Game Streaming Platforms and Technology (xCloud, PSNow, GeforceNow, Luna) (Rip: Stadia)

[AlNom]

Kind of curious about the implications for developers having dev kits on the cloud ( also for stuff like baking).

 

[Malo]

Kind of curious about the implications for developers having dev kits on the cloud ( also for stuff like baking).

Aren't they provided actual physical dev kits? I thought they mentioned during the conference that hardware was provided to 100+ publishers or something.

 

[BRiT]

Aren't they provided actual physical dev kits? I thought they mentioned during the conference that hardware was provided to 100+ publishers or something.

Was that just the Stadia controller and a Chromecast Ultra?

 

[iroboto]

Kind of curious about the implications for developers having dev kits on the cloud ( also for stuff like baking).

I'm sure there's a large DevOps cycle involved here. MS: They probably have a dev-cloud and staging-cloud as part of the workflow.

 

[AlNom]

Aren't they provided actual physical dev kits? I thought they mentioned during the conference that hardware was provided to 100+ publishers or something.

They are, but maybe cloud development is the best way for studios to go about things just in case the building goes down in flames. Plus maybe they can take advantage of cloud on a per-need basis instead of having to setup their own internal farms and spend a bunch of money there to maintain it themselves.

 

[Jay]

I'm not referring to content exclusivity but service exclusivity.
MS knows that they will never be about to own 100% of the market. IE: RDR2 sales are divided among PS4 and XBO for instance. They will never see any profit of the ones sold on Playstation. If you make streaming exclusive, perhaps you'll maybe get a couple more percentage points on the sales because of switch over as being a driver, but you'll see significantly more profit if you support the Playstation streaming, and now you're taking a small percentage of all sales in the whole market. They just went from 100% of 20/30% to 100% of 20/30% and X% of the remaining 70%.

MS will never profit from Sony exclusives or nintendo ones, this avenue of supporting streaming is ideal here for completely new revenue and additional saturation of their assets.

When you quoted me I was talking about the need to get content on the service to attract people and keep them coming back.
I wasn't talking about keeping the cloud service exclusive.
I can see them selling it like they sell any other part of their cloud service.

The best way to have a game cloud service that other companies want to use thought is by making your own as successful as possible, as then you can invest to expand it.
So to me still comes back to having content.

 

[Jay]

Kind of curious about the implications for developers having dev kits on the cloud ( also for stuff like baking).

Always wondered why this wasn't a thing for MS a long time ago.
Super fast build and render times, being able to spin up when required.
Can see true benefits for some studios.
With remote desktop in cloud probably not far away.

 

[AlNom]

Too many other things on Phil's plate, I guess?

 

[BRiT]

MS does have general cloud development, it's called Azure DevOps: https://dev.azure.com/

The Azure Pipelines is for the builds/compiling/deployment aspects.

Build, test, and deploy with CI/CD that works with any language, platform, and cloud. Connect to GitHub or any other Git provider and deploy continuously.

 

[iroboto]

When you quoted me I was talking about the need to get content on the service to attract people and keep them coming back.
I wasn't talking about keeping the cloud service exclusive.
I can see them selling it like they sell any other part of their cloud service.

The best way to have a game cloud service that other companies want to use thought is by making your own as successful as possible, as then you can invest to expand it.
So to me still comes back to having content.

Right, I agree.
Yea I think on this topic,in this case I think for MS their go is that the whole xbox catalogue appears on XCloud. As it sounds like, MS is trying to make that happen so that developers don't need to code twice. I'm not entirely sure how Stadia works though.

 

[Jay]

MS does have general cloud development, it's called Azure DevOps: https://dev.azure.com/

The Azure Pipelines is for the builds/compiling/deployment aspects.

Build, test, and deploy with CI/CD that works with any language, platform, and cloud. Connect to GitHub or any other Git provider and deploy continuously.

Thanks.
Remember when they was pushing thunderhead, but don't remember them talking about cloud development for games.

It's a shame that xcloud is 1S based otherwise could actually deploy and debug in cloud also. This is probably one of the reasons development isn't done in cloud (if that's the case)

 

[Jay]

Right, I agree.
Yea I think on this topic,in this case I think for MS their go is that the whole xbox catalogue appears on XCloud. As it sounds like, MS is trying to make that happen so that developers don't need to code twice. I'm not entirely sure how Stadia works though.

Main issue as I see it with gen 1 xcloud is 1S framerate performance. Otherwise they would be in a very good place for year or 2.

Stadia will need actual game porting to be done. Probably powerful enough to brute force most games without having to spend too much time optimizing. That's if they use the console branch of the code base, think they did that for the AC trial.

 

[iroboto]

Main issue as I see it with gen 1 xcloud is 1S framerate performance. Otherwise they would be in a very good place for year or 2.

Stadia will need actual game porting to be done. Probably powerful enough to brute force most games without having to spend too much time optimizing. That's if they use the console branch of the code base, think they did that for the AC trial.

Stadia uses Vulkan, so I'm not sure on the details there unless ACO was a special Vulkan/Stadia variant.

 

[Jay]

Stadia uses Vulkan, so I'm not sure on the details there unless ACO was a special Vulkan/Stadia variant.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-hands-on-with-google-stream-gdc-2019

"Correct, but they started from their main line on the consoles, it's not that they took the PC version and ported," Stadia VP Majd Bakar explains. "You can see that as the UI changes according to the controller you connect. I wouldn't call it a console port, I'd recommend going to the talk. It's going to be run jointly between Google and the team that did the work for Project Stream and they will talk about how they did it and the work stream they followed."

Don't know the full details of their approach but sounds like they started with the console branch.
But don't see it as just a console port, probably due to all the work that needed to be done. But it's very wooly, be nice to get some of the details from presentation.

 

[MrFox]

The target seems to be pretty much linux and vulkan.

If google is successful bringing most third party developers on board, all those games will become much easier to release on a steam console or other linux gaming PC (since the linux/vulkan port is already done). Once the service gains market share, it becomes possible to launch an x86 google console supporting download and local play, offering something similar to PSNow where you can choose between streaming or download. Because streaming-only will remain a more limited audience based on the requirement for a high quality, stable broadband.

 

[DieH@rd]

Was that just the Stadia controller and a Chromecast Ultra?

They clearly talked about it in the GDC presentation. Devs can use Stadia in the Google cloud, Stadia in their studio rack, or Stadia devkit on the table.

 

[PSman1700]

Sony already offers both local and cloud gaming, they could just thrive forward with PSnow if competition from Stadia becomes a worry.

 

[bgroovy]

I see a lot of people complaining about how you could never play competitive multiplayer over game streaming. I get that there would be input lag yet at the same time wouldn't this effective kill P2P connections for multiplayer. I mean if the game is already running in the data center wouldn't it just make sense to have it act as the host as well.

This was an advantage OnLive was advertising 10 years ago.

 

[temesgen]

If Sony, Microsoft and Google all offer cloud gaming services, the differentiator will be likely be exclusives first and some combination of the quality of the service relative to price second.

Both Microsoft and Sony have and IP advantage but Google could buy some developers or timed exclusivity or DLC to swing things their way. But does anyone expect to see a real commitment from Google in that regard?

Has Google announced anything notable? With Epic moving in to compete with Steam and Google competing with traditional console market, perhaps we'll see some shake ups in gaming as a service....

 

[Alucardx23]

Quick question for anyone that can answer it. Would it be possible to implement Freesync with a cloud game? I know that probably no HDMI or Display Port standard allows it at the moment, but is there any technical limitation stopping it from happening?

The reason I ask is because I have this scenario in my head. Game X running in the cloud with an unlocked framerate (90 to 120fps range), while locally you have a 120hz monitor. The cloud will be sending every single frame it generates to the client.