
Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance - jmsflknr
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-deals/Sony-and-Microsoft-set-rivalry-aside-for-streaming-alliance
======
davemp
It seems like all the major players are taking game streaming seriously. I'm
still not very sure about the viability.

There's the obvious DRM win. Accessibility will be higher with way lower or
non-existent hardware costs. These probably look very enticing on a cooperate
slide deck. Not to mention the subscription model.

On a more technical side game streaming is only really desirable for games
that don't run well on commodity hardware (see AAA 3D action titles). Latency
is very important for these titles and the general rule of thumb is that 50ms
of input latency is readily noticeable to humans. Average home connections
have ~20-30ms round trip latencies. These speeds are not a reality everywhere
or consistent. Combined with hardware input, world simulation, and rendering
latencies it can be difficult to get latencies low enough to be comfortable.

Modern games just have the client run its own world simulation and rectify
with the server later to hide the network latency. This strategy won't be
possible with streaming. Is there some alternate optimization that can be made
for streaming? The architecture will definitely be simpler with the main-frame
paradigm. Maybe if there's only one client it could be feasible to send some
batteries included chunk of frames that can be easily constructed based on the
next set of inputs. Is there any hint that progress can be made in this
direction?

If the latency problem can't be solved, I'm definitely bearish or game
streaming. Latency insensitive games for the most part are not difficult to
run on commodity hardware.

~~~
Xixi
I have no idea how reliable it is, but quoting wikipedia [1]:

"Testing has found that overall "input lag" (from controller input to display
response) times of approximately 200 ms are distracting to the user. It also
appears that (excluding the monitor/television display lag) 133 ms is an
average response time and the most sensitive games (fighting games, first
person shooters and rhythm games) achieve response times of 67 ms (excluding
display lag)."

These numbers are from the PS3/XBox 360 area, which certainly sold massively
well. Since display lag is not included in these 67ms, this is what these
streaming services would have to aim for. It doesn't sound completely insane
given the 30ms round trip latencies of home connections.

On a more subjective note, I think it's going to be really hard hunting down
high end gamer PCs. On the other hand lots of games don't run particularly
smoothly on consoles (especially "normal" PS4 and XBox One, rather than PS4
Pro or XBox One S) that these services are directly aiming at. I can perfectly
imagine a stadia version of The Witcher 3 running circles around the PS4
version that lags so much... But I don't think it would hold against the PC
version.

But I don't game much at all anymore, so my knowledge is mostly outdated. The
last games I played were 80 days and A Dark Room on my iPhone (both pretty
good games). So I guess I'm now more in the target demographics of Apple
Arcade.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_lag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_lag)

~~~
romwell
>I have no idea how reliable it is

This is not reliable at all. You can _really_ feel 100ms latency.

That's why in the world of pro music, barely anything above 10ms keypress-to-
sound latency is deemed acceptable.

Quake III will make all these streamed games feel _slow_.

~~~
DontGiveTwoFlux
Well sound uses different neural pathways than audio, so it's not a totally
fair comparison.

~~~
kibibu
Is this a typo? Anyway, audio feedback is a critical part of games. Pressing
the "fire" button and waiting 100ms for the sound of the gun would be insanely
noticeable

~~~
josephg
The inverse is also true. Sound triggers and local animations are often used
to mask latency in games like DOTA which need a server round trip before your
commands have any affect on the game world. It works remarkably well to make
games feel responsive even when they’re not.

However, with these streaming systems I’m not sure developers will be able to
use tricks like that. It seems like these tech stacks are running all code
remotely. I feel pretty skeptical about whether they can make the game feel
good enough this way.

------
tetha
I am sad with this threads discussion. Or I'm old. This is a logical step in
lock-in disguised as user experience.

Back in the day, if you could maintain the data, my 15 physical 3.5 inch
rather unfloppy floppies were monkey island. I lost my personal copy, but if I
moved the data, I could have my own copy of monkey island right here. I
personally failed on my own maintenance there.

Then we had - skipping some steps - something like private WoW Servers. they
worked 90% of the way. But Blizzard kept some code and that never worked
privately. Most stuff worked on the client side, most stuff on the server side
could be reverse engineered.

And now we're planning to stream games via something similar to team viewer /
citrix, put bluntly. At this point, what difference is there to an interactive
movie? I can replay several single player games I acquired on steam off-line
as long as I have the binary and a windows instance. I'm sure I can play FTL
or slay the spire in 2040 without any developer interference.

If you stream those games, those games will die harder than the multitude of
multiplayer only games with dead servers once the streaming servers get
shutdown due to business decisions. Which can and will happen < 1 year after a
failed launch in my book.

~~~
ericdykstra
We already see this problem with other streaming media services; just because
something is available today doesn’t mean it will be available tomorrow.

I don’t want to give that much control over to someone else. I don’t need all-
you-can-eat content. Just let me pay for the music/movie/book/game that I want
and enjoy it for what it is, and know I always can just use my copy without
needing to be plugged into the internet.

I guess this view probably makes me look like an old man yelling at a cloud,
but I’ve managed to find a way to survive without signing up for Netflix, and
I hope I can still play games in the future without needing to sign up for a
streaming service.

~~~
tetha
I have lost dearly held content to the internet deciding to not host it
anymore, including spotify.

At this point, I trust my backup 2x SSD mirror more than some cloud. So I
guess we're two old guys yelling at clouds.

And this will just go even more fucked once the article 13 of the EU goes
weaponized in 2 years.

~~~
0_gravitas
I remember an xkcd that was basically saying if you _really_ want your files
to be portable and available reliably until the end of time, the only solution
is to pirate it

~~~
VibrantClarity
[https://www.xkcd.com/488/](https://www.xkcd.com/488/)

------
phjesusthatguy3
MS is contributing Azure resources, Sony is providing the camera sensors, and
they're both working on AI. So they're collaborating on enhancing the
panopticon and going to charge people to train it.

I wish I was kidding, but it's right there in the press release minimaxir
linked[0]

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19931405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19931405)

------
shmerl
Google finally advances Linux+Vulkan gaming using a side door that bypasses
the market share blocker altogether. MS and Sony don't like it and plan to
mirror Google. Instead, they should stop being lock-in jerks, and should
support Vulkan as well.

~~~
chronogram
How is that Google streaming gaming thing not Google being "lock-in jerks"
then?

~~~
skohan
Presumably if Google makes game development for Linux commercially viable,
that will make for much more vibrant community support (tooling etc.) for
local Linux as well. That plus what Valve is doing with Proton could
potentially break the stranglehold Windows has on PC gaming. I personally
would go 100% linux on my media PC if I did not occasionally play games on
Windows.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
I think a lot of people don't expect games released on Stadia to ever be
downloadable. It won't help linux at all.

~~~
savethefuture
They most likely wont be released, but the hope is that google contributes to
open source like vulkan, linux video drivers, graphics rendering, as well as
potentially release their own tooling.

~~~
shmerl
Some of them not (from legacy publishers). Others from normal ones will,
especially since they'll see it as "why not reach more users, we already did
all the heavy lifting anyway", instead of legacy publishers' scornful "why do
it, who is using Linux?".

------
XzAeRosho
>While details have yet to be hammered out, the partnership will center on
artificial intelligence and the cloud. The latter category includes plans for
joint development of cloud gaming technology.

So this agreement mostly focuses on Sony using Azure infrastructure for Cloud
Gaming. I wonder how will Xbox will compete in this scenario, it's kind of
weird hosting your competitor.

~~~
nerdjon
It's not like the tech industry is exactly new to using competing companies
products.

Microsoft using Mac (not even discretely).

Apple using AWS, Google Cloud, Azure

Amazon Selling competing products

etc, etc

This may be a bit of a specialized case, but if you run a cloud hosting
provider that is not your primary (or original) business you will need to
accept that likely be involved in running a competing service. (I am sure AWS
hosts a fair number of retailers and related technology)

~~~
test6554
The cloud changed everything from Microsoft's perspective. They don't care
what language or OS or tool you use anymore, as long as you host it in their
cloud, they are making money.

------
DangitBobby
Finally, someone listens! I've been saying for years that not enough services
are dependent on unreliable internet infrastructure! I can't wait to add
single player games to the list of things I am unable to do when my internet
provider has yet another massive multi-day outage.

------
tcfunk
Would be comical if Sony still claimed that they can't allow crossplay.

------
Ericson2314
There's something depressing to me about this more than other things moving to
the cloud, irrational as it may be. Yeah they already could track you, and you
already didn't own the game in many sense, but this just seems extra "casino"
like. PC games in particular are like the last bastion of desktop software
people actually care about; it seems like the end of PCs and the desktop.

------
minimaxir
Official PR from Microsoft: [https://news.microsoft.com/2019/05/16/sony-and-
microsoft-to-...](https://news.microsoft.com/2019/05/16/sony-and-microsoft-to-
explore-strategic-partnership/)

------
dead_mall
Even trying to stream via LAN is unplayable. It's especially much worse
streaming from a server that's thousands of miles away from your home.

I got 200mbs download and half the upload speed, I played plenty of PS Now
titles, and the only problem I have with it is the input lag. There's no
escape to it. You cannot play fast-paced games with such delay, especially
multiplayer-FPS games, it's just terrible. It's better to have the hardware to
play than to play remotely. Unless you don't mind 1-3 second (+ additional
cause you're using the internet) input lags, then game streaming is just for
you

~~~
thrower123
I've tried to like my Steam Link, but it just isn't worth the hassle - wired
with cat6 from one room to the other I've always had lags and glitches and
disconnects.

Throwing in ping times of 50-100 ms to some datacenter, not to mention
whatever traffic shaping shenanigans Comcast will inevitably apply, and I
don't have a fuzzy feeling about the viability of this rash of streaming
services.

~~~
vardump
Does your HDMI cable also have "lags and disconnects"? I mean, when you have
hardware compression (presumably?), it's not all that different to send it
over HDMI than ethernet.

Compression latency should be in low milliseconds (1 ms should be plenty.) The
latency over ethernet is going to be measured in hundreds of microseconds.
Sending a compressed 100 kB frame over it takes 800 microseconds, which can
partially overlap with compression. Noticing 2-3 milliseconds extra latency is
going to be pretty hard.

Something is _badly_ wrong with your setup or with Steam Link.

------
LaserToy
Pricing is a key. As far as I know, Game streaming currently doesn't have
viable business model.

PlayStation Now (former Gaikai) was a startup that wanted to sell game ads
(try before buy), and after expanding into actual game streaming struggled to
make money and attract users. It is just too expensive.

To me, the biggest difference bt movie streaming and game streaming is that
gamess are much more resource hungry. Video can be watched on cheap 30 bucks
usb stick, for gaming you need 400$ console.

------
colemickens
Of course they are. Google is better at cloud and better at Linux, and
Steam/Proton are already turning the tide for big games being available on
Linux. If Stadia forces all triple-A titles to be Vulkan compatible, and more
likely, Linux-compatible, Windows's strangehold on desktop gaming further
weakens.

As a Linux user, cloud gaming excites me even though I have no intentions of
ever using it.

~~~
colemickens
Thanks for the constructive feedback as always.

------
matthewaveryusa
Is the Akamai (largest CDN in the world) partnership with Microsoft announced
last month related?

[https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/press/2019-press/aka...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/press/2019-press/akamai-
expands-partnership-with-microsoft-azure.jsp)

~~~
eclipxe
No.

------
Jemm
Having tried several video game streaming services over the years, I am not
optimistic that streaming games will work for fast action games like shooters.
The lag between a controller move and screen response is just not adequate,
even when the server is only a few hops away with low ping values on an
excellent network connection.

------
stkdump
I wonder if these cloud gaming efforts will also lead to latency improvements
in remote application usage such as rdp and/or vnc. We are considering using
'heavy' software dev and CAD/CAM workstations on servers in our server room or
maybe even into the cloud, so that we can use lightweight machines locally.

------
cockroach
OnLive envisioned cloud gaming really soon and was then shut up by SONY. My
internet was not the best but the service was quite promising. It was about
time to hear about cloud gaming again. I feel like onlive was more than
10years ahead of its time and Sony 10years late.

------
artemisyna
I'm curious to see what the long term implications for this technology are.
While game streaming is a big market, I can't imagine it being _that_ big of a
market, so it'll be interesting to see what sort of longer term plans they're
aiming for.

------
bredren
Will the most powerful titles white label or use their own custom cloud
gaming? For example, Dota 2 or what pubg did with its App Store.

Removing the end user capital expense of a gaming rig sounds like a huge
change. Would drastically reduce the cost of VR setups as well.

~~~
skohan
I can't imagine cloud gaming will be viable for VR anytime soon. It's far too
sensitive to latency.

~~~
bredren
An alliance like this is a decades-long proposition.

~~~
skohan
Recently I saw a talk where John Carmack said he is working with camera
manufacturers to find ways to reduce firmware overhead on the image coming out
of the sensor for VR/AR applications to reduce latency. A lot can happen in a
few decades, but this is a very hard problem to solve.

------
neilv
I didn't think this would ever happen. Sony execs presumably know the history
of how alliances like that have gone (i.e., you almost invariably get
backstabbed, sometimes first being given an offer you can't refuse, of a
buyout).

~~~
guidedlight
Sony is the biggest backstabber of them all

~~~
neilv
I haven't had that impression, relative to some in industry. My external (and
non-MBA) view is that Sony is definitely money-driven, like any other big
company, and they aren't stupid, but, when it comes to excesses beyond the
norm, they might be more authoritarian than malevolent.

For example, consider that the PS3 Other OS mess might've been more a Japanese
"we can no longer have this, and must discontinue it, for the good of the
company/platform" (not that I agree that was OK), than "now is the time to
screw over those other guys, on things we never intended to honor in the first
place" (which has been well-known SOP of some other companies).

------
hacker_9
I for one hope it works out, I like the idea of instantly loading any game I
feel like playing for an hour. So what if I don't own it, it's a game. I don't
any of the movies I watch on TV either.

------
0_gravitas
Cloud stuff aside, the title can also read "two massive media companies will
explicitly coordinate and not try to compete with one another in an otherwise
practically unpopulated product space"

------
metalliqaz
Why is it that these articles always mention Google's new Stadia service but
never mention Nvidia's Geforce NOW, which has been in the cloud gaming space
for years now?

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
nvidia doesn't have the scale to endure years of losses while making enemies
of half of the gaming industry in order to pursue this. AFAIK they have 0
exclusives lined up, meaning DOA.

~~~
metalliqaz
It's been operating for years already. They already have customers. In other
words, the "A" has already passed.

------
_nedR
This marks the beginning of the end of golden age of gaming.

Two historic foes setting aside their differences to target their common enemy
- The gamer.

------
m3kw9
Sony’s got the game connections, M$ got the clouds

------
NicoJuicy
Console and when unused, a cloud gaming streaming server could reduce lag.

That's what I'm thinking about right now.

------
lawrenceyan
I assume this is in response to Stadia?

~~~
Waterluvian
And Nvidia GeForce Now. I'm wildly impressed by Nvidia's streaming solution.

~~~
lawrenceyan
I remember when Nvidia first launched GeForce Now in 2015 with their attempt
at mobile gaming using the Android Shield. It was a good idea in principle, so
I was sad to see it not do as well.

Glad that Nvidia is pivoting to moving the service back to a full computer
setting. The Shield while cool, really could have done with a better screen.

~~~
deckar01
The only thing they pivoted on was their pricing model. GeForce now was just
them beta testing on shield users. Once they were feature complete they
flipped on the switch for PC and started charging more money.

~~~
Waterluvian
They're charging money? I'm in a closed beta for free.

------
sneakernets
And yet, the average American will never be able to use cloud gaming
comfortably.

------
jxdxbx
Apple is not doing a game streaming service.

~~~
pier25
No, but it announced Apple Arcade which is an iOS/TVOS/macOS gaming
subscription service.

~~~
jxdxbx
Right, it's a new business model, but it's odd to lump it in with Stadia etc.

------
coakroach
OnLive was envisioned cloud gaming in 2012 and was bought by SONY. My internet
was not the best but it was quite promising. It was about tine to hear about
cloud gaming. I feel like onlive was more than 10years ahead of its time.

