
Ask HN: What do you think of the Google Stadia? - seaborn63
I watched the conference yesterday and it all sounds great at the surface, but I also don&#x27;t know enough about all the things talked about to understand.  Is it good, is it bad?  Are they targeting Steam as well as the consoles with Stadia?
======
dyeje
I don't think it will work for multiple reasons.

1\. Google doesn't have gaming in their corporate DNA. They will commit a
bunch of faux pas that will alienate the gaming community.

2\. Streaming games adds latency. Latency problems ruin the experience.

3\. Gamers are a very fickle community and if they don't feel your company
'gets' them, they will not engage with you.

~~~
dpcan
1) You might be able to say that about MS before the XBox arrived. Also,
Google has always been "playful" so to speak. Changing their logos, adding a
game right into the no-connection screen of their browser. They may be ready
to go big here.

2) I can't imagine this going out to the public with latency issues. Netflix
can stream video smooth as silk to millions very nicely. Streaming the game
will be the same thing, we are just getting the video. Sending keyboard and
mouse input should be trivial in respects to how intense video streaming is,
so I'm not sure why there would be any latency.

3) These particularly picky gamers are a small subset of the community. You
can choose to listen to them or not. There are millions of gamers who don't
stream, who don't watch streams, who game on their own, who don't care if the
files for the games are on their computer, etc. And these gamers want popular
titles on their Chromebooks. Google is about to make that happen it seems.

~~~
smadurange
1\. Really, anyone who changes their logos playfully sets a precedent for a
gaming culture? Do you actually play games?

2\. Streaming a film and streaming the full content of Halo is a whole
different ballgame. Do you know the kind of optimizations devs have to do to
achieve the performance they do on pcs and consoles?

3\. And how many Chrome book users is there?

I think at best this will be more like a mobile game platform. Won't put a
dent on AAA games on PCs and Consoles.

------
soulnothing
Having been mobile / traveling a lot. I tried using multiple cloud gaming
services. I didn't want to lug around a gaming laptop.

The biggest issue I've had is internet. Outside of my own home the internet
has been slow, laggy, or compressed the image to much. It's generally
unplayable.

In between being able to afford a gaming device. I used parsec, and rented a
machine to play games. FPS online multi player games were very difficult. The
latency was to much for that. But other games, strategy, sports, etc. Worked
fine. It was also great being able to connect anywhere and have my full game
suite.

Right now I'm trying something similar in my home setup. I switched mobile
gaming to old emulators and indies. With a bluetooth controller. (Ryzen
2700u). My home server is running a windows vm for gaming, and I stream
everything over gigabit lan. That is working wonderfully so far.

I see this going two routes. For the casual gamer. As long as we have good
internet. Then this can be a big win. Discarding the drm and ownership
concerns.

For the more enthusiast / pro gamer. With the spark of 144hz freesync and
gsync monitors. I don't see these streaming services being able to keep up. I
still see a number of gamers wanting to build a gaming rig. I want to because
I think it's fun. I just hope that this doesn't harm/limit any of the other
gaming stores.

~~~
stenioaraujo
What do you mean with "I... rented a machine to play games"? Is it a online
service? Would you mind talking a little bit more about that?

~~~
soulnothing
Parsec, allows renting of cloud computers with quadros. Either via amazon or
paperspace. It's rented per the hour. Storage costs additionally flat each
month. I usually spent about 10 to 20 a month. For several nights a week with
an hour or two gaming.

[https://parsecgaming.com/](https://parsecgaming.com/)

I'm still a fan of the service. I'm using their software for hosting my in
home network gaming setup.

~~~
dmix
Do you have any examples of games that worked well with Parsec? I have a super
fast home internet but don't want to invest in a high-end rig.

------
RandomGuyDTB
I don't think gaming needs another competitor, much less one that already has
a history of booting its rivals and starting monopolies. Steam is good enough
for me.

The thing that's horrific to me is the quoted 20GB of data transferred per
hour during playtime. I don't have data limits so it doesn't affect me too
hard but my Internet connection hovers right around 5mbips per second. I live
in a smallish city in Maine. Google is alienating those in rural areas.

~~~
gzeus
I think they are only focused on the future where almost everyone has fast
internet.

I like the that they don’t have any load time. It doesn’t look like it’s going
to support most games any time soon. It’s going to be mostly hype for a year ,
I feel.

~~~
karlkatzke
I don't think they're being realistic about what the world is going to be like
any time soon. While the 5th generation cellular protocols will be great for
data in cities, it will still leave people in rural areas behind on 4th or
earlier generations because the frequencies don't carry well over distances
and the wired/optical backbones need to be in place.

~~~
vorpalhex
It's sort of a chicken and an egg problem though right? There's not enough
demand to build out speedy rural infrastructure so it doesn't get built, and
because it doesn't get built, nobody makes applications which would really
increase demand.

~~~
dmurray
Not really, you can build the applications for the billions of people who live
in dense cities, and then let the rural population demand access to the same.

------
Xelbair
Absolutely pointless.

without client and server side input prediction you get huge input lag - way
above tolerable ranges.

with input prediction you get annoyed players that their character doesn't do
what they want. Plus with multiplayer games you get extra lag on top of that.
And lets not forget about local input lag.

Transfer speed requirements are sky-high.

Also - can i just own something? i don't want to perpetually rent things.

I would really hate it if google attained yet another 'monopoly'.

~~~
bryanlarsen
It's input compensation they need, not input prediction. In other words, for
every button press sent to the server, it should also send the frame time the
user was seeing when they pressed the button. The server then applies hit
detection / whatever for the input at that time rather than the current time.

So you'll see a visual glitch as the world jumps to "what should have been",
but that's a _lot_ better than you missing your shot / jump / whatever due to
latency.

The fact that their controller is wifi and not connected to the computer gives
a hint that Google is _not_ doing this. Since the controller is independently
connected, it can have a different latency than the computer.

~~~
saynay
"Since the controller is independently connected, it can have a different
latency than the computer."

Not necessarily. Chromecast and the like already does side-channel
communication to devices on the same network. Its how my phone can know that
my TV is streaming something sent by my PC.

The controller could be sending input commands directly to the server, while
also talking directly to the video streaming device.

------
snarfy
Lag will always be an issue. I used to play a lot of competitive games like
street fighter, tekken, starcraft.

There is zero chance of a fighting game like Tekken ever being popular on
Stadia due to lag.

Distance from LA to New York: ~4500km.

Time of light speed to travel 4500km: ~30ms

Time of 1 frame at 60fps: 16.7ms

There are moves in Tekken ('just frame') that require 1 frame precision to
pull off. For a while it was popular to hook up old CRTs to playstations to
reduce lag as much as possible.

People might think the network will get better eventually, but the speed of
light isn't getting any faster. The network is no match for the local bus, and
it never will be due to physics.

~~~
basch
Render the next 60 possible frames (and recursively the next 60 of each 60 to
that frame), send them to the client, then based on controller input, it knows
which frame to choose next.

Use AI to determine the "most likely futures" and process those branch
further.

It could dynamically increase and decrease the "possible futures" sent
depending on how fast a person is going and how many input choices they have
at any given moment. Compression (combining like elements of different future
frames) can happen strongly on frames further into the future that have more
time to be decoded.

~~~
klohto
That would either require games to support this branching feature or have 60
instances of the same game open. Forget about this if you have any RNG or MP
elements. The complexity of such task is enormous. And that's not even talking
about the performance cost. Pretty much whatever is G charging now times 60
times 1.2x for added complexity.

"lol" is the best reply.

------
yodon
With much less fanfare Microsoft will be presenting their game streaming
service tomorrow (built on the Xbox Live brand, installed base, and tech)[0]

[0] [https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/project-xcloud-the-
futur...](https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/project-xcloud-the-future-of-
streaming-xbox-games-on-mobile-devices-and-beyond-presented-by-
microsoft/865431)

~~~
smadurange
Haha thanks for the link mate.

------
veryworried
I think it's fantastic for AMD. Google will have to buy so much AMD hardware,
and whether they are successful or not AMD will still be flush with new cash
that will allow them to become a bigger player in the chip space. Stock is
going up. And if for some reason Stadia really takes off it would only go up
even more, I'm talking $100+.

The big advantage AMD has that no one really talks about is their ability to
do client virtualization at the hardware level, not software.

~~~
gravypod
For anyone wanting more detail on the GPU-hardware virtualization support you
can search for SR-IOV and also read the AMD whitepaper [0].

[0] - [https://www.amd.com/Documents/Multiuser-GPU-White-
Paper.pdf](https://www.amd.com/Documents/Multiuser-GPU-White-Paper.pdf)

------
loudmax
This could be great for strategy games like Civilization, Sim City/City
Skylines, Age of Empires. Or, you know, chess.

It's also plausible for games where latency isn't a big issue. Something like
EVE Online seems like a good fit (I've never played, but I get the impression
it isn't a quick reaction type game).

At the conference they focused a lot on first person action games and
streaming to Youtube. Both of these aspirations are deluded. Action games are
plausible if you're on a network with super low latency to Google's data
centers, like say Google Fiber. Since Google just discontinued Fiber, this
isn't going to happen.

Streaming to Youtube is nice, but in no way needs a dedicated hardware button.

There are definitely interesting things they could do with massively
multiplayer worlds with low barriers to entry. There's real potential here, if
Google manages to focus on this product long term.

If Google can stay focused. There's the rub.

------
falcolas
I don't live in a big city, or near a big city, so streaming games will never
be a viable option for me. Despite having fiber, my ping to any Google or AWS
datacenter is never under 50ms. Online game pings (where it's actual TCP
traffic with compute) tend more towards 100ms.

For most games, 100ms latency between action and response is simply not
acceptable. Even games like Rocksmith, Guitar Hero, and Crypt of the
Necrodancer will offer calibration to overcome mere 10ms delays between the
controller and the AV equipment.

------
carlesfe
I don't know about Google Stadia in particular, but I was in the MWC this year
and got to experience an over-the-net gaming session. My friends and me played
Pro Evolution Soccer for about 10 mins at a stable 60fps from a 5G connection.
4 player mode.

I'm not a gamer. The only modern video console I own is a Nintendo Switch that
I bought to play BoTW. My previous console was a Super Nintendo. I only own
low-powered laptops and will probably never build a gaming PC.

But, if this remote-gaming takes off, and I can play any game from any console
at any time by paying a monthly fee, count me in.

It is my understanding that this is limited to PC-gaming only. Heck, I'll even
say that console manufacturers, who sell money by, you know, selling consoles,
won't be very happy about this. But, in my opinion, it is an inevitable
future. It is music streaming over owning CDs. It is Netflix over renting
DVDs.

------
Paul_S
Local latencies are horrible already, most monitors will add a good 40, then
input device tend to be horrible, a non gaming mouse can be equally high.
We're fighting all that and you want to add a round trip on the Internet and
encode and decode of video on top? This will work for games like civ but
onlive has proven there is no market for that.

------
waffle_ss
I'm wondering if Google will use this as a way to expand their compute
footprint into more POPs / edge network locations.

Everyone is hung up on latency, which is true. So if Google deploys their game
rendering boxes at edge networking locations, like internet exchanges, that
will result in lower latency to end users. Once Google has their rendering
boxes there, they might as well sell other computing services as well. Why not
sell to the game makers themselves, too - if they put their matchmaking/host
servers in the same place, then latency is lowered even more.

IIRC Google already has the largest private network (most fiber-miles) with
the most POPs compared to other cloud providers. The more POPs you have, the
better you can do CDN and other geographic-sensitive computing since you are
physically closer to your end users.

Having mini-datacenters at edge network locations could also be an interesting
bet on future/emerging technologies that are also compute-heavy and latency
sensitive, say VR or AR. Imagine being able to deploy code to thousands of
locations (for a price) compared to the traditional couple dozen regions * a
handful of availability zones where the huge datacenters are.

~~~
wppick
These are great points. My two cents: I think there's potentially a lot more
behind this product than just the face value of game streaming. Amazon is
growing their compute power with aws, and other people are paying for this.
Google needs something similar to grow their compute resources, and to lower
risk by also having others pay for it. It's an arms race for compute power.
With stadia Google will have an advantage over Amazon in gpu resources. Amazon
could grow gpu resources by getting into the video rendering business with
massive shows like Lord of The Rings to finance it. The other big win for
Google imo is having this be a passion project for good engineers to pour
their energy into

------
matt_s
A example of a solution without a problem.

Hardcore gamers, and by that I mean people that spend a lot of time playing
graphically intense games, have their own gaming PC's and keep up with
hardware. So they aren't the customer, at least immediately, maybe in 2-4
years.

Anyone that has a current-gen console already has access to play most any AAA
title game that comes out, unless it is exclusive to the "other" platform,
which means it won't be on Stadia either. They aren't really the customer, at
least immediately.

The boasting of Stadia GPU vs current gen consoles doesn't mean much to people
playing on consoles. They already bought into a average common denominator of
graphics capabilities. So they aren't the customer immediately, maybe when
another generation of console comes out.

So who is the customer? Gamers playing non-graphically intense games? Why
would they care? Maybe the killer feature here is being able to change devices
(tablet, phone, Chromecast) and pick up where you left off. At what price
point though is that worth it to someone?

------
gravypod
It's the next evolution of DRM. First you owned your games, then you owned a
license to your games, now you will rent your games. It's going to happen at
some point and there won't be much fighting this from AAA studios.

    
    
      "You mean it will be 100% impossible for piracy to exist?"
    
    

In addition, if Google is smart, they'll also be building their own game
engine and tooling to run along with it. Google will market this engine to
publishing studios and they'll build in base features that you need for the
platform. Any multiplayer game, in their architecture, will have no latency
and they'll be able to support things that no other company can. Want 10000
people in a huge PvP arena? No problem, everything where the game is running
is on an infiniban network hardlined to GCP!

It's a great business idea, it's going to be terrible for consumers.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> Any multiplayer game, in their architecture, will have no latency

...except all the latency between the player and the game of course.

~~~
gravypod
The view layer will have latency but the code that actually runs the game
logic wont.

------
TwoNineA
I tried Steam inhouse game streaming a few times and the result was decent. I
have gigabit ethernet in my house, so latency was superb but video quality was
noticeably different than the the actual game running on the host. My host is
a beast so I got no idea why this discrepancy.

If Google can keep latency low and graphics as close as possible to original,
then it has the possibility of being a Netflix for gaming. IMHO, Google need
to focus on 3 things: latency, price and game library. Without those, it will
fail or be a niche product considering that for 600ish$ you can build a pretty
decent gaming PC.

------
kevinventullo
I beta tested the Assassin's Creed demo they had a few months ago, and it
worked really well, but the last thing I want is to depend on Comcast to be
able to play a single player game.

------
smadurange
My guess, they will try to shove this down customers using Android like the
rest of the GSuite. Then the same guys who play candy crush on android will
start using this. And the mobile game devs will start porting their games to
stadia. Overall, mobile game quality will improve but that's probably it.

I think Public Cloudx from Microsoft and NVIDIA Geforce is doing similar
things. Not sure why when a Google does it, it's such a huge deal.

Either way, last thing I want is to have to have a Gmail account to play GTA5.

------
johnnyturbo
I wonder if it would be possible to implement some sort of runahead feature,
such as what the libretro team has recently added to their project. Two
identical instances of the game running simultaneously on two servers, one
feeding back inputs to the other in such a way as to eliminate input lag
entirely. Maybe this would be impossible over a network, but it works like
magic in RetroArch.

------
Jedi72
Tinfoil hat time - will they use the data to train neural-nets? Game playing
is a very active area of AI research.

------
Yizahi
Yet another nail in the non-google Internet. From tech point of view - it may
or may not work for SOME games for SOME audience mostly depending on the
marketing and ease of setup/use. It won't make a dent in the AAA gaming, at
least in the nearest 3 years.

------
plopz
Unless they are able to somehow do client-side prediction I don't think they
can overcome the latency hurdle. Maybe they could send multiple potential
video frames that are the result of different inputs and select from them when
the client chooses an input?

------
fidla
I'm all for it but I think it will be a fly in the pan. GOogle starts these
projects and then discontinues them after a while. It's kind of a joke
actually.

------
rambojazz
I think this won't work for hardcore gamers, because of lag. On the other hand
it could work for casual gamers if it's not too expensive.

------
codychase
I don't think it will work because most Americans don't have fast enough
internet connections to work with no lag or latency.

------
grawprog
The same things I think about a lot of Google's things they come up with, why?
meh, and wonder how long this will last...

------
gd2
I'm not a gamer, but it * could * turn out to be a successful on-ramp for a
large number of casual non-committed gamers.

------
dkonieczek
I watched the entire keynote. IMO, definitely industry breaking if they can
deliver what they're promising. Their demo with Assassin's Creed Odyssey
overall went well. I'm sure they're hard at work cutting down on input lag and
being able to scale. Can't wait to try it out!

------
drivingmenuts
If it’s not an immediate and smashing success, it will languish in development
he’ll until Google just gives up on it. Google has corporate ADD for anything
not based around ads and gmail.

------
morkfromork
It looks like it would easily exceed my ISP data cap. Whatever I would save by
not buying new game hardware would be spent on bandwidth.

------
moneytide1
I only play competitive online games so I need minimal latency.

------
morsmodr
Factors external to the product that could impact Stadia

\- Adoption will depend based on Internet speeds

\- Cable companies and their data caps could result in a demand for high speed
and unlimited data but not sure whether the tyranny of Comcast can be broken.
Maybe a new lease of life to Google fiber? Just own everything from network to
server to platform

Good things about Stadia besides no console, multiple devices

\- Sharing state, youtube shortcut to get you a walkthrough video from youtube
is god sent, lobby feature is also epic

Some really amazing things about this

\- People working on the engine or 'hidden' console do not need to care about
packaging it in a sleek way or ensure it weighs less. E.g. the hidden console
could be ugly, and occupy a lot for space

\- Google can build it in a way that is scale-able from a hardware perspective
without worrying for form - just pure focus on function and performance

\- For consoles, the constraints are form, power consumed, heat management and
yet they are required to deliver high performance

\- Add a VR device and unleash power of version 2 or 3 of the hidden console
on it and you swallow the VR market as well -> Streaming VR games is the
future

Speculation of the future landscape of gaming (2030) if everything goes well
for streaming based gaming

\- Microsoft and Google leverage their cloud infrastructure to capture
significant chunk of the market

\- NVIDIA also enters the market but either exits or ends up having a very
small % of the market, because existing server and cloud infrastructure will
play a big role in determining the winner and no one can beat Google and
Microsoft in this regard. Doubt whether that gap can be closed by newcomers

\- Sony is a little late to the market and grapple, they realize that their
strengths lie in good narrative games and yet delivering great graphics, good
gameplay and go back to that.

\- There are a lot of multiplayer games ranging from high graphics to small
games developed by Indies (making this industry literally the youtube of
games), and most of the people gravitate to streaming games slowly

\- There is still a set of console loyal gamers who buy the PS4 and they join
Nintendo in a niche category

\- Microsoft dabbles in both console and stream, doesn't capture the people's
imagination with its work but still comes out with solid content in both
places. They hold the 2nd place in market for both styles of gaming.

Stadia is not just targeting consoles, it is also looking at freeing up some
developers from being forced to tie up with massive publishers. It will also
result in smaller dev shops working on simple games where Google compete with
Steam

------
MayeulC
This is very exciting, as it opens up a lot of opportunities.

Firstly, gaming hardware is expensive, especially if you want the latest
stuff. My desktop computer is quite powerful, but I haven't had time to turn
it on even once these past couple weeks. Making a big pool of hardware
available to anyone on a time-sharing or seat-sharing basis makes gaming a lot
more affordable. Of course, this only scales to hardware, not licenses. This
is a big plus for just about everything, from environmental consideration to
GPU demand. Except maybe investment in consumer-oriented hardware.

Then, there are the new possibilities offered by both, more powerful hardware,
and centralized servers. As well as anti-cheat measures, and new financial
models that can be explored. Bigger servers, fair latency, better splitscreen,
etc. Are just a couple.

Since it runs on Linux+Vulkan, this combination will get a lot of favourable
treatment over the next months, which might mean more native games, and at the
very least better engine support for those open technologies (which is great
for future-proofing, portability, etc).

AMD will likely benefit a lot from this, and virtualisation tech can be
improved further as a byproduct.

\--

On the other hand, it comes with a lot of disadvantages, and endangers the
status quo:

Dematerialization is very dangerous for game preservation: cloud-exclusive
games or features, games that can no longer be played after the license
expired, or they became unprofitable to maintain, etc. This is a very powerful
form of DRM.

Modding community will also likely suffer from this, as there is no way to
modify a game that runs on a remote server (ideally).

Of course, you will need a decent internet connection to play.

This will increase user monetization (and tracking). I am afraid that with
google's reach, we could see a lot of Stadia exclusives.

And of course, Google gets to say what's allowed on their platform and what's
not.

Gaming might actually be one of the reasons why we still regularly see
powerful computers around us, and not just smartphones/tablets/mass
consumption devices. It's a limiting factor in the migration to an "all-cloud"
life, anyway. So google wins on every front with this move, and could see the
"desktop marketshare" start dipping again, and/or make powerful hardware
harder to come by for a consumer.

\--

On the bright side, VR might be the redeeming actor, as Stadia will never be
able to play those games, which will maintain a baseline of Gamer PCs and
traditional game publishing. On a less bright take, it looks like VR is going
to be mostly used in professional environments in the next few years, and
might end up confined in VR arcades.

For now, I personally think the possible drawbacks outweigh the advantages,
and will refrain from using it. I think it would globally beneficial if it
finds itself a niche, with no exclusives. I would even be willing to pay for
that. But the prospect of another Embrace, Extend, Extinguish tactics is way
to dangerous, so I would try not to add myself to the number of customers they
can leverage.

As an aside, I would really like to be able to share my untapped computing
power within my circles, and have my friends do so as well. We would likely
need far less powerful hardware if we could pool this together, as a federated
cloud. I guess the blocker here is trust, and algorithms to distribute
workloads. Working on idempotent encryption algorithms and proof-of-work-like
verifiable computing (check that the output is a valid compilation result,
without recompiling ought to be doable) could alleviate some of the trust
issues, and the second part will likely come naturally anyway.

------
neves
Can you put references to it?

~~~
Jaruzel
Google Press:
[https://store.google.com/magazine/stadia](https://store.google.com/magazine/stadia)

Keynote in 15 mins:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOkEdQYePWY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOkEdQYePWY)

Tech Response:

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/20/18273977/google-stadia-
cl...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/20/18273977/google-stadia-cloud-game-
streaming-service-report)

[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/03/google-stadias-
first-...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/03/google-stadias-first-hands-
on-demo-washes-some-key-details-down-the-stream/)

------
maccio92
I don't understand why everyone is so up in arms against Google over this,
when Microsoft (xCloud) and NVIDIA (Geforce Now) are also going after the same
thing.

~~~
smadurange
Because Google has been playing fast and loose with "Don't be evil" for a
considerable amount of time. There's a substantial number of people specially
in tech who are wary about Google.

------
gcatalfamo
The comments in this thread is why we don't deserve nice things. I too think
Google has a reputation for killing nice projects or not enough gaming
experience, but we have to start somewhere, and why not Google that has the
resources to do it.

~~~
ykevinator
I laughed out loud

