So would it just be for PC games? Or can you play it with consoles?
The rumour is that they'll be bringing out a streaming microconsole thing
Many JS devs don't know this, but there's a gamepad API in the browser that, in my experience, doesn't work so well out of the box, but interfaces pretty much natively with the OS's gamepad API:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad_API/Using_the_Gamepad_API
So if the tech behind it is just streaming video directly through the browser, then this is actually a relatively simple technology, there just wasn't as good integration with existing gaming platforms before
I don't like any of those streaming services.
Will be interesting if Google can fight the common issues like needing a good internet connection.
Main reason I dislike those things is because promise to be great but are pretty shitty, "the future of PC use".
They also pose a big threat for freedom in games as they can potentially turn games into a streaming service instead of having a local copy which you can mod etc.
Shadow is another new company that popped up in the streaming business, they offer a full PC over the internet but even though they advertise with stuff like 15mbit needed,
their FAQ actually shows they also want 25mbit, wired and fiber if possible, in tests it broke hard on Wifi.
He actually talked about this on Dead Game News yesterday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvxaadSzvxU
He's at peace now with the idea of games dying because of game streaming, it's literally game over at that point. He just hates the half-and-half time we are currently in now.
https://projectstream.google.com/aco/location sign up link for those interested. (US Only)
I guess it doesn't matter if we're 5 to 10 years too early for this, AAA publishers are going to push this on us whether we like it or not.
I think this is all really cool and I feel like this is going to be the future of gaming and will have many pros and cons. Instead of needing a powerful computer, you'll be able to log in to some online server and play any game you want at 1080p or even higher. The server runs the game you receive a stream of the game. Like a Netflix for games, Playstation now is already trying this model.
The pros will be any computer will be able to play any game, console or otherwise and space requirements won't be a thing, as you aren't installing anything.
However, the drawback to all of this will most likely be that some games may not even be released and can only be accessed through their online streaming service, which will almost certainly be a subscription model. Companies will love it because it will be near impossible to pirate, players will not technically own their games, and everyone is playing the same version of the game. And like @Steel implied, games will die when the server shuts down with no way of preserving them.
I don't think this is all bad necessarily, just what I believe the outcome of this technology will be.
This technology will never make it to the point of completely replacing the gaming industry standard of game downloads for quite some time simply due to the massive overhead this kind of thing produces, not to mention how difficult it would quickly become to allow modding of any kind (steam workshop and the like) for a streamed title, how untenable for an indie dev it is, and how Valve in general still rules the market and is more than content on resting on their laurels.
For some single-player console game like assassin's creed? The streaming platform could work.
For basically any other title? Multiplayer? Competitive? Speed/reaction-time based? All this service does is hinder your playerbase whilst providing little benefit.
Publishers don't care about mods, and they'll care even less in the future, publishers rule the AAA space in absolution, which is where most of the money is.
I'm not going to ever 'buy' a game that you have to stream. If I can't own it digitally or physically, the publisher can shove it
Owning a game on google's platform is not that much different than owning it on any other digital distribution platform. You don't really own any game unless you buy GOG/DRM-Free version or physical console copy.
Not necessarily, DRM can be cracked, but you can't crack something if no one actually has the files for it.
Expecting people to "vote with their wallets" to solve a problem does not work.
Ever.
Welp. The day the game industry moves to 100 percent streaming is the day I cease buying any new games.
Thankfully, long as GOG doesn't go out of business, it won't.
Man, I cannot wait for every game to have these tags in the future:
"US Only"
"$4.99/month"
"50Mb connection required, 200Mb recommended for 1080p"
"Offline edition available (Additional $9.99)"
i live in australia how the fuck do i stream games on shitty internet and high latency
The primary market is going to be naturally USA, I assume, but how will it work when people there are getting shafted by their ISPs?
Frankly, if they have an offline edition at all I'd be fairly happy in such a dystopia.
When a game dies and is no longer purchasable, it's 100% okay in my eyes to pirate it.
Publishers and devs don't get money from it anyway, and you can't get it any other way.
In the future everyone in aussie land is going to be seeding the Australian offline edition for the rest of the world.
The one saving grace of American ISPs being so shite as they are is that it means stream/cloud gaming will likely never take off in the mainstream in the US unless our internet improves. The majority of people simply don't have the connection required to play that stuff without some heavy compromises. There's a reason those Cloud versions of RE7 and Assassin's Creed on the Switch are Japan-only and American internet is probably a pretty big part of that.
I wonder if the game streaming market could become so important that game publishers would fight for NA ISPs to fix their shitty infrastructure?
I really don't get why companies really want to try to offer games as a streaming service. It just doesn't make any sense. The amount of overhead costs required for that sort of thing is enormous considering the servers required along with the hardware to run the games. I get that they might like to minimize the ability of people to pirate games, but the cost of streaming games is much more than the marginal loss of profits that would ever be created by pirates. It's just simple economics. It's much easier to just shirk those costs onto the consumer and require them to just have a half decent internet connection and a physical hard drive. Games as a streaming service will never take off until server costs and minimum graphical requirements for games comes massively down.
https://i.imgur.com/VI0jQPd.png
Guess Alaska isn't the US anymore. Dang.
Hmm, nothing really new in terms of tech
Nvidia gamestream has been around for a number of years.
It's part of the shadowplay package, just locked behind a experimental feature checkbox.
Your friend sends you a Play with me or Play as me, and you send over a URL, which just loads up a low latency video feed.
Gotta use chrome though last I used it, gamepad APIs (for first or second player).
Hosted rocket league splitscreen, it wasn't too shit. Would never really recommend it though
I could never get it to work at all. It just refused to do anything.
Ended up having to use Parsec instead, which works very nicely.
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