
Google’s “Yeti” is reportedly a gaming hardware, streaming service beast - evo_9
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/report-google-considering-a-game-streaming-service-console-hardware/
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jarnix
This reminds of Shadow ([https://shadow.tech/](https://shadow.tech/)), a
service that was launched in France (cocorico) last year and is really
excellent. The network induced latency is not an issue. It's a little bit
strange when you move your mouse for example but when playing you don't feel
the latency.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
That small-form-factor Xeon box of theirs[1] would make a very nice little
PC...

1: [https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/blade-shadow-cloud-
streaming-p...](https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/blade-shadow-cloud-streaming-pc-
games-console-29-01-2018/)

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ne375
Does nobody seriously remember onlive who did this like 7 years ago. There are
also companies doing this today like liquid sky.

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sekh60
If it launches I am curious to see how performance is, I have strong doubts
that there is a large enough population in North America with enough bandwidth
and low enough latency to have a good experience.

~~~
chatmasta
The most recent chromecasts are more like mini computers. It wouldn’t surprise
me if this product came released with a beefed up version of chromecast.

If you can cache data locally, you can drastically reduce the bandwidth
requirements. Of course it’s still a huge challenge due to latency, but there
are many tricks google can use to solve that issue. There may also be clever
ways to offload some processing to local/nearby android devices.

This type of gaming service, IMO would require a fundamental rearchitecting of
how games are developed. I would be more curious to see if Google can run
_any_ game on this service, or if they’ll build out their own gaming platform
with an SDK that optimizes for the architectural differences between cloud and
local gaming.

~~~
vardump
I can play my home PS4 games from anywhere, with pretty good quality. It feels
pretty much local.

Disclaimer: I don't play much, but my kid sometimes do on the go. Perfectly
happy with it.

So why would Google need to be any worse?

There's less latency on the network than in many TVs because of their crazy
image high latency processing pipelines.

~~~
chatmasta
What sort of games are you playing? Latency sensitive genres like FPS, or more
RTS / turn-based games?

Also, I find it hard to believe that the refresh latency of a TV is greater
than Internet network latency. Do you have a source for that? And even if it’s
true, wouldn’t that only exacerbate the problem if you’re playing a cloud game
streamed to your TV?

~~~
vardump
> What sort of games are you playing? Latency sensitive genres like FPS, or
> more RTS / turn-based games?

Not me really, but my kid likes to play latency sensitive stuff. Platformers
and some FPS style.

> Also, I find it hard to believe that the refresh latency of a TV is greater
> than Internet network latency.

2017 TV models have input latency between 12 and 69 ms in "game mode"
according to [0].

The situation seems to have improved considerably, some older models I've
tested were up to 100-140 ms.

When I tried to ping google.com, I generally got about 16 ms avg.

    
    
      $ ping google.com
      PING google.com (172.217.21.174): 56 data bytes
      64 bytes from 172.217.21.174: icmp_seq=0 ttl=54 time=16.403 ms
      64 bytes from 172.217.21.174: icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=15.492 ms
      64 bytes from 172.217.21.174: icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=16.880 ms
      64 bytes from 172.217.21.174: icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=16.249 ms
    

> And even if it’s true, wouldn’t that only exacerbate the problem if you’re
> playing a cloud game streamed to your TV?

Well, in this particular case I was using a laptop instead when playing
remotely. So it kind of offsets it.

[0] [https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/inputs/input-
lag](https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/inputs/input-lag)

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imtringued
This is only interesting if you can pass around the "gamepad" to someone else
who is also watching the stream.

Otherwise what's the point? Just buy a console or PC.

