I had an OnLive subscription back when they were still around. They delivered everything promised but it just wasn’t good enough for me. Initial impressions were great, but the longer I played intensely-interactive games the more pronounced input latency became. Especially in competitive multiplayer games. I didn’t so much mind the occasional artifacting caused by bandwidth throttling - it wasn’t bad enough to disrupt my flow. It’s not the bandwidth, it’s the latency. But for many, bandwidth caps may be a problem too.
So the question I have is, what technical advancements have been made to warrant a comeback for this tech? Is the only difference between this and OnLive going to be Google’s marketing department? I don’t think WAN latency has much improved in the past 10 years and that’s the hurdle imho.
A second question - how long before Google abandons this product? I’ve been burned by their lack of focus on so many products that I’m starting to learn not to touch the stove any longer.
Well their marketing is that they have many Google datacentres closer to users. If all players you play against are in the same datacentre and it’s in your state or province then it might have better latency characteristics… but I am still worried it won’t be low enough to not hinder game play enjoyment (depending on the game type.)
I’m not familiar with OnLive, so I can’t say for sure, but if it’s a service from more than a few years ago, HTTP/2 and gRPC are developments that will probably reduce latency…
I’m sure it will work well… for some. Really going to depend on your ISP and your distance from their nearest data center. I get around 100/12Mbps down and up with 15ms ping at home and tried the could gaming PC service Shadow and it worked surprisingly well. And I’d assume/hope Google could do a better job using their resources…
Won’t ever be great for competitive FPSs, but more than ok for 3rd-person adventure or RPG. Anyways, I pre-ordered. Will see some of you on Destiny 2 in Nov =p
I tried Shadow and a few other services as well this summer, and was also similarly surprised at how well it worked, even for FPS (mostly did Fallout 4 and Prey, which are hybrid FPS RPG).
I know some people had issues when they oversold a bit due to a sale (this is why you should be wary of cheap lifetime VPN subs or other popular discounted services dependent on bandwidth, generally speaking), but I only had a few instances of lag, and minor ones at that. Have around the same download speed and latency (symmetric upload, though) to nearby servers with Verizon FiOS.
Stadia I think should be fast enough and low latency for a lot of people, though obviously they aren’t going to win over pro/competitive online gamers anytime soon. Cloud infrastructure has vastly improved since the OnLive days. I think the success or failure of Stadia depends largely on how they fare against Microsoft, Sony, and others.
I’m a PC gamer and won’t be getting Stadia - I tried Shadow because I was in between PC builds - but I will be following how it does.
I live in the middle of the pacific ocean and while I do have a fiber cable direct to japan it’s unlikely cloud gaming will be worth it here.
We are all still waiting for Elon to launch his satellites so the ISPs can provide us with better options. I currently pay $75 a month for 50 down and it sucks.
How negative is the people, if it finds its nitch it will not flop AT ALL, there are people like me who preffers console gaming and want to try the newest titles but because we don’t have enough money to buy a console or we are handheld gaming fans first and foremost this service fits us better than a traditional console, having Stadia free with our games and controller is the best option for us because we are not tied to a monthly payment plan and we could buy only our favorite console games, plus the option to attach a telescopic gamespads to our phones would let us play wherever we want inside our homes, n public WiFi or in coffee shops where they have their private WiFi with the password printed on the tickets.
Overall for people with low end PCs, with low income and semi stationary handheld gaming fans are a nitch for them
I for one would LOVE to play Street fighter V or KOFXIV in my phone bc when they figure the best settings for fighting games on Stadia
Well it’s out now and people are experiencing it… and then my friend sends me this: http://stadiacountdown.com/
Looks like they’re giving it 4 years…
As far as I know, no one has actually stated when the free tier debuts, so I presume, based on your attitude and apparent inside knowledge, that you’re a Google employee?
And downloading metadata, which in this case implies data about your games is kinda useless if you don’t actually have the game. “Here’s a list of games you no longer can play, oh and here is the saves from them.” What kind of useless promise is that?
Actually… The people on Spawn wave media are praising it even though the backlash it received, they said it is good though bare bones, they would not make it their main console but they see the people on the free model using it as theirs
I don’t really understand the “consoles being outdated” argument. You can spend $400 every decade for a new console? Didn’t PS4 come out like 8 years ago?
Yeah I don’t get it really either, because game developers need a set target to aim at. If the specs are perpetually in flux then the developers will keep blaming the platform for any failings of the games.