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Google: Stadia exclusives to have features “not possible” on home hardware
- Thread starter stormfire
- Start date
Thanks for the explanation. Curious to see how it'll be implemented
Their stance on allowing you to game with out purchasing hardware must be infuriating...
The thing is, all the big players will eventually put a lot of stock into cloud gaming eventually. We are seeing the start of it now with the likes of Stadia, Xcloud etc. It's going to play a massive role in the future of gaming whether people like it or not. So if Google want a piece of the pie then there is no way they will drop Stadia. Even if it's a mild success now they know it's the way things will be down the line and if they drop it in the short term then that will fuck them in the long term. People won't give them the time of day if they abandon Stadia and then try and give it another go in the future when cloud gaming really, really takes off.
What I'm saying is Google will only get one shot at cloud gaming so I doubt they'll drop the service even if it's not a success initially. If they do then they're out of that game for good (or for a very long time at least)
What I'm saying is Google will only get one shot at cloud gaming so I doubt they'll drop the service even if it's not a success initially. If they do then they're out of that game for good (or for a very long time at least)
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Cool stuff will come from it at some point; just not from Google.
We will see, MS was just as hated when they entered the gaming scene and yet we can thank them for giving Sony to bring up their online infrastructure, unified gamertags, achievements, ect..
Some times you need an outsider to bring something new to the mix.
Time will tell, either way some interesting times ahead
The issue isn't Google entering the gaming scene, the issue is Google entering the gaming scene with its track record of lack of support, constant fracturing, and killing of of popular services, along with half assing of features that were supposed to be great elsewhere.
If it were Apple doing this, no one would have as many issues. If it were Samsung, same thing. Microsoft never had the history of constantly dumping software and projects, even back before the first Xbox, and they still don't.
This is Google, the same company that has tosses out four different text messaging apps with different features, killed three of them, failed to integrate popular functions and features into the one that survived, and has bungled iOS styled SMS fallback for text messaging so much that cellular carriers are about to push out a better implementation (in truth, it's going to be shitty as all get the hell out, but they're going to probably succeed).
The best parts of Android come from other OEMs and then Google eventually adds them in. Something like that wouldn't work for Stadia, because if the best parts of game streaming come from Microsoft, Sony, and Nvidia, you have no reason to go Google since they're going to constantly be behind the curve.
What you keep discussing is literally what Crackdown 3 does. It has physics and AI simulations happening on cloud servers, main rendering being done on people's local Xbox's.
"Separate house" lol.
(there's obvious advantages to the rendering machine being in the cloud along with the physics/ai simulation server, but then again that requires the end user have a low latency connection in the first place)
edit: And LOL at you asking a question to start your post... then ending your post with an example of how it's possible. And why are you using some "Kahawi" tech demo example when we have actual this-gen console games that use cloud compute?
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Looking forward to buying Stadia whenever they have it up and running! (Assuming someone else doesn't do it first, which is a pretty shaky assumption)
Well there response to internet connections were that the internet providers will solve that problem.
so I imagine the response will be gamedevelopers will fund Multi millions of dollars to take advantage of all the powerssss!
I don't believe this is really true. Not entirely. It may do stuff that consoles can't do locally. But those consoles could quite easily utilise the same cloud systems as stadia to achieve the same sort of stuff. Just look at the new flight simulator from MS.
Consoles however also come with the benefit of rendering natively with the least amount of lag when they're playing games that ARE local. So...stadia is still -1 in terms of capabilities in my eyes.
Consoles however also come with the benefit of rendering natively with the least amount of lag when they're playing games that ARE local. So...stadia is still -1 in terms of capabilities in my eyes.
Not what I'm referring to. Crackdown 3 was supposed to have impossible-for-local-hardware-to-calculate levels and environmental destruction, showcased in 2015 with the power of the cloud meme and all, and in the end all of that massively scaled down. Digital Foundry did an analysis:
The same problems that happened with Crackdown 3 will not be there with Stadia, unless you have anything specific you want to point at, on how the Stadia server blades will not be able to work together.
From the article you posted:
"It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the original Crackdown 2015 concept we saw was massively over-engineered in some respects - to the point where actually rolling it out to thousands of players could ever be achieved, bearing in mind the vast amounts of compute power it required."
I'm sure there are some things that could be done on Stadia that couldn't on home machines, but at some point they're going to need to stop talking about how wonderful Stadia could potentially be and actually show some of those things in a functioning game. I have a feeling anything like that is multiple years away at a minimum though.
What's even worse is some people literally won't be able to do anything launch day because the preorder bundles are being shipped over the course of like 2 weeks.
What?
The quote identifies what DF claims are the problems on Crackdown:
- It was over-engineered
- Required too much cloud compute
How does Stadia solve these problems?
Either way CD3 is literally an example of exactly the type of compute that is being discussed as happening on Stadia; the only difference being the main rendering box being local to the user as opposed to in the cloud in the same datacenter as the rendering machine. The DF article does not indicate that was the problem with Crackdown 3.
Unless you have anything specific about how the problem with Crackdown 3 was the distance between the cloud compute and local renderer...
Agreed. And it's really on the platform holder to invest in a title that shows off these exclusive features. Is a third party developer really going to invest time into voluntarily developing an exclusive title for a brand new platform? Probably not.
If i had some time i would add these to the last cell:
- and there's input lag.
- and compression artifacts.
- and buffering whenever the network has a hiccup.
- and performance drops when someone else in your house downloads or streams something.
- and you can't mod games.
- and...
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If it works, it seems like a great new home for Star Citizen, Elite:Dangerous, and EVE Online. Games where instancing and load limit their potential.
It's funny cause if I did a point by point list like this in any console or PC thread as it has fuck all to do with the topic, pretty sure I would get banned.
Even though I dunked on this messaging it is only because we have been through this song and dance before with Microsoft. The potential of having multiple computers work together is super obvious. Most of us do care but are now old enough to care about merely words.
The elephant in the room, who is paying for this server hardware?
Well one thing stadia has going for it that no other platform has is guarantied dedicated servers for online multiplayer matches. If they still managed to weasel in P2P connections I don't get the value proposition at launch.
Stadia games can only be brought in the Google store correct?
That level of control means there will be less frequent sales and probably also means less steeper sales than other platforms.
On top of that Google is telling premium users pay us 10 usd a month and you don't have to worry about buying new hardware every cycle. Over 6 years based on PS4 MSRP you're paying the same 720 usd as a PS4 owner at launch who also pays for online multiplayer every year.
The weird part is that in 2020 Google will have a free subscription tier. I'm sure ad revenue will be factor but I can't imagine ad conversions being so profitable in aggregate. It will take another year or year and half to figure that out once Google releases their investor reports.
A "server cluster" would be being used for something like an MMO; where everyone on any given server are sharing compute.
If a 2-GPU server can do some cool physics calculations for a level that 100 people can be in, that's 102 GPUs cost instead of 100. It's not 100 x's 3 GPUs. Technically each of the 100 players is seeing / experiencing the effect of 3 GPUs though. But it's not the same as having like a 3GPU SLI setup or something.. the offloaded compute can only do so much, the main graphics rendering pipeline can still only be on the main rendering machine.
But this can also be done in a hybrid manner with 100 people in the same region of a country connecting to the same datacenter from a console.. but that can be tricky to manage the disparity between connections to the server... however for cloud streaming to work AT ALL those 100 players all need a fast / low latency connection anyways.. so it's a bit of a catch 22.
edit: People do also seem to be under the impression that google is going to allow standard multi-GPU compute (like SLI, double the hardware per user).. but as has been discussed many times, they haven't explicilty stated that and it appears most of their vague comments about elasticity and multi-GPU comments are more about Crackdown 3 style "cloud compute" than SLI/stacked rendering.
Unless we have comments from developers or even Google saying something different, this is something we can all expect from Stadia. What you see below is what I have seen from developers.
"I think that the more interesting question is how stuff like Google Stadia will change things. It gives developers something different. In the data center, these machines are connected to each other, and so you could start thinking of doing things like elastic rendering, like make a couple of servers together to do physics simulations that may not be possible on current local hardware. I think you'll see a lot of evolution in this direction."
"When you have an almost uncapped amount of computation sitting in a data centre that you can use to support your game design and ambition – whether it's in vastly superior multiplayer, whether it's in distributed physics, or massive simulation – there are things we can do inside a data center that you could never do inside a discreet, standalone device."
The logic you are trying to use now, you wouldn't accept it in any other situation. Let's say that you are trying to sell a PS4 to someone and the reason someone gives you to not buy it, is that he has seen broken PS4s. Right there you would bring objetive data like the one below to show him how reliable PS4s are. What you are doing is even worse, it's like someone saying to you he won't buy your PS4, because he has seen broken Xbox Ones. So let's try again and bring some objetive information we can all read on how developers that make games for Stadia won't be able to make the server blades/instances work together.
I'll believe it when I see it. So far everything Stadia is made of vapor and dreams, and not any tangible products. Until then, there is no reason to put my faith in Google.
Devs can say a lot of things about the potential of hardware. It's happened before for AMD, Nvidia as well as Microsoft. They still are worried about their bottom line in terms of time management while their leaders are concerned about the money side of things. When a developer makes a game most of them are going to be worried about feature parity across platforms. The rest who don't give a shit will try to make something on Stadia but their numbers are really low. If they don't have proper financial backing they'll settle for VR development instead which has more cachet and nerd cred than game streaming.
Seems to me that these things have to be coded and dev time and $$$. Which studio is going to dump more time and money into something that is only going to run on a fraction of the install base?
unless Google front the dev cash for these exclusive features?
unless Google front the dev cash for these exclusive features?
See the bolded though; none of this addresses the fact that cloud compute is available for games that are locally rendered.
And are you just refusing to respond to my challenge of your statements about Crackdown 3?
The PS4 came out at $400, the PS4 Pro came out 3 years later at $400. 6 Years of PSN is $360. Try doing the math again taking into account that online play is included, that the server hardware will continue to improve over time and that you don't have to pay $10 every month. 6 years of the basic subscription is $0.00 on Stadia, you can take all the money you used to spent on the console, online play and mid gen upgrades and invest all of that on games or take that money and spent it elsewhere if you want. All of this has no value of course if the service doesn't work for you, but if it does, it is a loosing battle on your side to try to deny how much money you can save.
Edit: Fixed the PS4 Pro price.
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That is too vague of an argument for me. I shared with you an specific quote from a developer stating what is possible for him. A good counter argument to that cannot be "Devs can say a lot of things". Unless you have something as direct as I have shared with you, then we will simply have to wait and see, but for now you don't seem to be basing your argument on any factual information other than "Devs can say a lot of things".
You didn't realize I was responding to a post that pondered how Google could possibly get money off of this. It is sufficient enough to show that the long term costs of buying Stadia are comparable to a current gen console at launch.
If it was a discussion about trying to prove which is more cost effective I would be spending more time on the analysis.
Google is one of the largest companies in the world selling cloud compute. I'm sure they can keep those servers busy doing all sorts of things.
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Sure, the service is not out yet but you already said "The potential of having multiple computers work together is super obvious.", so you must understand the minimum here on how networked hardware can work together. I will also wait and see, but if someone asks me if developers will be able to make this hardware work together, I have no good reason to say that it wont be possible or that they are lying. Just like if someone asks me if developers are saying that the next gen consoles will have faster loading times than before due to the included SSD. That would be the first time that happens for consoles and I wouldn't describe it as made of vapor and dreams, just because it's not a tangible product yet.
The hybrid solution you linked to doesn't really attempt to solve distributed rendering, it's just a two machine scenario with one doing basically all of the work.
On the flipside people make a lot of assumptions about distributed compute that are just complete fiction at this point, especially with regards to use in accelerating low-latency workloads like rendering. Which isn't to say this isn't the most likely future (known physics does suggest local compute is not going to grow forever). But it hasn't been solved yet neither from engineering or commercial perspective, and Stadia does nothing to change the former in of itself other than potentially another injection of $ into the space.
Seriously, a special build of EVE Online with hundreds of players and no lagging would be epic for demonstration purposes (if such a thing existed)