Stadia, Google Game Streaming platform [2019-2021]

[hughJ]

It's difficult to find PC game benchmarks of Vulkan/DX12 games where they're running on a ~2.7 GHz CPU. Most of the rule-of-thumb of games being GPU bottlenecked is working on the presumption that the CPU isn't unusually old or under-powered. Even in the cases of lower base clock laptop CPUs, (or high core count HEDT CPUs) they still benefit from good boost clocks. I'm wondering for platform hardware like Stadia if they're opting to lock the cores at 2.7GHz in order to keep perf profiling predictable and not contend with clock speeds varying based on what workload might be occurring on adjacent VM sessions.

 

[BRiT]

I can't imagine any of these games being CPU or GPU bottle-necked on the Stadia servers considering the performance achieved on the Xbox One X with substantially lesser hardware. The only way possible is if Google is crypto-coin mining at the same time.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

100 Million for a AAA title is pretty steep to bank roll here. There needs to be some form of ROI plan.

It's just a figure showing how much Google could readily spend on a title and get a lot of game if they really wanted devs. As for ROI, the plan is to own the future of gaming. What was the ROI on MS's acquisition of Minecraft? For $2.5 billion, MS are making something $100 million a year from the franchise, revenue. I have no idea how the internal financial debates go in Google but seeing how they chuck money at hardware ventures and other schemes, I don't see why commissioning games for their new gaming platform would have a harder time justifying itself for investment. How much did they spend on hardware? Without software, that hardware is useless, so it should also be seeing large investment.

If Google didn't fund software because of investor concerns, and the dearth of content on Stadia is because of that, then those investors killed the platform...

 

[iroboto]

True. I see where you are going with this. Mine craft is a bit of an outlier here. Perhaps it would be better to align the costs incurred by MS to break OG Xbox into the market.
Which is several billion IIRC.

 

[BRiT]

The Minecraft acquisition is very different because of looming tax penalties and hits MS would have taken when bringing all that money back into the US. Instead they spent it on Mojang, which was already producing large quarterly returns. MS turned a net negative into net positive without being burdened by the tax pitfalls.

 

[hughJ]

I can't imagine any of these games being CPU or GPU bottle-necked on the Stadia servers

Wut? If performance is neither CPU nor GPU bottlenecked, then there's nothing stopping Bungie or Rockstar from running their games at 4k60 max settings. *Obviously* there's bottlenecks. What the XBox One X is capable of is completely irrelevant -- Stadia is running PC ports of console games, and just like the PC, it doesn't get the luxury of developers spending 3+ years designing the tech and assets to accommodate their platform. Stadia is having to cope with the same optimization hurdles that PC does, albeit with less capable hardware, plus working through some sort of VM abstraction layer, and don't have an Nvidia driver team unrolling and tweaking their shader code.

I set my 6700k multiplier down to x27, disabled the turbo, ran the RAM at stock, loaded Destiny 2 and even with the rendering resolution at 25% (1/4 of 1920x1080) I'm seeing dips below 60fps when standing at the spawn in The Tower with a few people running around. Running the CPU at stock, my FPS scales up roughly with the % difference in CPU clock speed. AFAIK, Destiny 2 doesn't run at 60fps on the PS4 Pro or XBox One X either. For Stadia to hit a solid 60fps in Destiny 2 it seems reasonable that Bungie may have had to cut corners.

 

[BRiT]

The One X is relevant because it show what is possible with tiny Jaguar CPU cores and 6TF GPU. Also, look at what Windows 10 PC can achieve with Destiny and similiar hardware at launch in 2017 it was already doing 4K 60fps on average. It's been 2 years since then so expect it to run better now. Google is barely hitting 1080p 60fps.

Destiny had the Google Stadia integration team on site working with them for nearly 5 months. What you see now is likely the best you will see for the next year baring some miracle updates Google does with their base Stadia OS. Google arrogance is the bottleneck. It's not hardware related.

 

[hughJ]

What does your graph have to do with being CPU limited by a 2.7GHz chip?

Google arrogance is the bottleneck. It's not hardware related.

Is this B3D or Reddit?

 

[BRiT]

You asked what/where the bottlenecks are and you now know. It's in the Stadia OS layer. And I gave a reason for what caused it.

 

[hughJ]

And with me running the same spec CPU (clock, core count, cache size, architecture) as Stadia, it's reasonable that Stadia just doesn't have much performance headroom, at least in the case of Destiny 2 anyways.

 

[Malo]

How much performance and support is there on linux for AMD, especially Vega? I'm sure that is a factor.

 

[DavidGraham]

The trilogy of Tomb Raider on Stadia is never 4K60. Either 4K30 or 1080p60. All of them also run at a combination of Low/Medium/Console settings, with horrible Texture Filtering.

 

[PSman1700]

Stadia is killing it!

 

[Jay]

The trilogy of Tomb Raider on Stadia is never 4K60. Either 4K30 or 1080p60. All of them also run at a combination of Low/Medium/Console settings, with horrible Texture Filtering.

I shouldn't bother watching it, but well its like a car crash...

Well.
Looks to be the best port yet.
I'm far from impressed though.

 

[milk]

Stadia is killing it!

it-self

 

[BRiT]

Ars article on game pricing, https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...st-more-than-their-downloadable-counterparts/

Since back in June, Google has been telling us that the publisher-set prices for games on its Stadia streaming service would be "competitive... to what you would see on other platforms." While that's been true of the vast majority of games on the service, fans were surprised to find a Stadia price premium for yesterday's launch of Darksiders Genesis.
...
"I don't know why [the Stadia version] would be cheaper [than competing versions]," Google Phil Harrison told European journalists back in June. "The value you get from the game on Stadia means you can play it on any screen in your life—TV, PC, laptop, tablet, phone. I think that is going to be valuable to players... In theory, the Stadia version of a game is going to be at the highest-possible quality of innovation and sophistication on the game engine side."

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Ars article on game pricing, https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...st-more-than-their-downloadable-counterparts/

Since back in June, Google has been telling us that the publisher-set prices for games on its Stadia streaming service would be "competitive... to what you would see on other platforms." While that's been true of the vast majority of games on the service, fans were surprised to find a Stadia price premium for yesterday's launch of Darksiders Genesis.
...
"I don't know why [the Stadia version] would be cheaper [than competing versions]," Google Phil Harrison told European journalists back in June. "The value you get from the game on Stadia means you can play it on any screen in your life—TV, PC, laptop, tablet, phone. I think that is going to be valuable to players... In theory, the Stadia version of a game is going to be at the highest-possible quality of innovation and sophistication on the game engine side."

Phil Harrison was part of completely trashing almost an entire generation of XBO 1st party exclusives (he really pushed games as a service, F2P, in game monetization, and the F2P pay model while at MS) and I see he's still at it at Google.

...highest-possible quality of innovation and sophistication on the game engine side.

I wonder when this will materialize or if it ever will? So far all the games have just been ports from other platforms (mostly PC Windows) right? From a platform perspective, is it really more sophisticated than either PSNow game streaming or Xcloud?

Regards,
SB

 

[Malo]

(he really pushed games as a service, F2P, in game monetization, and the F2P pay model while at MS) and I see he's still at it at Google

But he's not? Everyone except for Google expected Stadia to be games-as-a-service but they're still full price games. He's touting Stadia as something better than a local console.

From a platform perspective, is it really more sophisticated than either PSNow game streaming or Xcloud?

I took the comment as the game itself being driven at the highest settings, which we've seen so far is definitely not the case.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

But he's not? Everyone except for Google expected Stadia to be games-as-a-service but they're still full price games. He's touting Stadia as something better than a local console.

Phil Harrison has talked the F2P model on Stadia as well as game subscription services (over and above Stadia's subscription).

https://9to5google.com/2019/06/10/harrison-stadia-e3-interview/

Both of the "free" games on Stadia are using the F2P pay model. And I'm sure Harrison is trying hard to get more of them on the platform that have heavy in game monetization.

That's been his vision of the future of gaming. Games that require being online to play that either monetize in game or have a monthly fee to play the game.

Gravy on top if you can also get people to pay for the game AND pay a monthly fee to play those games you bought. As opposed to the either or situation that exists on consoles and PC at the moment.

Regards,
SB

 

[hughJ]

It's the go-anywhere, high-end, zero-hardware service that launched as a only-at-home, mid-tier, hardware SKU. And their messaging seems to be that they're putting the onus of 'go-anywhere' service onto the ISPs, and 'high-end' content to developers, neither of whom have any immediate financial incentive to execute on the vision that Google has marketed and already sold their product as. The whole thing is really baffling. It's like a hollywood movie that's been through 10 screenplay drafts and switched directors partway through production and now is being kicked out the door as-is. Whatever the genesis of the initial idea was for this service surely wasn't what it turned out to be.