Google Gets Into Game Streaming With Project Stream and Assassin's Creed Odyssey in Chrome (techcrunch.com)

Earlier this year, we heard rumors that Google was working on a game-streaming service. It looks like those rumors were true. From a report: The company today unveiled "Project Stream," and while Google calls this a "technical test" to see how well game streaming to Chrome works, it's clear that this is the foundational technology for a game-streaming service.

To sweeten the pot, Google is launching this test in partnership with Ubisoft and giving a limited number of players free access to Assassin's Creed Odyssey for the duration of the test. You can sign up for the test now; starting on October 5, Google will invite a limited number of participants to play the game for free in Chrome. As Google notes, the team wanted to work with a AAA title because that's obviously far more of a challenge than working with a less graphics-intense game. And for any game-streaming service to be playable, the latency has to be minimal and the graphics can't be worse than on a local machine.

Comments

ISP's and servers local to users are the issue

[Joe_Dragon]

ISP's and servers local to users are the issue
Google has lot's of DC's but this not an video site like http://youtube.com/ where some buffing or being pushed to an cluster with an higher ping but less load is ok.

also with some games it can be 1 user per video card and say max 4-5 cards in an 3-4 u server? + any other systems needed for encoding / MGT.

On the ISP side CAP's / network neutrality can be very bad for this. Also what if your local node / RT / CMTS / is over loaded? Also the new OTT Tv that is NOT multi cast does not help as well.

I don't see much benefit

[imidan]

On the cynical hand, it seems to me that game streaming is just another (perhaps the ultimate) way for a company to demand that I pay monthly rather than just buying the software I want.

But on the other hand, it seems like there could be real value to it. With streaming, I could play any game on Linux or elsewhere, while the developers only have to support one OS. I don't have to worry about installing games anymore, or patching them. I never have to worry about driver incompatibility (or maybe not never, but less).

Despite whatever positives it might have, I'm reluctant to get on board. I don't want to have to be online to play. I do want to be able to keep playing after the streaming service abandons a game I like. I don't want to pay monthly, even if I get access to a larger library of games; I'd rather buy individual titles I want.

I guess I just don't see it as an advantage until the payoff to me becomes much greater. Right now, the benefits mostly seem to be in favor of the businesses.

Re:I don't see much benefit

[imidan]

How much are you willing to pay to be able to play games on ultra settings on computers that don't meet the minimum system requirements for those games? How much are you willing to pay to play a AAA game on a Mac that hasn't been released for Mac. PC games on Chromebook?

It's a good point, and one that I've played around a little bit with Steam streaming. I have my powerful desktop computer in my office, but I can install a game on it and then go out and play it on my laptop in the living room (even on my MacBook Air, I suppose, although I stream to a laptop with a larger screen). And the performance is pretty good. Not always great; I see some I/O latency sometimes. But then I've done nothing to try to optimize my streaming experience. Plus, they talk about streaming games being run on machines with huge graphics arrays that allow for rendering far beyond the abilities of my desktop.

I see the writing on the wall. Game publishers would be crazy to go any way other than streaming, because it allows them to have total control over the binaries for their game. No more piracy, no more cheating, no more user modding, plus they get to charge in perpetuity for every game.

I mean, I was reluctant to get on board with Steam, and one day I bought a boxed game at the store and brought it home and inside the box was a Steam code. At that point, I gave up and started buying stuff in Steam, and today I have a library of 170 games there.

Nothing new

[Locke2005]

I hear Donald Trump is also into streaming...