if xCloud is combined with Game Pass, Google should just format the clusters running Stadia and pretend it never happened.
I absolutely agree that XCloud will be more successful in the short term. I don't think that's up for debate. But being second-best in a multi-billion dollar industry is not a failure, and everything I'm talking about here is the long term. Amazon Prime has fraction of the viewership that Netflix does, and their goal isn't to be "number one in video streaming". But it's clear why they're sticking to their guns on offering it. Hell, XBox OG bombed compared to PS2 (it didn't even make a profit across its entire life!). Microsoft didn't give up on that either. Consider this: in non-PC gaming, outside of Nintendo, not a single vendor in this race does "only video games". Ask yourself why they persist, even when they're not dominant in their fields. Show of hands who doesn't think Stadia won't be wrapped up in Play Movies/Music/Books/Games/Apps within 2 years? C'mon, that's an obvious end goal. 2025 - Amazon will have a streaming gaming arm. Quote me then.
Related: I see US TV ads whilst watching NFL games. Some of the mobile phone providers are giving away 1 year subscriptions to a streaming service with their phone plans/bundles. It was Amazon Prime, but they seemed to have switched to Disney+.
like youtube music i think it will be abandoned, and Amazon 2025, hell anything could happen by then i suppose, as long as Jeff keeps The Expanse going i'm happy. future us won't recognise the players of tomorrow. just gotta toss it all in the mixer and see who pops out a winner.
You don't think things involved in YouTube music weren't merged behind the scenes into Google Play Music? People joke a lot about Google "abandoning" projects, but time and time again I see related stuff appear as part of an established tool. Wave dies, Hangouts gets a bunch of Wave features ("Hangouts Chat" is virtually identical), etc, etc. Even if the Stadia brand dies, I can bet you everything from the code to the lessons learned will pop up somewhere else in the Google ecosystem.
Notice how the stadia speedtest doesn't show the latency in the results https://projectstream.google.com/speedtest
and in the meantime people have a pile of shit they can't use and potentially they lose any software licenses they buy.
Again, no argument from me. Like you, I enjoy physical and/or DRM-free downloads (GoG, etc) as my source of gaming. But those crazy masses - man, do they do some weird stuff.
im thinking of using my Xbox to run a server from home with 40mbps upload nbn. might be the only chance to get a decent version of tekken 7 handheld.
I think you're misunderstanding my point in regards to the "epic fail" is only in reference to the Google's Stadia business. Firstly the business model doesn't make sense - Google model is a game streaming subscription service with no games except Destiny 2. Already own the game on an alternate platform, well you're SOL if you want to play it on Stadia as you'll have to buy it again. Not only is the business model half baked but the initial launch in the US ( with its vastly superior internet ) still experienced technical issues too. This article has a good detailed discussion of Stadia's flaws. I think you're forgetting that Microsoft probably broke even with Xbox since there was a large takeup of xbox live to play all the multiplayer on that console like Halo, etc. Again this is MS which has a history of playing the long game whereas Google will enter and exit markets fairly quickly. Google owned Motorola mobility to make nexus phones in house before selling it to Lenovo in 2014. Again Apple's game subscription service makes business sense. Apple has indie games exclusive to this service that are free play with possibly microtransactions in the future. Stadia has no target market and this niche market will be made even smaller due to all the limitations on it. Google is not a games developer and literally has no gaming content that cannot be played on another platform. Microsoft and Sony will have gaming subscription services that are actually enticing as they have exclusive game content on their respective consoles. Additionally consumers don't like companies overpromising and then under-delivering on products - just look at Bioware's Anthem launch. They've dug them Do you actually work for Google or know their long term business plans with cloud gaming streaming subsciption service? Google has zero stake and almost no synergy with cloud gaming in their Stadia product.
No. It's well documented how much was lost on XBox, including Live. Likewise on 360 due to the RROD issue. No "probably" about it. No. Like you and literally 100% of the people in this thread, we're all just shooting the shit. Anyone who did know would be under NDA. The only difference is I don't see Google throwing the baby out with the bath water. I've spent enough time in and around the entertainment industries to know that people don't give up on these 100 million dollar plus investments because of internet comments. Happy to be proven wrong. But I can see at absolute worst case a couple more years of Google trying something with this. Best case, 5G makes the internet great again and this stuff explodes. I don't see it being dropped in under 12 months though. There's too many dollars sunk this far too turn around this soon.
Kind of feels like the release was a bit premature IMO. All the in depth reviews are out now and it's basically like taking a console experience and downgrading the graphics and adding inconsistent lag (even for US reviewers on 1Gbps fiber, with less than 5ms ping times..). If you want to get people piling onto a new platform like this it should be a similar release to how consoles are done. You need to be at least as good - but preferably way better than what there is now. Offer better graphics or some kind of ground breaking thing to get people talking. Right now google has gone forward with a release that will spawn many new memes i'm sure. Then next year the new ps5 and xbox are coming out... Who knows though maybe google are working on some silicon to up the graphics quality? I just don't see something like this taking off anytime soon unless the experience has something new to offer besides all the downsides. Currently you have to subscribe to the stadia service for $10USD per month AND pay retail game prices before you can play a game...
I doubt it. The complexity of producing visuals today is enormous. Google have a lot of cash, yes, but this sort of thing requires extremely specific knowledge going beck eons. Don't forget Nvidia have imported brains from SGI and 3DFX over the years. AMD have people from ATI and Alpha/DEC/Compaq/HP. These are graphics hardware royalty - people who have their names in the original release of OpenGL long before numpties like us even dreamt of 3D video games. There's an intellectual and more importantly an intellectual property gulf here that can't be crossed just by driving trucks of cash up to a business and saying "off you go, kids". Google are doing things with TPUs and other purpose-built silicon for AI and ML. But that's a very different kettle of fish (and at this point far slower than GPUs for tasks like graphics). For now, Nvidia and ATI are very likely the only two people capable of gamer-focussed hardware delivering the speeds we want. On the streaming side - it's all in the algorithms. HEVC / h.265 and VP9 have low latency modes, and finding ways to maintain image quality from the source while dropping latency from first frame in to first frame out on codecs that typically require analysis of close neighbours is more likely going to be where things can improve. But honestly, those gains are marginal compared to just concentrating on link latencies (something Google is also good at, with protocols like SPDY under their belt that prove they've attempted this sort of thing before). Digital Foundry have done a fairly comprehensive quality test - stadia vs XBoxOneX. Interesting that it varies so greatly game to game. They test on a 200mbit/s connection, but also demo some footage on a 30mbit/s connection later on (spoiler: it sucks). On their premium, Virgin Media UK Fibre 200mbps connection, latency wasn't terrible. Kind of shows where you need to be both technologically and perhaps even geographically to buy in to this.
There’s very mixed reviews floating around but I trust DF. Plenty of people on social media saying how amazing it works on there slow cheap arse WiFi which will be total bullshit. Good luck to those who invest in Stadia but I’m gonna stick with my PS4 and soon PS5.
