AAA games but can't be bothered to put up the initial investment. Many friends of mine don't have TV's or a beefy PC. Laptop and phone is pretty much the standard. But if they had the option to click a button on a YouTube video and check out a game, they might. A subscription is psychologically much more appealing to most people that a big payment upfront. Especially if there is a free trial. It's kind of like the difference between CapEx vs OpEx.

I think this segment will be a primary target of Stadia. If you want uncompressed 4K, 144hz, HDR with extremly low latency then your not currently playing on a console anyway and probably have a $2000+ machine sitting on your desk. For the enthusiast the tech is not there yet in streaming. But make no mistake. It will be there soon(ish). The day is not that far off when local machines will disappear for almost anything. And on a technical level nobody will be able to tell the difference.

[basch]

to me, AAA is budget, and for the most part, you get budget by delivering sales. As a series goes on, they expect more sales, or budget gets cut.

Can you think of a AAA, "hardcore gamer only" game that is significantly more expensive, precisely because they know sales will be lower?

Latency can be fixed by moving the processing closer to the edge, like a CDN. Cloudflare and Netflix have boxes everywhere, google just needs to pop some mammoth consoles colocated inside isp data centers, and group people together connected to the same console. They can get there with 5G faster than itll make sense to keep adding gfx power to phones (battery life.)

Google is looking towards the future, where half the population lives in a city with cheap 5G.

[quakenul]

I don't think any of these points are particularly strong, and yet any bet against a new venture is a safe bet, because failure is the overwhelmingly likely outcome.

[lfcc]

Can Gamers really be boiled down to such a homogeneous group though? I think many of the younger fortnite console gamers already have very different views from your average young/middle aged adult on steam.

Stadia doesn't have to steal all of steam's userbase to be able to reach critical mass for their own userbase and videogame streaming seems like a logical next step (like music and video streaming were) if a good UX can be provided (and I think they're aware of latency concerns and would not enter this market if they thought it unfeasible to provide a good gaming experience).

Disclaimer: I work for Google but am otherwise unaffiliated with the Stadia project

[temprunberkdk]

Do you think this is one of those ideas that sound great on paper but in reality doesn’t pan out. Mostly because google doesn’t have enough domain expertise to understand the gaming community?

[ykevinator]

This is exactly how I feel but you said it better than what I was thinking.

[Kiro]

John Carmack is of a different opinion regarding 2.

[unwind]

This (repeated) comment would carry more weight if it included a citation, i.e. a link to the source.

[silly-silly]

I'm not sure that he agrees that streaming games is a good idea.. i mean, at least from his twitter.. https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1108144741932249088

[andypants]

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1108144741932249088

[dpcan]

1) You might be able to say that about MS before the XBox arrived. Also, Google has always been "playful" so to speak. Changing their logos, adding a game right into the no-connection screen of their browser. They may be ready to go big here.

2) I can't imagine this going out to the public with latency issues. Netflix can stream video smooth as silk to millions very nicely. Streaming the game will be the same thing, we are just getting the video. Sending keyboard and mouse input should be trivial in respects to how intense video streaming is, so I'm not sure why there would be any latency.

3) These particularly picky gamers are a small subset of the community. You can choose to listen to them or not. There are millions of gamers who don't stream, who don't watch streams, who game on their own, who don't care if the files for the games are on their computer, etc. And these gamers want popular titles on their Chromebooks. Google is about to make that happen it seems.

[smadurange]

1. Really, anyone who changes their logos playfully sets a precedent for a gaming culture? Do you actually play games?

2. Streaming a film and streaming the full content of Halo is a whole different ballgame. Do you know the kind of optimizations devs have to do to achieve the performance they do on pcs and consoles?

3. And how many Chrome book users is there?

I think at best this will be more like a mobile game platform. Won't put a dent on AAA games on PCs and Consoles.

[mreome]

Netflix streaming actually has a huge latency, it buffers several seconds of the video before actually starting playback, that buffer is what makes it seem like the video is "smooth as silk" as it has time to wait for slow packs and to re-request dropped ones.