Google Gets Into Game Streaming With Project Stream and Assassin's Creed Odyssey in Chrome

Earlier this year, we heard rumors that Google was working on a game-streaming service. It looks like those rumors were true. From a report: The company today unveiled "Project Stream," and while Google calls this a "technical test" to see how well game streaming to Chrome works, it's clear that this is the foundational technology for a game-streaming service.

To sweeten the pot, Google is launching this test in partnership with Ubisoft and giving a limited number of players free access to Assassin's Creed Odyssey for the duration of the test. You can sign up for the test now; starting on October 5, Google will invite a limited number of participants to play the game for free in Chrome. As Google notes, the team wanted to work with a AAA title because that's obviously far more of a challenge than working with a less graphics-intense game. And for any game-streaming service to be playable, the latency has to be minimal and the graphics can't be worse than on a local machine.

ISP's and servers local to users are the issue

[Joe_Dragon]

ISP's and servers local to users are the issue
Google has lot's of DC's but this not an video site like http://youtube.com/ [youtube.com] where some buffing or being pushed to an cluster with an higher ping but less load is ok.

also with some games it can be 1 user per video card and say max 4-5 cards in an 3-4 u server? + any other systems needed for encoding / MGT.

On the ISP side CAP's / network neutrality can be very bad for this. Also what if your local node / RT / CMTS / is over loaded? Also the new OTT Tv that is NOT multi cast does not help as well.

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[CatalyticDragon]

Current server products give you 4 GPUs into 1U or 8GPUs into 4U (depends on the storage and CPU requirements). That's pretty good but when people optimize for this it could also increase. Those GPUs tend to have more memory. Given average VRAM usage you could have five or six gamers on a GPU before memory is a problem. The other big issue is compute but there are tricks there too. Not all gamers are in areas of high complexity all the time and not all gamers are running at the same resolution all the ti

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[Joe_Dragon]

8 gpu's needs 128 pci-e lanes at X16 and 64 pci-e lanes at X8.

AMD EPYC systems only have 128 pci-e lanes and some are need for other server io / server chip set stuff. INTEL systems have less unless you get a quad cpu box.

Even then will the provider force there images on to the game dev's?
Game dev's force there own images that may only work with real GPU's VM in passthrough mode ok.

I don't see much benefit

[imidan]

On the cynical hand, it seems to me that game streaming is just another (perhaps the ultimate) way for a company to demand that I pay monthly rather than just buying the software I want.

But on the other hand, it seems like there could be real value to it. With streaming, I could play any game on Linux or elsewhere, while the developers only have to support one OS. I don't have to worry about installing games anymore, or patching them. I never have to worry about driver incompatibility (or maybe not never, but less).

Despite whatever positives it might have, I'm reluctant to get on board. I don't want to have to be online to play. I do want to be able to keep playing after the streaming service abandons a game I like. I don't want to pay monthly, even if I get access to a larger library of games; I'd rather buy individual titles I want.

I guess I just don't see it as an advantage until the payoff to me becomes much greater. Right now, the benefits mostly seem to be in favor of the businesses.

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[PopeRatzo]

On the cynical hand, it seems to me that game streaming is just another (perhaps the ultimate) way for a company to demand that I pay monthly rather than just buying the software I want.

Game streaming is where it's at. I thought the same way you do, until I gave it more consideration (and until I tried GeForce Now, which I am still testing). The question isn't whether or not to pay, it's how much I'm willing to pay.

How much are you willing to pay to be able to play games on ultra settings on computers tha

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[volodymyrbiryuk]

Expect the service to be half the price that you are not willing to pay (https://gaming.liquidsky.com/). To pay monthly is one thing. But if they limit your access like these fellas do they can also go fuck themselves (1440 hours/year is not that much).

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[imidan]

How much are you willing to pay to be able to play games on ultra settings on computers that don't meet the minimum system requirements for those games? How much are you willing to pay to play a AAA game on a Mac that hasn't been released for Mac. PC games on Chromebook?

It's a good point, and one that I've played around a little bit with Steam streaming. I have my powerful desktop computer in my office, but I can install a game on it and then go out and play it on my laptop in the living room (even on my Ma

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[rtb61]

I play with wired keyboard and mouse because I do not like the latency of wireless keyboards and mouse, how much would I be willing to pay to play a streamed game, nothing, in fact I would have to be paid.

What this is really all about, it is a great big ole con, they want you to rent games for the rest of your life and not buy them once, come on in sucker. Infinite copyright and the cartels ban the selling of content, for infinite greed.

Wont work, they are already at saturation on gaming and really games

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[PopeRatzo]

I play with wired keyboard and mouse because I do not like the latency of wireless keyboards and mouse

Same here.

If you have a fast (and clean) internet connection, you will not notice any latency. I play racing games and shooters mainly, and being able to play at higher FPS means I can actually score better on GeForce now than I can running those same games on my PC.

Wont work, they are already at saturation on gaming and really games are not selling that well at the moment.

PUBG has grossed over $1.5 billio

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[PopeRatzo]

You sound like a fucking shill. There's no way even a 50mbit stream will look as good as the real thing, and lag sucks

And yet, it does. I'm getting 100 Mbps and I'm playing Far Cry 5 on max settings and there is no lag. Occasionally, there are some audio stutters, but it's still in beta (and free) so I'm not concerned. If the current quality is any indication of what the finished product is going to look like, game streaming is going to be big. I'm thinking the big publishers will start setting up their

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[Actually, I do RTFA]

How much are you willing to pay to be able to play games on ultra settings on computers that don't meet the minimum system requirements for those games?

Nothing. I don't really care about the settings (for normal play, I do crank them up at the beginning to ooh and ahh.)

? How much are you willing to pay to play a AAA game on a Mac that hasn't been released for Mac. PC games on Chromebook?

Nothing, I don't game on a mac, and I don't use a chromebook.

When youtube/netflix never needs to buffer at 1080p (and on

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[Actually, I do RTFA]

then services like netflix, hulu and popcorn time showed the popularity of on-demand streaming and it's likely to go the same way with gaming

Movies and TV are watch once. You need constant of new content. Games can have a lot of replayability.

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[Solandri]

I think game streaming is the future (aside from competitive gaming where absolute minimal latency is required).

• If you buy your own GPU, you're spending say $360 every 2 years to stay relatively state-of-the-art. That works out to $15/mo.
• If you're paying to stream games, your monthly payment is being pooled with all other streamers to buy state-of-the-art GPUs. It's this pooling which creates the economic efficiency. If at a maximum only 1/3 of subscribers will play games at any one time, then essenti

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[CatalyticDragon]

It is a way to lock you into a subscription model but there are also reasons not to hate it. 1. Roughly speaking there's about a billion gaming consoles on the planet. More if you include handheld. That's a lot of hardware being produced that ultimately spends a lot of time unused. Consolidating it into managed clusters which can also be used for other things during off-peak is highly efficient. Less e-waste and that's not a bad thing. 2. People would be able to play really high-end games on commodity

Nothing new

[Locke2005]

I hear Donald Trump is also into streaming...

US only

[Andy Smith]

Denied here in the UK. Makes sense that it would be US-only due to latency issues, but still... boo hiss.

Lastest Chromecast

[MrDoh!]

If the new Chromecast device with bluetooth supports pairing a gaming controller and can stream these games? Never going to need a PS/Xbox/other gaming device ever again.