Game streaming (xCloud, Stadia, etc etc); future of gaming?

[trip]

I know there is a Stradia thread already.  Originally I was going to bump that one and maybe even change the title to something a bit more general, but it didn't have good vibes.  So let's start a fresh general "Game Streaming" thread.

 

Lastnight I got my approval for xCloud testing and even though I haven't had a whole lot of quality time to delve in, the time I did have I was impressed.

 

We all know that game streaming is all about bandwidth.  I happen to live in a country with sad, slow broadband...the USA. 

 

Are we getting to the point where bandwidth won't be an issue?  Are there people who don't have decent internet?  Plus 5g is coming so even the outdoor network is boosting up.

 

Basic math:

7 years between the 360 and xbox One.  So that might put the end of the next gen at 2027.  

 

 

My first impression(xCloud):

Holy f*ck!

I can't say that I played any session for more than 10 minutes and every session definitely experienced some form of lag chunk while playing.   I haven't had enough testing from my home wifi, but the bit I did seemed way better so...we'll see.  

 

When things were smooth, things were smooth.  I didn't notice any input lag and I was really paying attention to see if there was any.

 

It took a minute before I realized how cool the "instant play" is.   After having spent a good portion of my life accepting that it is going to take hours before I can play the new game I want to now clicking on a big ass AAA game and it just pops on ready to play...very neat.

 

 

Since my experience is xCloud it really seems like Microsoft is really positioning themselves...and maybe betting a bit on the future.  It all started with GamePass.  GamePass then gets tied in with Gold and such.  The current available games for xCloud are gamepass games...it really is just an abbreviated gamepass list.

 

Fast forward to Christmas 2028.  Every kid wants the next gaming thing.  I always feel bad for the families that can't afford the expense new console.  That family may be able to walk into Walmart and pick up an xbox controller with a gamepass subscription.  We all may be doing that...and xbox may very well have the leg up with the early infrastructure.  Currently they probably win just on catalog of games and early on large scale testing.    Wait until Steam steps in...imagine if steam went subscription streaming with a crazy huge library playable on your big ass living room TV.

 

 

 

 

*pardon the rambliness of this post - my wife was yabbering at me while I tried to type it out.

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by trip

[Mister Pink]

15 hours ago, trip said:

Fast forward to Christmas 2028.  Every kid wants the next gaming thing.  I always feel bad for the families that can't afford the expense new console.  That family may be able to walk into Walmart and pick up an xbox controller with a gamepass subscription.  We all may be doing that...and xbox may very well have the leg up with the early infrastructure.  Currently they probably win just on catalog of games and early on large scale testing.    Wait until Steam steps in...imagine if steam went subscription streaming with a crazy huge library playable on your big ass living room TV.

 

This sounds like a plausible and worthy place to be in the future. 

 

Having said that, I still think the next gen in say 2028 might have hardware attached and that's because we'll have to wait for the slowest markets (internet wise) to catch up. I'm lucky that I live in the capital and largest city of a very tech-industry focused country, so internet speeds are high. However, the rest of country brings our average down to the early 20's in the world when it comes to average internet speeds. This is changing as there's a new national broadband infrastructure being implemented to bring the whole country up to a competitive speed. But streaming games would be OK for me, I guess we would have to consider markets and areas where speeds are slow. 

 

On the flipside of that, you may get an economically challenged town in South America that has good internet connectivity where users can play next gen games, for a fraction of the cost by taking out hardware costs.

 

With the almost elimination of loading screens with the next gen of consoles, I'm happy just for that progression. I like having hardware for now, even if it's a bit costly. I like purchasing used games and I with the expansion of Game Pass, I'll play games that I wouldn't otherwise shell out full price for.  There's some rumours that Xbox might use xCloud to substitute certain loading areas or allow you to play the game instantly while the game installs which is nice. 

 

Anyway, glad your Xcloud is experience was a positive one. Makes me hopeful of the future. 

 

[Jason]

Game streaming isn't just about bandwidth, it's also about latency and that is the real killer IMO. The bandwidth problem is already solved depending on where you live but there's no way around the latency issue for the forseeable future no matter where you live.

 

Anyway, my stance on it has long been that streaming is a future of video games but not the future. I think MS with xCloud and Games Pass are in pole position right now in the streaming market because they have everything they need to make it good value for customers but also the right mentality behind it. All the talk out of MS about it is that this isn't replacing local machines and they're right, it isn't, but it's definitely an interesting option for people who are on the move or value the convenience of streaming which is potentially crazy high whatwith these days and games approaching 100gb+ with huge patches day 1 and the like, the ability to buy the game and play it instantly is IMO the greatest boon streaming has right now. Couple that with an Xbox Games Pass like service and you've got a crazy good product there, if bandwidth and latency issues are alleviated anywho.

 

Stadia on the other hand is how not to enter the games industry. Garbage product quite frankly, I fully expect Google to pull the plug on it in a year or two if not publicly then silently by slowing down all support for it to a halt.

[trip]

1 hour ago, Jason said:

Game streaming isn't just about bandwidth, it's also about latency and that is the real killer IMO.

Yeah.  I was a bit too general in my bit.   Even through latency and bandwidth go kind of hand in hand we are still going to need some very well placed server farms.  Minimize those hops.

 

@Cameron Staryeah I totally hear you, but I'm thinking towards the future when the world may have better, more reliable internet access.  I hope you get selected to test.

 

Let's just go back 10 years and anecdotally look at the internet.   Lots has changed.   Heck, Netflix was probably still mailing out lots of discs even.  Crazy chart on This page displaying the bandwidth growth in the US.   Just think of all the crazy changes you've witnessed.

 

Personally:

I existed before the internet and have worked in the internet world since around the birth of the WWW.  The stuff I've seen...just kidding.  But really, the pace of technology is crazy to have witnessed.  I believe Moore's law has been declared dead.  

 

 

 

 

*I want to ramble more but I need to eat.

 

  

Edited January 10, 2020 by trip

[ṼirulenⱦEqừinox]

I'll give a view from a PC player POV there are several cloud based and VM based gaming platforms out there for those who like to play on PC but may only have a cheap PC that has no dedicated graphics card so they can't play anything more than The Sims 

 

I was actually gifted a free trial to a Virtual Machine Gaming Platform called Shadow the way it worked was you logged into a virtual machine from your own device and then treated that device like it was your own computer, you had to configure it to your specs and install the gaming apps such as Steam, UPlay, Origin ect and then download the games from your accounts onto the VM and then you could play from there.

 

I didn't really do much rather than test it really, I downloaded one heavy specs game to see how well it handled it graphics wise and the online aspect of the high demands world the online would demand from it and that's where it failed my testing, While the graphical specs were decent enough to give me a steady 60FPS the Online part is where it went downhill.

 

I have decent internet speeds for my area and low PING and personally suffer no lags or downtime when playing or loading into an online session but with Shadow I experienced quite a bit of lag and rubberbanding more than enough to ruin the gaming experience and enough to make even the most patient of gamer to quit.,

 

But in offline mode the game went smoothly with no issues.

 

So my review and takeaway from it is as of right now these VM Gaming platforms are good enough if you're like me who mostly play single player/story mode games but if you're mostly an online player they're no where near ready enough to handle the high demand that is needed for a smooth online experience.

Edited January 14, 2020 by ṼirulenⱦEqừinox

[trip]

One thing I've noticed when talking with people about cloud gaming and the future;

People seem to think good internet is for gaming.  Thanks to the world embracing IOT(InternetOfThings), the internet is now used for a ton of sh*t we don't see. 

 

We arent going to see autonomous cars without a real secure reliability internet. 

 

More and more is reliant on the internet.  Gaming will just be a nice byproduct.

[Jason]

On 1/14/2020 at 9:06 PM, trip said:

One thing I've noticed when talking with people about cloud gaming and the future;

People seem to think good internet is for gaming.  Thanks to the world embracing IOT(InternetOfThings), the internet is now used for a ton of sh*t we don't see. 

 

We arent going to see autonomous cars without a real secure reliability internet. 

 

More and more is reliant on the internet.  Gaming will just be a nice byproduct.

It's the same with VR, everyone assumes it will be made for gaming but in reality it will transform entertainment in general. VR's big money will be in things like live sports, music and theatre and getting a stadium, festival or theatre like experience with 360 degree vision while sitting on your sofa.

[Static]

18 hours ago, Jason said:

It's the same with VR, everyone assumes it will be made for gaming but in reality it will transform entertainment in general. VR's big money will be in things like live sports, music and theatre and getting a stadium, festival or theatre like experience with 360 degree vision while sitting on your sofa.

And pr0n. Nothing drives tech development as much as pr0n.

[trip]

1 hour ago, Static said:

And pr0n. Nothing drives tech development as much as pr0n.

Just ask Sony back in the betamax/VHS days.  Ha.

 

E:

Oh and they expanded the games available on xcloud... yay!   

Edited January 29, 2020 by trip

[Static]

3 minutes ago, trip said:

Just ask Sony back in the betamax/VHS days.  Ha.

 

And when DVD vs Bluray was a thing.

 

rip laserdisc

Edited January 29, 2020 by Static

[Standard Deluxe 59]

I personally hope this isn't the future. I largely resent forced online games, especially those are more for single player I.e the last Sim City game. But hopefully I'll be out of video game playing altogether if the option for offline and single player games go away in favor of forced online subscription specials. Needless to say, I'm not a fan of video game streaming, well really any kind of streaming I'm not a fan of. 

[trip]

xCloud moved to the GamePass app and they bulked up the available games.  Crazy.

FO 76?  The Witcher?  Nice...

 

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[Failed Again]

Amazon. just sent out Luna 9.24.20 US---Not sure is this is the 1st announcement--sorry if old news

early access invite

Introducing Luna, Amazon's cloud gaming service where it's easy to play great games on devices you already own. No waiting for lengthy downloads or updates — just play.

Request your invitation for early access and help us make Amazon Luna even better.

Edited September 25, 2020 by Failed Again

[Turan]

So when are we getting xCloud for PC? I really wanna try that out.

[trip]

In a few months I suppose.

Microsoft confirms the xCloud beta is coming to iOS and PC in spring 2021

 

Gotta say...xCloud is not bad.  I have a phone clip for a controller and get a fair amount of use out of it.   The library of games is impressive.

[Mexicola9302]

I tried out GeForce Now, and i was not impressed, being limited to 1080p only, and it still felt laggy. I only have 50 mbit down and 10 mbit up speed, but that shouldn't be the problem.

 

Streaming games is something for casual gamers not real gamers. Except you really wanna play games on a mobile device, then it's helpful.

 

Playing streamed games, limits you, you can't use mods, you only have 1080p quality, and you have to subscribe to a service. 

 

I got 1 year of free GeForce Now, because i bought a RTX 3080, i thought i just give it a try, i tried out Watchdogs Legion, it was pretty dissapointing. I mean of course, because my rig can handle more than GeForce now. But if ppl are okay with just 1080p and don't mind some lags/stuttering, then it's okay, you don't need a overpowered rig for the newest games anymore. But you still have to buy the games and that sucks. If it really would be like some sort of Netflix for gamers that would be nice, but that would also mean that they remove games after some time, and ppl wouldn't like that. If they pull the plug, while your still in the middle of a playthrough.

 

I would think about using such game stream services, if every game would run in 2160p @ 60 FPS/HZ, but now with just 1080p i rather stick to my rig and upgrade the GPU every 2-4 ish years, and the CPU, MB, RAM every 6-8 ish years.

 

It also can't be good for the enviroment if suddenly all gamers start streaming their games, that costs much of ressources to achieve that.

 

I mean imagine how many datacenters like this the world would need, if every gamer would stream their game:

[trip]

I usually only play xcloud when my wife needs the TV during her lunch/dinner.

 

Pleasantly surprised when I logged on and saw GTA V available.  Neat.