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

[Deleted member 11852]

It's more of an issue with GeForce Now... the service and the stores are de-coupled.

I don't think this is a bad thing. The piece that is missing is letting games play the games they already bought in their Steam/Epic/GoG/EA/Ubisoft libraries. But that remains a technical hurdle trhat streams needs to cross. It can do it, because Steam already supports in-home streaming of most games without special support.

If I was a publisher & I had a choice where my games were played I'm sure I would be picky too.

I'd have thought publishers were more interested in a sale rather than hardware the game is played on but publishers are weird.

 

[upnorthsox]

So how is Nvidia making money on this? Is there a fee for the service?

I think publishers are very leery of the whole streaming proposition. It's not setup to make them money, in fact its setup to cut them out.

 

[Malo]

So how is Nvidia making money on this? Is there a fee for the service?

Yes, it's $5/month to basically rent their gaming servers for when you want to play your game streamed.

I think publishers are very leery of the whole streaming proposition. It's not setup to make them money, in fact its setup to cut them out.

This is different in that the consumer still buys the game to own.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

In essence you are renting a "gaming PC" in the cloud the enables you to play games (with modern features like RT, VRS, etc...) on a very old pc or laptop. I imagine the fee also covers the cost of the OS the game is running on.

 

[upnorthsox]

Ok thanks. But there must be something more to it if you need Activision's buy in. If it's just a cloud based VM it shouldn't really be an issue. Whatever it is, I suspect Activision wants a cut and Nvidia ain't giving.

 

[BRiT]

I mentioned this somewhere, maybe the other thread... Mist likely Activision wants to be paid by Nvidia and other cloud providers the mass license for Commercial use. They used to require this for Internet Cafes even if they required the user to use their own Steam accounts. Just like Unity (?) and a few other middleware providers require server licenses to use their software in such scenarios.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

I would think it would be similar to an electronic book reader used to read purchased content. Hopefully the EU will step in and set the record straight.

 

[BRiT]

Only if that electric book reader was installed and running on a server in the cloud and didn't have existing license terms that require payments in such circumstances. So then yes, except for all the vast differences they're similar.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

So it would be similar to products like Kindle Cloud reader which use a web browser to read online books.

 

[Malo]

So it looks like it's definitely Google being the reason for GeForce Now. YouTube paid Activision $160m for the streaming rights for Overwatch and COD league. Included in the deal is the exclusive rights for Google to host all of Activision Blizzard's games on their servers. Which likely requires removal of their games from any other cloud providers.

edit: So apparently it was due to Activision wanting a commercial license for their games and some misunderstanding between the two companies.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Right before you posted I was about to say this is far from over and almost deja vu.

 

[Ryan Smith]

Activision likely wants some sort of revenue from being used in virtual cafe environments, I imagine.

Bingo.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ames-misunderstanding-for-activision-faux-pas

Nvidia said on Tuesday that Activision had asked to have its titles removed from GeForce, but didn’t explain why. It turns out that the video-game giant wanted a commercial agreement with Nvidia before they proceeded -- and the situation stemmed from a simple misunderstanding, Nvidia said on Thursday.

And this is why streaming games is so hard from a business standpoint. Publishers want a cut of all revenues, even if customers own or bring their own games.

 

[Communism]

Bingo.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ames-misunderstanding-for-activision-faux-pas

And this is why streaming games is so hard from a business standpoint. Publishers want a cut of all revenues, even if customers own or bring their own games.

Nvidia has never been very good at the corporate backstabbing/politics/lawfare part of the whole "giant corporation" game.

This was shown when they had to take the cash payout from Intel instead of being able to secure their own x86 license that nobodies like Cyrix, Via, etc were able to.

This was shown when they lost to Samsung despite literally being way more of a US Strategic Asset (and therefore would be easily able to use their political leverage to get a free win in any court case like Apple is able to) than almost any other company.

This was shown when they admitted to 3.5gB gate when they could have easily ignored it and pretended people were just "holding it wrong" like a master of the corporate bullshit game.

Things like this is simply par for the course when Nvidia deals with other giant corporations in most cases.

Nvidia is only good at the engineering (hardware/software) and direct to consumer marketing side of their business.

 

[CarstenS]

Nvidia has never been very good at the corporate backstabbing/politics/lawfare part of the whole "giant corporation" game.

Not for the lack of trying though, as shown by their 2017-ish EULA amendment, where they wanted to prevent GeForce-cards to be used in Data Centers instead of their more expensive offerings:
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/.../driver-eula-update-no-datacenter-deployment/

 

[Deleted member 2197]

And this is why streaming games is so hard from a business standpoint. Publishers want a cut of all revenues, even if customers own or bring their own games.

It should be interesting to see how Nvidia's collaboration with China's Tencent, Japan's Softbank and Korea's LG U+ for Cloud gaming platforms plays out. As the largest gaming publisher, I wonder if the Tencent online gaming platform business model will include "streaming revenues" they might not otherwise get. One-off, monthly or annual streaming fees are possible approaches at purchase time.

 

[Kaotik]

This was shown when they had to take the cash payout from Intel instead of being able to secure their own x86 license that nobodies like Cyrix, Via, etc were able to.

This is just so bad logic it's ridiculous. When Cyrix got their license, it was a different time. "everyone" had license back then and VIA got their license from buying Cyrix and Centaur.

 

[AzBat]

I'd have thought publishers were more interested in a sale rather than hardware the game is played on but publishers are weird.

If you can double the value of your sales with an exclusivity contract what's more capitalist than that?



Tommy McClain

 

[Sxotty]

If any companies allow their games to be used this way it gives consumers more value at no cost so as I said previously I hope consumers can support those companies however that is asking a lot of consumers to know that.

 

[entity279]

Or the reverse. It also increases the adressable market for the games at no additional cost for the company

 

[AlphaWolf]

If any companies allow their games to be used this way it gives consumers more value at no cost so as I said previously I hope consumers can support those companies however that is asking a lot of consumers to know that.

At no cost to the consumer, but not necessarily no cost to the publisher.