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

CES 2021: Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now are coming to LG TVs – KitGuru

 

Geforce Now supports now Microsoft Edge (Chromium). I prefer the native app for Windows, which is x64 only.

Unfortunately no Doom, Rage, BioShock, Resident Evil etc. available. I played a ltitle bit Portal 2 and it looked good, no compression artifacts. Do they use VP9 on Edge?

Link GeForce NOW

 

Google wont be making first party cloud native games anymore.

"Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially. Given our focus on building on the proven technology of Stadia as well as deepening our business partnerships, we’ve decided that we will not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E, beyond any near-term planned games. With the increased focus on using our technology platform for industry partners, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Google to pursue other opportunities. We greatly appreciate Jade's contribution to Stadia and wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors. Over the coming months, most of the SG&E team will be moving on to new roles. We’re committed to working with this talented team to find new roles and support them."

https://www.blog.google/products/st...ias-future-as-a-platform-and-winding-down-sge

 

GeForce NOW list of games for streaming is finally available - SlashGear
February 12, 2021

 

One thing I've been really curious about. Stadia and Luna have had great success decreasing latency by using wifi to directly connect to their controllers. MS famously uses wifi as the local connection for their XB1/XSX controllers. What would be stopping MS from firmware updating XB1/XSX controllers to connect directly over the internet to xCloud like Stadia/Luna controllers do? The controllers are firmware upgradeable. The controllers have bluetooth builtin so users could upgrade firmware and manage connections through a mobile app. This would instantly be a huge install base compared to the competition.

Would MS have even had the forsight way back when (2013?) to have accounted for this possibility?

 

bit of news that could indicate the future of luna, or possibly nothing

The head of Amazon Luna has left the company and is now working at Unity
Head of Amazon's cloud gaming service, Luna, decamped this month for Unity. Marc was former CPO of Sonos and Xbox Follows obvious trouble at Google's Stadia this same month


I would love to find out what the subscriber numbers are for luna and stadia, they must be in the 10s of thousands, looks pretty terrible compared to game passes 18m (I know its not a direct compare, but thats the number that the bean counters will be comparing the internal figures to in all likelyhood). If it is the case that luna is being defocused by amazon because of poor take up it will be interesting to see the future of xcloud competitors from amazon and google. Imo stadia has no use to a 3rd party, due to requiring a linux port, whereas luna is more intriguing, as it uses windows based VMs

 

I think Luna has potential more than Stadia, because at least Amazon can attach Luna for example to game purchases in the marketplace akin - "try as demo" or something.

 

Wasn't Google Stadia supposed to have that tie-in from YouTube videos and live streams?

 

I wouldn't totally count out Stadia as it's model could very well be the one to prevail in the end. Using Windows based VMs might be attractive at first for publishers for doing quick ports but this means that publishers will have to licensing fees to Microsoft and it will also mean that they'll have no control over the platform that they're using to provide the services as well. If service providers have bad relationships with Microsoft then it might very well be in their interest to build their own platform since this will offer a politically favourable outcome for them.

Even if Stadia doesn't survive in the future, the concept of developing your own platform and using it to provide services has the potential to succeed among publishers ...

 

Probably, but well that's Google. They closed even their Youtube originals or something.

Amazon has Twitch and Marketplace. With a decent implementation it might be a huge thing.

 

Edge Chromium seems finally to come on Xbox One (or Series X/S only?): a backdoor for Geforce Now (Stadia?) on Xbox?

 

I guess what Microsoft or any other closed platform vendors can do is 'whitelist' sites that will have HW accelerated video decoding enabled so it'll effectively prevent users from even using backdoors like VPNs to access other cloud gaming services but the downside is that it'll be annoying to use Edge or other browsers for streaming videos ...

 

Eventually I'd be unsurprised by PSNow as well.

 

Would it be rather ironic if they blocked game streaming services on the Xbox browser given the xcloud on iOS situation?

 

Stadia on Xbox with the new Edge Browser: Playing Stadia Cyberpunk on Xbox (Video created by billetviolet) : Stadia (reddit.com)

And there is a video on YouTube where Geforce Now runs on Xbox with the new Browser.