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Google Cloud Games

Google Debuts Video Games Streaming Service Stadia (polygon.com) 106

Posted by msmash from the pushing-the-limits dept.
Google today launched its Stadia cloud gaming service at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. From a report: Stadia is not a dedicated console or set-top box. The platform will be accessible on a variety of platforms: browsers, computers, TVs, and mobile devices. In an onstage demonstration of Stadia, Google showed someone playing a game on a Chromebook, then playing it on a phone, then immediately playing it on PC -- a low-end PC, no less --, picking up where the game left off in real time. Stadia will be powered by Google's worldwide data centers, which live in more than 200 countries and territories, streamed over hundreds of millions of miles of fiber optic cable, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said.

Phil Harrison, previously at PlayStation and Xbox, now at Google, said the company will give developers access to its data centers to bring games to Stadia. Harrison said that players will be able to access and play Stadia games, like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, within seconds. Harrison showed a YouTube video of Odyssey featuring a "Play" button that would offer near-instant access to the game. Pichai announced the new platform at the Game Developers Conference, saying that Google want to build a gaming platform for everyone, and break down barriers to access for high-end games. Users will be able to move from YouTube directly into gameplay without any downloads. Google says this can be done in as little as 5 seconds. At launch, Stadia will stream games at 4k resolution, but Google claimed in the future it will be able to stream at a video quality of 8k. The company says it will launch the service later this year in the U.S. and UK.
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Google Debuts Video Games Streaming Service Stadia More

Google Debuts Video Games Streaming Service Stadia

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  • Interesting to see PC gaming expand (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @01:42PM (#58299122)

    Its been pretty impressive seeing the resurgence of PC gaming after consoles seemed to have expanded to take over the gaming market... Google's move can only help to cement that trend.

  • Why would anyone use this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gatzke ( 2977 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @01:47PM (#58299150) Homepage Journal

    After all that Google has abandoned over the years, why would anyone trust them for anything?

    The big ones I think of are:
    Reader
    Wave
    Picasa
    Google+

    I love google docs, android, and gmail but I would not be surprised to see them get dropped as well.

    • Re:Why would anyone use this? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @01:53PM (#58299196)

      all the products google has killed or rolled into other products. https://killedbygoogle.com/

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Every company abandons products that don't work out. How many pieces of software has Microsoft abandoned. Someone even created a wikipedia article for it!
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Microsoft_software

      I love google docs, android, and gmail but I would not be surprised to see them get dropped as well.
      Are you kidding? It's about as likely as Microsoft suddenly dropping Office. These are the main products of Google after search.

      It's a risk to be sure. But so was the X-Box when it fi

    • After all that Google has abandoned over the years, why would anyone trust them for anything?

      The key thing about this service is, there's really not much need to trust Google. You just play and enjoy games.

      The only thing you are technically "trusting" them with is save game data. But even there, a lot of games you are playing are saving your real status back to some server like an EA account.

      I am OK with the risk of playing through a game, and losing the same game status sometime later - since those tend

      • Well no, you are trusting them with a lot in the case of a gaming service, Imagine tommorow if something happened and valve announced steam wasn't really printing money, and they need to ditch it. People have bought hundreds or thousands of dollars of games there over the years. Were valve to cut and run the way google did with reader, or docs etc... would mean they'd give everyone a few weeks warning that they've got 3 months to download every game they want to keep (and of course, many people have many te

    • I don't know which is worse - the products that Google kills (i.e. Picasa), the products that Google keeps but doesn't know what exactly they should be (i.e. Voice, Keep), or the products that Google runs their own competitor for (+ vs Hangouts vs Orkut or Pay vs Wallet) .

      * Picasa was an amazing application that Google purchased, destroyed, merged into other services, and then abandoned.
      * Reader was probably one of the best RSS aggregators available.
      * Grand Central, which they purchased, rebranded as
    • Ignoring the latency, dropouts, and compression artifact issues. You're basically renting the GPU instead of buying it. This is taking advantage of the fact that most people's gaming GPUs sit idle for most of the day. If on average, gamers buy a GPU and use it only 20% of the time (4.8 hours/day), a streaming service like this can provide the same gaming experience for as little as 1/5th the cost, since their GPU can be used by someone else when you're not using it. So if you're used to buying a $600 top

      • Ignoring the latency, dropouts, and compression artifact issues.

        Uh, those are pretty good reasons to buy your own console/PC.

    • That's only a problem if you have to buy games. If you can just play any of a selection of games for your monthly fee, then the worst thing that happens if it goes away is that you can't use the service any more. Either you've gotten something for your money in the interim, or you shouldn't have paid for the service.

      The articles on it don't specify whether you're supposed to pay for the service, or for access to games individually, but I'd have guessed the former...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )
      Inbox (the sane interface to Gmail)
    • What does this have to do with trust? They produce a product, you use the product. Maybe they cancel the product if not enough people use it. Then you stop using it and go do something else. That's how it always works, and has always worked.

  • Hahahaha this is rich (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You and what bandwidth?

  • Streaming-Only Game Releases (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @01:51PM (#58299176)

    I'm not looking forward to the wave of streaming-only game releases that will occur as a result of Stadia and any future lookalike services. Some quick problems off the top of my head:

    - When nobody owns copies of the game, the publisher can remove them for good if they fail to turn a profit.
    - Potential modding scenes for these games will never materialize.

  • Obvious warning : GOOGLE WILL TRACK YOU. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is a project to track and monetize gamers in their youth so that their data can be scraped and sold to Google affiliates. Anyone fawning over it is a moron who deserves to be robbed and beaten by Google's data extraction henchmen.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 )

      This is a project to track and monetize gamers in their youth so that their data can be scraped and sold to Google affiliates.

      Yeah sure, but GAMES!

  • Streaming Video (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @01:53PM (#58299188) Homepage Journal

    I can't be sure from the article, but it looks like this is a different approach to gaming. Normally the code and data for the games is sent to your device, and then your device runs the game logic, renders the graphics, and outputs the video and sound, sending data to central servers for multiplayer gaming. This service takes data from your controller, sends it over the network to a server, runs all the logic and rendering there, then streams the video and sound back to your device.

    This is a radical change that has lots of serious implications if it catches on.

    • Your local CPU is no longer important
    • Your local GPU is no longer important
    • Your local OS is no longer important
    • Network latency is much more important
    • Network bandwidth caps are very limiting

    I expect Google will be able to encode the game video in a number of different formats, enabling streaming to many different devices. Doing this in real time is a nice trick. Eventually they should be able to support multi-monitor setups and other interesting configurations.

    • Some of it is important (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @02:02PM (#58299252)

      Your local GPU is no longer important

      I agree with the other items, but the system has to be able to decode a high resolution video stream very quickly - which is usually dedicated hardware, or the GPU on most systems. I don't think that even the faster CPU's today could manage to decode a 4K video stream quickly enough for the bandwidth required.

      It's not as important though for sure, just saying there is still some base of performance you have to meet for the video needs.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 )

        There's a minimum, but that minimum bar will be much lower than the average game's. And going much above the minimum won't help. A definite change, and one that would make the idea of a "gaming machine" pointless. If it works well and catches on, it would change the PC and parts market.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by FunOne ( 45947 )

        Your local GPU is no longer important

        I agree with the other items, but the system has to be able to decode a high resolution video stream very quickly - which is usually dedicated hardware, or the GPU on most systems. I don't think that even the faster CPU's today could manage to decode a 4K video stream quickly enough for the bandwidth required.

        It's not as important though for sure, just saying there is still some base of performance you have to meet for the video needs.

        Vast majority of mobile SOCs, desktop processors, and GPUs in the last few years have dedicated H264 and/or H265 decode blocks. Shouldn't be an issue from that standpoint.

        Biggest challenge for many, many people is going to be bandwidth and latency.

        • Vast majority of mobile SOCs, desktop processors, and GPUs in the last few years have dedicated H264 and/or H265 decode blocks. Shouldn't be an issue from that standpoint.

          Biggest challenge for many, many people is going to be bandwidth and latency.

          Bandwidth and latency will not likely be a problem. Bandwidth and latency hasn't been a major issue in online gaming for a few years now. With Google resources, they can put game servers in multiple geographic locations to reduce latency. The only challenge will be if Google servers can handle every game instance because if their serves are overloaded that will cause games to lag. Another issue will be how the netcode will adjust for players whose ping is high because they are overseas. However, these issue

      • The "GPU is no longer important" not because the GPU isn't used, but because every modern GPU can handle 4k streams. The iGPU in Intel processors have been able to decode 4k video since Ivy Bridge (2012)) [anandtech.com]. A lot of the GPUs in modern phones and tablets can do it too (one of the reasons I thought it was silly to complain about phone resolutions becoming so high). And obviously the GPU in Rokus and Fire TV sticks which support 4k and 4k smart TVs can decode 4k video streams.

        The bigger issue has been supp
      • Google already has the hardware. A Chromecast Ultra 4k can already decode 4k HDR streaming.

    • Not exactly a new approach, as there are a few competitors. Personally, I can't see this working at scale.

    • and when comcast does there own others will be slowed down and then comcast will hit you with all kinds of fees to make of for the loss tv subs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by melted ( 227442 )

      All of that is "no longer important" only if you don't mind being nickel and dimed for play time, and providing a profit margin to Google.

    • It's different from the mainstream, but not new. Lots of companies have tried this in various forms. The standalone ones have all gone out of business (e.g. OnLive). The ones that are offered as part of a larger service (e.g. PlayStation Now) are plugging along with limited success.

      The only novel bit of tech here is being able to pause and resume on different devices. Everything else (e.g. broadcasting, saving highlights) was offered by previous entrants. The most successful games in the world are all twitc

    • I can't be sure from the article, but it looks like this is a different approach to gaming. Normally the code and data for the games is sent to your device, and then your device runs the game logic, renders the graphics, and outputs the video and sound, sending data to central servers for multiplayer gaming. This service takes data from your controller, sends it over the network to a server, runs all the logic and rendering there, then streams the video and sound back to your device.

      This is a radical change that has lots of serious implications if it catches on.

      • Your local CPU is no longer important
      • Your local GPU is no longer important
      • Your local OS is no longer important
      • Network latency is much more important
      • Network bandwidth caps are very limiting

      I expect Google will be able to encode the game video in a number of different formats, enabling streaming to many different devices. Doing this in real time is a nice trick. Eventually they should be able to support multi-monitor setups and other interesting configurations.

      Network latency and bandwidth is critical to online gaming as it exists today. Google moving the heavy lifting to the server side doesn't change this. Online gamers have been dreaming about this the last 10 years. No more video card upgrade, no more memory card upgrade, no more overclocking the cpu, no more headache about building the best gaming rig on a budget, etc. Now if Google can host, my favorite game, americasarmy I will be stoked.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by trawg ( 308495 )

      A service called OnLive [wikipedia.org] first launched this model at GDC in 2009, after several years stealth development. I happened to be there at the time and got to try it out there and was vaguely impressed but coming from Australia I knew it would be a bit of a long shot for it to work here with our crappy Internet.

      It didn't go anywhere; Sony ended up buying all their patents. Not sure if there is a competing product now. NVIDIA also had a product in this space.

      My reservations are still the same - as you note, networ

  • Must rebuy games? + no mods + limited to there list of games = ripoff

  • They mentioned TV's. Any word on whether this will be available on WebOS for LG TV's by any chance?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      I would think anything capable of watching Netflix should be capable of working with this service. It would just need to be able to take input from the controller and be updated to add the new streaming service.

  • Ephemeral Media is a sad future (Score:3)

    by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @02:06PM (#58299280) Homepage

    In a world where you can own no remnant of things you pay for, it's only the parent companies that can archive and preserve culture.

    The root cause of this trend might be the flood of info we are exposed to daily, whether it's Facebook or Twitter or Youtube, but the end result is a complete loss of any permanence.

    I can still pick up a Super Nintendo game and play it - long after the parent company has abandoned the hardware. In fact, that company still continues to sell some of the games, but only in a form that has a limited lifespan. Now what do I have after paying for Google's gaming service for years upon years? I have nothing. If a company wants to pretend a game never existed, there is no one else to preserve it.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • In a world where monthly data caps cause issues for streaming movies and TV shows, what could possibly go wrong with streaming video games? I'm sure Comcast and AT&T (among others) will love this. As soon as user's get their first overage bill they will realize what a bad idea this was.

    If Google was smart, they would have used this to drum up demand for their own ISP service, Google Fiber. However that, like most other Google "hobbies" is all but dead now.

  • Don't get too used to this. Google will retire it in 2021.

  • I'd be curious how this system retains your play state and how you might store saved games. I'd hate to have a mobile connection drop and lose a game mid-level, but if it is constantly saving your stream and can be picked back up on the PC, that would be interesting. Also, I wonder how saved game files work and if you have a certain number, or if you unsubscribe how long they might be saved.

    • Google is cloud company, The offer hosted VMs. This service is probably basically a VM with GPU which streams the game back to you. Snapshoting the state of such VM in case of connection loss or when user needs to pause is their bread and butter. They already have technologies to spin and transfer VM workloads. This is not much different.

      Storing game saves is trivial problem solved way ago with cloud object storage. If Google can do that with emails (GMail) or files (GDrive) they certainly will be able to h

  • The idea of "streaming games to your TV so you don't have to have a console" has been around since around 2000. Here's a complete gravey^H^H^H list [wikipedia.org] of some of the companies who have tried. Even technologies like NVidia's shield or Steam's ability to stream within the intranet don't seem to have taken off.
    Google entry into this market seems foolhardy at best.

    • The idea of "streaming games to your TV so you don't have to have a console" has been around since around 2000. Here's a complete gravey^H^H^H list [wikipedia.org] of some of the companies who have tried. Even technologies like NVidia's shield or Steam's ability to stream within the intranet don't seem to have taken off. Google entry into this market seems foolhardy at best.

      The technology wasn't ready then. The technology is currently available for this to take off. With Google resources behind it this can succeed. Steam technology is different from what Google is doing. With Steam game platform--the game is rendered client side (as all games currently do) with information about the player movements, location, where the player is facing, etc sent server side. Because of this the player computer hardware is critical to game enjoyment and success against other players in multipl

  • I already hit my monthly data cap sometimes. I assume this would use a great deal more data than normal gaming since usually the video is all local. So that would make it an expensive proposition for me.

  • Ahh, the announcement without any price. What a classic. "It's great, it's magic, trust us! You don't need to know how much all of this will cost!"

    You don't need to know a lot of things apparently. Like what sort of internet connection you need, how much this would eat into your data plan, that you're locked in permanently to Google's ecosystem with all your games and thus must pay rent indefinitely to them to even access these games. But don't worry, it's cool tech, which means it's sure to succeed as a

  • Because its not very nice to give publishers and lawyers the power to completely wipe a game out of the existence.
    They have been trying to have this power for years now, and many games got a lot harder to erase for trivial shit like music licensing expiring to pure corporate assholery.

  • the interesting part is that all of this is running on a linux, debian based OS.
    i'd say linux is a viable gaming platform!

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