Google Live stream

if oyu are geeky you might want to check this out

they are now presenting a new gaming streaming platform

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Here is a Digital Foundry video about the specs & performance of Stadia

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Thatā€™s all very nice

BUT


If I can share one though, even though I 1) am not a game dev and 2) didn't watch and won't watch the whole announcement: It's not likely to be a global thing any time soon.

From the articles I have been reading, everyone keeps putting forth the argument that this new way of playing games will make the medium more accessible to the general public, because it wonā€™t require such powerful hardware.

I see it as a half-truth.

One impediment is still the requirement of a stable, fast, internet connection. We suppose that, after decades of having Internet hanging around, we, on a global level, have made it as available as other basic resources. Thatā€™s not the case, as thereā€™s currently a huge discrepancy in price and internet speeds throughout the world. The laws that ā€œinhabitā€ or are related to the internet, its speed and its use (see GDPR) are not universal like, say, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Instead, they are majorly country-defined.

Which means that, at the end of the day, on one hand we have South Korea with its ridiculous Hulk-like average connection speed of ~28 mb/s and on the other we have Egypt with an average of 2.0 mb/s.

Internet, as many other resources like food, water and sanitation is not available in an even remotely similar standard throughout the world.

To add to that, developing countries like Brazil (I can speak for myself, here) are especially notorious for having laws that protect internet providers at the consumersā€™s costs. For example, any provider here is legally bound to provide a minimum of 10% of what they promised in the contract, so if you signed up for 10 or 30MB/s, you may only get 1-3MB/s. In newer contracts, there are also monthly limits, which means you may have up to 50GB or 100GB/month before they could slow your internet down (100GB is the highest I could find with my provider, and itā€™s out of what I can afford being in the middle class).

Here, internet providers also agree on the maximum internet speed they will provide, in order to maintain ā€œfairā€ market competition. But of course thatā€™s a strategy weā€™re all prey too, globally, on many different services and items, from soda to detergent.

Finally, Iā€™m curious to know how Google will implement its Stadia servers, since it seems like only the major countries ever get local servers for multiplayer games and things like that. So Iā€™m wondering how regional availability, as well as internet speed, could be a detriment to performance.

TL;DR: A fast and stable internet connection is not a global standard. Stavia is aimed at a very small public, and powerful hardware nowadays may be just as big of a detriment as fast internet speeds in the future. This platform does not make games more accessible, just more convenient to those who can already afford it.

:small_blue_diamond: Here are my sources for the aforementioned numbers, enjoy:

Internet Speeds by Country (Mbps), by Fastmetrics


Disclaimer: if anyone wants to share thoughts and views on this, please do. Iā€™m not angry enough at Google as it is and the more arguments I can gather, develop and brainstorm to throw at them, the happier I will be. So give me your counter arguments, please! :blush:

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Not even the world. Where I live (probably a small city), itā€™s $50/month for 100 Mbps or $70/month for 1Gbps across multiple internet providers. (I know of 3 in my area, GFiber, AT&T, and some other one I donā€™t remember). 5 hours away at my parents house, which is situated in a town of ~2000 people located between towns of approximately 24000 people (30miles/48km drive North or South), itā€™s $50/month for 6Mbps.

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A Google spokesperson told Kotaku they were able to deliver 1080p, 60 FPS gameplay for users with 25 Mbps connections.

so about 2.5 mbps, itā€™s way less scary than what we could thing of (and thatā€™s for 4k60 not 4k30)
but itā€™s all fun and games until i have it in my hand, i aint gonna make games for it if the platform turn out to require a direct access to google data center,

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iā€™d like to (again) point out, netflix has the same stupid ā€œrequirementsā€, and youtube i think has lower
-yet neither is able to provide, promise or guarantee "stable, reliable, steady and enjoyable"throughput.
when people on 10x faster connection, get interrupts here or there, buffering, lag, stutters etc, -and itā€™s not ā€œyourā€ connection/isp, then they can pretty much toss they suggested recommendation requirement faaaar up between Cthulhuā€™s butt-cheeks, since itā€™s worthless to ā€œusā€, but might have some use thereā€¦

there are way too many factors playing in to make such experience decently enjoyable, input latency is just one thing, add to that regular ā€œlagā€ itā€™s gonna begin to snowball just there. -and thatā€™s before you have various factors from your/x ISP playing in too.

no way in heck this isnā€™t hype beyond hype and the utmost silver-tongued golden no manā€™s sky promises dialed up to 310
this is Youtube, where people with fast connections (can) get the pleasure of having to wait 4 hours on a 3minute upload, because their monkey was too busy

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This.

@bellegueule If thereā€™s one thing I have learned from reading system requirements, is that you absolutely cannot trust them. It may or may not work: thatā€™s what demos are for ā€“ and why I, for one, support them. Another point is that I donā€™t have a 2.5 mb/s connection myself, and know many others who donā€™t. So even if those system requirement were the first in history to be perfectly accurate, my point that many people wouldnā€™t have access to the service still stands, unshaken.

And it absolutely will require a direct access to Google Serves where theyā€™re likely to use your gameplay data for ā€œanalyticsā€.

One YouTube comment argued that the service could be used as a demo platform, to try out games before actually buying. I think that may be an interesting idea, as long as itā€™s not the only kind of demo provided. Although, if we think hard about it, providing demos is not a widespread trend, so if a platform like this, thathas the potential to make it more common place, does, Iā€™m not complaining much.

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*cough https://206.81.1.216/t/funny-bonez-stuff/9375/36?u=gnuffi :wink: -shamelessly self-post pluggin :blush:

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Iā€™d like to think that because whoever writes the specs has never bothered to educate themselves on equivalencies or how well things actually perform.

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itā€™s already happeningā€¦ you dont know how much data is tracked when you play a video game, hereā€™s a small table of how games are already tracking you

  • first death location
  • number of death
  • avg time by level
  • first micro transaction purchased(with location date&time)
  • etc

the official reason of tracking games is to make sure that the game is balanced and fun, but the real reason is to find consumer pattern to sell you useless stuff, i canā€™t call name but thereā€™s also adaptive game play that will learn how you play and make the game different to push you to buy stuff

#BeAwareOfTheShadow

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Bold of you to assume I donā€™t avidly research the topic.

I believe what you mean is, for instance, f2p PvP games that match ā€œnon-premiumā€ with ā€œpremiumā€ users in order to make the first group buy items to buff themselves.

Unfair matchmaking is in the list of the strategies employed by EA games for example, and apparently itā€™s quite effective. Iā€™m on mobile so I canā€™t link you, but Reddit has plenty of discussions on the topic.

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You know with these new cloud gaming services I have never thought about data caps, that is probably going to be pretty bad for most people. Also data caps really have to suck, cant imagine having that low of caps. We burn through at least 1 TB a month, so not sure what we would do with such low caps :frowning:

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[insert pr0n joke]

I personally would have to limit my YouTube watching quality and time. Would also have to regulate the amount of things downloaded.

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Basically why I never switched to the newer plans and I have a download speed of 1.3MB/s on a wonderful day. The older plans are unlimited but slow(er).

You honestly learn to live with those things.

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Yeeeahh. No thanks.

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i watched this,

i still donā€™t buy the speed tables tho, unless the servers are located right next door
i have 10x the recommended for 1080p and over 4x for 4k, yet YT, netflix or even our local broadcast, still has lag/buffering in their sht here and there, despite my own metrics being clean, assuming itā€™s traffic or congestion on their end thenā€¦
so yea, fcn no way iā€™m buying you can have smooth or even low/tolerable latency, with only a 10mbps connection lol
^if they somehow actually can do that, then 10$ a month aint bad for people to save on hardware cost almost in ā€œperpetuityā€ -at least no reason for high grade upgrades: As long as people were willing to hand everything over to the cloud/forego modability, customization, local files/backups etc

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And despite all your sensible arguments you can be damn sure people will pay for it.

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people bought google glass, apple watch and the fn 1000$ monitor stand to a 5000$ monitor(that didnā€™t include a stand), and mcdonalds saladsā€¦ :man_facepalming:
i have long since lost the ā€œreasonā€ of sensibility in peopleā€™s purchase decisions :man_shrugging:

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The fact Iā€™m going to have to buy my games (most likely at regular price) to use it in the first place, it doesnā€™t really appeal to me.

As my critique video I posted mentioned, itā€™s likely aimed for those that donā€™t want to spend $$$ for and/or build a high-end PC Desktop but still want to play the latest games.

Because even if you are travelling, this doesnā€™t really work well for you. Me personally, I have either my 3DS, Switch, or a laptop that I can take with me for travelling.

supposedly it includes a ā€œbasicā€ stand. (But doesnā€™t include a VESA bracket - thatā€™s $200)

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na, the articles i read said it didnā€™t include a stand at all, but supposedly you could use another (specific) stand if you already had that, so it was sorta supposed to come off as a (potential) optional purchase/saving Apple's $1,000 Screen Stand Isn't a Rip-Off; It's a Missed Opportunity

hahah yea, +with data caps stadia is gonna be especially fun for people that travel or if bounce between networks, dang i hope starbucks has some good isp arrangements to become the new 4k gaming cafeā€™s :smile:

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