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by zepto 1958 days ago
> There are streaming gaming services that don’t deal with latency issues?

No, but those aren’t the only alternatives - consoles, PCs etc, are. Youtube had no established, better alternative to compete with.

You may be right that streaming games won’t suck in the future.

I’m just pointing out that this is not like the YouTube situation at all. Also YouTube didn’t suck even at the beginning.
2 comments
jhbadger 1958 days ago
Perhaps a better analogy would be Netflix streaming. A lot of people thought it was nuts given how many people were still on low-bandwith DSL connections that couldn't reliably stream even in standard definition. There was already an existing solution that worked well -- DVDs by mail (Netflix's original business model). That still exists, but is a small fraction of Netflix's business today.
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nickelcitymario 1958 days ago
Netflix is definitely the better analogy.
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nickelcitymario 1958 days ago
> Youtube had no established, better alternative to compete with.

If you're comparing game streaming to consoles, then the fair comparison is to every other source of video entertainment that predates YouTube. Like: DVD, VHS, network TV, cable TV, bootlegs, etc. They had EVERY alternative to compete with, and almost all of them were better in some way or another. YouTube was (and is) simply better in ways that matter even more.

That being said, maybe latency will never improve. Maybe no matter how much pipe you have, the fundamental speed limit of light is enough to ruin this whole concept for gaming. Maybe.

But I doubt it, personally. I'm willing to bet that this is an idea that simply needs technology to catch up to it.

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zepto 1958 days ago
> If you're comparing game streaming to consoles, then the fair comparison is to every other source of video entertainment that predates YouTube. Like: DVD, VHS, network TV, cable TV, bootlegs, etc.

No, this is simply not correct.

YouTube was a new type of content that simply wasn’t available on any of those channels. If you wanted to see peer-produced video, which turns out to be very compelling, youtube was the only option.

The games you can play on stadia are the same games you can play on other platforms only worse.

Again - streaming may end up catching up, but the comparison to youtube simply is not informative, because they aren’t similar.

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