
 Google gets into game streaming with Project Stream - pearlsteinj
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/01/google-gets-into-game-streaming-with-project-stream-and-assassins-creed-odyssey-in-chrome/
======
azurezyq
Really feel sad about recent prevailing sentiment across HN. Some comments
seem to suggest Google needs to provide the following for this kind of "tech
test":

* Available for all browsers and comply all web standards.

* Available for all languages across all regions, with accessibility features.

* Promise not to "launch and shutdown in a few years".

* Imply a real future product.

But I'm guessing what Google wants to do is to just prove if "game streaming"
is technically / financially viable for mass crowds based on their technology
in hand. If not, maybe shelf and wait for a couple of years without dumping a
lot of resources and drawing bad sentiment.

What requirements are you thinking which should be applied to such a "tech
test"?

~~~
epicide
These are the sorts of projects that make sense to me for Google to be playing
around with. Namely, they are highly experimental and pushing what might even
be possible, but have the potential to (especially if Google shows success)
suddenly boom into a large market since games have a high demand.

It also makes sense for Google to push for this sort of usage since it's more
data going through pipes. Data they can analyze in some way, make money, etc.

The Google projects that make less sense to me are projects that are largely
about data retention, long term stability, and are generally considered solved
problems. I.e. email and office suites.

~~~
jankeymeulen
Those long-term solved projects can be sold to other companies as part of
GSuite.

~~~
epicide
I'm honestly not sure how that wasn't obvious to me.

------
PostOnce
Does this mean I'll now need a Steam, Uplay, and Google account all
simultaneously logged in to play an offline game by myself?

And if something goes wrong, I can expect absolutely zero tech support?

And I'll lose access to all my games in 11 months when Google kills it?

And it'll post my Achievements and owned games to my Google+ account
automatically and try to make it Social?

And if I get banned from the games stuff for some reason, I'll lose my other
Google accounts like Gmail, since they're all linked?

With all that value-add and free extra latency, I basically HAVE TO sign up!
What a deal!

~~~
restingrobot
Well since this is a streaming service, there is no such thing as an "offline"
game as you need to be connected to the internet to stream it. I"m guess they
will have some sort pay for play time model rather than a full game purchase.
This would be the streaming equivalent of renting a red box title, but
hopefully cheaper.

~~~
PostOnce
Offline meaning single player, streaming not withstanding, that's a lot of
crap to go through (managing and maintaining many accounts and clients) to
boot into a game that you're going to play by yourself (not multiplayer), and
a lot of points of failure between you and your small amount of recreation
time after work.

~~~
restingrobot
You already have to do this to play any AAA title? I really don't see the
issue?

~~~
PostOnce
The issue is that it doesn't have to be that way, didn't used to be that way,
and isn't that way for pirates.

Just because it's the state of affairs doesn't mean it's acceptable.

Consoles are arguably a better experience in several regards, and I want the
PC to be as enjoyable, considering PCs cost more; e.g. you can play Diablo 3
without an internet connection on PlayStation, but not on PC.

You can play some random AAA game on a console without having to put in a key
or maintain an account or a third party client (or multiple third party
clients!), where on PC you have to do those things.

You can sell a console game or give it to your friend when you finish playing
it, but on PC it's "already activated".

Google is going to take all the above and make it worse, so they can get their
% of the sale too.

Just because some company wants us to do something or behave some way doesn't
make us obligated to do so.

~~~
drivebycomment
You're perfectly entitled to your own opinion of why you think it's terrible
and why it will fail and is useless, etc (and I would agree with some of your
points). But I just don't understand:

> Just because some company wants us to do something or behave some way
> doesn't make us obligated to do so.

Don't use it if you don't like it ? Google launching something doesn't mean
you're "obligated" in any way, so I don't know what you're trying to say with
that sentence.

~~~
PostOnce
You can opt out in the beginning, but later it becomes a monopoly.

You can't even buy a game on a DVD anymore without it requiring Steam to
install, activate, and play.

So, in theory, if they succeed, it won't be optional anymore.

"Oh then you can just stop playing games!" ... yes, but I would prefer not to.
I would prefer a fair exchange of money for an unencumbered product.

Hopefully, if I speak out now about the potential and likely dangers of such a
service, then I may hinder its adoption and prevent the further decline of an
art form that I hold very dear.

~~~
wild_preference
Then support gog.com and accept that you won’t have access to all games, but
you’ll own the games you buy.

------
boxerbk
Have you checked out my company
[https://parsecgaming.com](https://parsecgaming.com)? We offer this but also
the ability to connect to your own computer and invite your friends to connect
to your computer too.

~~~
mooman219
I think you're being down-voted because the comment is kind of advertise-y
(maybe that'll be different in an hour).

Since it is your company, do you have any insight into potential challenges
that the average reader wouldn't consider? I understand that a benefit to
"game streaming" is that a game originally not networked (like splitscreen
only) can be played by multiple people over a streamed connection.

~~~
boxerbk
Hey. I have a lot to say :), and I provided a lot of thoughts to this
FastCompany article about the industry -
[https://www.fastcompany.com/90225352/microsoft-is-the-
right-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90225352/microsoft-is-the-right-
company-to-build-the-netflix-of-gaming). Generally, as we have seen media
wants to be streamed. And in this case, streaming is a great solution for
distributing content and unlocking games from the hardware they've been walled
off in. That being said, streaming video games is a very different proposition
technically and financially. People have been asking for the Netflix of gaming
for a long time, and companies really want to build it because it puts them at
the center of an entertainment industry that is growing extremely fast and
grabbing more attention every year. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics now says
that the average American's day includes 60% more time playing video games
than it did in 2011, and people who do play games play for 2.4 hours each day.
Most of the technical challenges with this have been worked out.

Streaming video at 60 FPS or greater and at 4K is possible. We do it all day
at Parsec, but the economic challenges are real due to the requirement that
you need to render video in real-time. Rendering in real-time requires each
user to have access to a GPU or 1/2 of a cloud GPU until newer technologies
allowing for true virtualization appear on the market. Cloud GPUs are
generally very expensive to operate, and as many of us know, the cloud
providers charge a lot to use them for gaming and/or ML. Companies with scale
can lease them at lower rates and have lower energy costs lowering the overall
cost to serve, but they are still very expensive to operate. Even if you get
the rates down to $0.15 per hour, you're still looking at overall hardware
costs at $10 per month. Your subscription price will have to cover the
hardware and the content license. The content itself is very expensive to
license as well because we consume games very differently from the way we
consume TV and media. When people binge on Netflix, they're binging on many
shows or many movies. When people binge on games, they're playing 1 game for
100s of hours. You can see this in the Steam Spy data. The median Steam
customer only buys 1-2 games each year - [https://galyonk.in/steam-
in-2017-129c0e6be260](https://galyonk.in/steam-in-2017-129c0e6be260). Many
cloud gaming companies and game companies are aiming to increase the market
for AAA games via streaming from the cloud. They're trying to reach the latent
gamers who don't play games any more. In our opinion, that's a lot less
exciting than delivering something valuable to current consumers of games.
Consumers don't switch to a new distribution technology because it's a cool
technology. They switch when it gives them something unique that they couldn't
get before the technology existed.

This is why, at Parsec ([https://parsecgaming.com](https://parsecgaming.com)),
we're focused on delivering unique experiences around games via streaming
technology. We make it so you can find other people around you and invite
friends to play local co-op games with you online. We're recreating the couch
gaming experience we love and making it available online. This experience
brings a new element to gaming that gamers today benefit from and enjoy.

------
wpdev_63
I've used various game streaming services and have found parsec[0] to be the
best in this domain. Their service prioritizes latency above all else and it
performs well though there's alot of artifacts. It runs on top of amazon
services so server placement is a non issue.

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

~~~
bspammer
Correct me if I'm wrong but these services are quite different no?

The idea of Parsec is that a machine you own is rendering and uploading a game
that you also own. Google seems to be playing around with the idea of games as
a service, where they render a game you don't own on a machine you don't own,
and let you play it for presumably a monthly subscription.

~~~
wpdev_63
Well you don't upload but parsec provides everything google is planning on
offering with the freedom of allowing you to use it as your own computer. So I
am not sure what you are getting at.

Unless google undercuts competing small businesses in the same space, they're
dead on arrival. They do not offer anything that's not on the market today.

------
beezischillin
The biggest bottle-neck to any game streaming service is latency and I've some
major doubts that they're going to be able to resolve it unless the client is
located really close-by to servers. I messed around with Steam InHome
Streaming, Xbox Streaming and PS RmotePly a bunch from work where we have the
same ISP as I do at home. The speed between the two is around 6-700mbit and
yet the added latency can still be felt and I don't live very far from work.

From my own experience the extra delay can be tolerable in a few game genres,
especially on console-optimised games where, to my knowledge, developers
optimise controls for higher latency due to a possibility of a slower tv.
Obviously PC FPSes and the like suffer the worst. It does work really well on
the same LAN, though: I decided to use a tiny SteamLink for my living room
gaming needs instead of messing around with long HDMI cables and the added
fiddliness of having to directly use the desktop launch games.

I wouldn't really sign up and pay for a service operated by Google, tho.

By the way, while a future affordable game streaming service that works well
might lower the bar of entry to the hobby, I have a serious fear of such a
thing enabling the worst parts of the video game industry to take over. The
software-as-a-service model and renouncing the last vestiges of actually
owning a copy of a game seems like a terribly tempting way to turn the entire
industry off of actual creativity and onto even more "whale-chasing".

------
mooman219
Looks like there is an older article but it didn't float as quickly as this
one [0]. This is a direct link to the signup page [1], and this is a link to
the about page [2].

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18115445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18115445)

[1]:
[https://projectstream.google.com/aco/signup](https://projectstream.google.com/aco/signup)

[2]: [https://blog.google/technology/developers/pushing-limits-
str...](https://blog.google/technology/developers/pushing-limits-streaming-
technology/)

~~~
deburo
Link 2 is really the link I'm looking for. It's the source to all of these
other 3rd-party articles.

Sidenote: can't stand how much space the header and footer (related articles)
takes up on that page on desktop. The scroll-up-to-view-the-header pattern is
disgusting with an header that big.

------
phjesusthatguy3
AFAIK Ubisoft was already planning to stream AC: Origins to the Nintendo
Switch in Japan (it's not coming to the Switch outside of Japan, I think). I
wonder if they'll sell it on cartridge; that'll have to be one of the first
games where the publisher can turn off the server and you now have a cartridge
that doesn't do anything.

~~~
bunnycorn
It's nothing new in Japan, it's normal.

[https://kotaku.com/in-japan-the-nintendo-switch-is-
streaming...](https://kotaku.com/in-japan-the-nintendo-switch-is-streaming-
games-that-i-1829071837)

------
grezql
Doesnt even work on firefox or IE. It tells me to use Chrome which I recently
ditched due to privacy violation concerns.

~~~
Jonnax
It's amazing how Chrome has become the Internet Explorer 6 of the modern web
era.

Instead of ActiveX I wonder what would be an appropriate way to describe it.

~~~
taneq
Trojan?

------
EKLM-ZK88
How is this different from [https://www.nvidia.com/en-
us/geforce/products/geforce-now/](https://www.nvidia.com/en-
us/geforce/products/geforce-now/) or [http://onlive.com/](http://onlive.com/)
?

~~~
merb
> OnLive is in the process of liquidating its remaining assets

it is not on liquidating (at least not yet)

~~~
EKLM-ZK88
The company may be liquidating but the service looks identical.

------
CM30
The big challenge here isn't the tech side, it's getting the games that people
want to play. Many, many companies fail to compete with the likes of Steam for
instance because they can't attract enough interest from developers and
publishers, meaning their libraries are lacking.

Google partnering with Ubisoft is promising here, but the question will be
whether they could get the likes of Activision, EA, Square Enix, Capcom,
Konami, Take Two, etc to work with this service as well. If they can't,
they'll end up with the streaming equivalent of Origin or what not, while
whoever does get everyone on board will take the market.

------
tedajax
Whoo another streaming service that will be bad

~~~
jamesgeck0
If anyone has the resources and technical expertise to make it work, it'd be
Google.

~~~
1stranger
I don't have much hope. Hangouts is still rarely a flawless experience whether
due to software or connection issues.

~~~
scotth
My experience so far as a beta tester has been very positive, for what it's
worth.

------
bribri
GeForce now has been great for me

------
desmondw
Oh good, the company that constantly bails on it's ventures is starting a new
one in a space that is far from being realized still.

Seriously, if what's the goal? Being a supporting network for gaming
infrastructure?

~~~
tspike
Google's promotion and incentive structure is built around launching products.
This will launch, putter along for a couple of years and then get shuttered
unless it's a surprise success.

~~~
fooey
If they make it work, Chromebooks just magically turned into gaming machines.

~~~
remir
Chromecast, too.

------
notjackson
"Sorry, this project is currently open in the U.S. only" can someone make
images of the webpage, please. thank you

[https://projectstream.google.com/aco/location](https://projectstream.google.com/aco/location)

~~~
cbuq
I tried, but it's also only for Chrome
[https://i.imgur.com/xcqYdjA.png](https://i.imgur.com/xcqYdjA.png)

~~~
josteink
So following Google’s gold-standard for accessibility then: both geo AND user-
agent blocked.

How could it possibly fail?

~~~
jsgo
Because it is a test. One would imagine they want to limit the scope initially
and expand out as time (and gravitation towards being a full fledged product)
allows.

This doesn't seem particularly shocking. Shadow just recently (I believe)
opened an east coast data center which now allows for their streaming service
to work on the east coast, so perhaps Google is only allotting their US data
centers to support this (one would assume initially and that if it is a
hit/worth continuing, it'd expand out). Chrome is their browser so either: a)
they're wanting to keep support requests limited to things within their
control (or at least, reduction of variables is important in the phase they're
going). b) they're wanting to be a full fledged gaming platform so they're not
interested in supporting others.

------
twtw
I hate that Google can pour money from its infinite ad revenue into other
things and beat out competitors by virtue of being able to sustainably run
unsustainable (for others) businesses.

EDIT: For people who are interested in this, I would recommend studying the
history of AT&T, especially the 1956 consent decree.

~~~
Jagat
The other player at the moment happens to be Amazon. So any competition is a
good thing.

~~~
twtw
Amazon? Are you thinking of Twitch, because this isn't that.

Parsec, Paperspace, GeForce Now, Shadow, ...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_gaming](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_gaming)

~~~
remir
Microsoft are also reportedly working on their own game streaming service.

------
srge
In the old days, Google would have bought an existing player and scale it. Now
seeing Google bootstrap this kind of mainstream business seems awkward. Also I
personably am very doubtful of any new app/service that Google releases.

~~~
icebraining
Google has always bootstrapped services, especially stuff from their 20%-time
program. Orkut, Google Lively, Google Video, Wave, Google Offers, Google
Health, and on and on.

------
josteink
Not to be overly negative, but _could_ they have come up with a less inspired
and creative name than that?

“Project” also make it sound like a ongoing effort of sorts, and not a
(finished) product.

~~~
azurezyq
I think you read it correctly. As described in the post, it's a "technical
test", not a product.

The gap between a "test" and a product is huge. I don't think it's wise to
dump resources into building a product based on unproven technology.

