Why Google Stadia Will Be a Major Problem For Many American Players

Earlier today, Google launched its long-awaited "Stadia" cloud gaming service at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Unlike services from Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo, Stadia is powered by Google's worldwide data centers, allowing users to play games across a variety of platforms -- browsers, computers, TVs, and mobile devices -- all via the internet at a 4K resolution. One major problem with Stadia, which Google didn't mention in its presentation, is that it will require a ton of bandwidth, testing the limits of data caps that most U.S. internet service providers have.

"Most US ISPs cap their customers' bandwidth usage, usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 GB per month. And streaming 4K content eats up about 7GB an hour," Steve Bowling from YouTube gaming channel GameXplain tweeted. "And that's based on Netflix's publicly available guidelines for 4K video content, which is shot at 24 fps, a far cry from 60fps, meaning content at 4k60 could be more costly." He added: "Your average consumer likely isn't rocking a 100Mbps+ connection, and in some parts of America such options aren't even available, limiting Stadia's potential reach. And if you are, that cap can come at you fast, especially considering most folks are going to use their internet for more than just streaming games. Most ISPs offer additional data at a premium, but how many are going to want to pay that premium to stream 4K games?"

What's unknown is whether or not Google will work with ISPs to help alleviate this concern. PCWord also notes that there's no option to download and install a game if you want, which is an option available on Steam's streaming service. "You're always streaming it, and presumably copies sold through the Google Play store won't come with more traditional versions from other storefronts," reports PCWorld. "You're either all-in on Stadia and streaming or you're not."

UPDATE: A Google spokesperson told Kotaku they were able to deliver 1080p, 60 FPS gameplay for users with 25 Mbps connections. They also said that they expect Stadia to deliver 4K, 60 FPS for people with "approximately the same bandwidth requirements." How exactly they will achieve this is still unclear.

Comments

Bandwidth

[darkain]

If bandwidth is concerned, it is no different than watching Netflix, Hulu, Twitch, Prime Video, or YouTube. Consumers are already aware of their data caps if they're hitting them.

Re:Bandwidth

[jettoblack]

It's completely different. A 4K HDR Netflix stream might be efficiently encoded at 10-15Mbps, but a realtime low latency gaming stream would need 50-100Mbps to get similar quality.

Efficiently compressing VOD is done by making multiple passes through the file, using information from earlier and later frames (up to +/- 30 seconds) to find redundancies that can be coded, using the results of prior passes to find segments of video that can be encoded with fewer bits without noticeable quality loss or which need more bits to look good, and using CPU/GPU intensive compression algorithms which can operate slower than real time. It makes sense to make every effort to save every bit when the video only needs to be encoded once but the output will need to be uploaded millions of times.

Live streaming video is tougher - You can't make multiple passes through the file but usually you can tolerate some delay, often anywhere from 5 - 30 seconds, so you can still use later frames to find redundancies. You have 1 producer streaming to an audience, so there's only one stream that needs to be compressed to serve many end users, and it makes sense to throw a lot of power into that compression since multiple viewers can benefit from the results.

Real time gaming, on the other hand, means you need an encoder for every user. That practically requires using less intensive and less efficient encoders, and thus more bits are needed to encode the same quality. Games tend to have a lot of small details such as text labels, so you can't drop the quality too much. And the stream has to be encoded with extremely low latency, which means you can't look at any later frames to find redundancies, you can only look at a few past frames.

Re:Bandwidth

[supremebob]

Bandwidth isn't going to be the big problem for game streaming. Latency is. If you don't have a sub 25ms ping time to the server, your game play experience is going to be crap in first person shooters.

Re:Bandwidth

[Ocker3]

I think a lot of us enjoy gaming rather than watching a show because we're directly involved in the action, rather then being passive. Throw in some voice chat with people that you know, and it's pretty damn fun.

Re:Bandwidth

[darkain]

I doubt visual quality will be an issue... remember, this is the generation that loves streaming 96kbps MP3 files from Pandora! They don't give no shits bout quality

Re:Bandwidth

[Cmdln Daco]

The music is all synth pop. It's entirely artificial to begin with, so the compression doesn't really affect it very much. Nobody listens to solo piano music at 96k.

Re:Bandwidth

[Can'tNot]

It's not limited to first person shooters, or other twitch games, I wouldn't even want to play a turn-based game through one of these services. Just moving your mouse across the screen comes with an annoying amount of lag.

The only games that will work well for this are games which are designed for this. I'm trying to imagine an interface which isn't effected by latency and I'm having a little trouble... but I'm sure it can be done. None of these companies seem interested in developing games for these services though. So much money has been poured into these, but it's all for the sake of adapting existing games.

Re:Bandwidth

[Calydor]

If Google has invented the ability to predict the next 30 seconds of the future I would LOVE to see the technical specs.

Re:Bandwidth

[Calydor]

There's a lot of difference between what you tolerate hearing and what you tolerate seeing.

Re:Bandwidth

[Mashiki]

Good point. Then again modern CPU and GPU's can't predict 5 seconds into the future, the whole error rate, hit, miss and branch prediction is kinda staggering at just how much overcompensation actually happens. The very best is a 'near guess' and then it going down from there. Similar to the ($1/\sqrt{x}$) aka Quake's inverse square root. A near guess, and fast dirty refinements. Even then, unpredictable things happen.

Re:Bandwidth

[golgotha007]

If FPS gamers are switching to wired input devices to beat latency on wireless device tech, I don't think they'll be itching to send their control inputs over the internet anytime soon.

Re:Bandwidth

[mjwx]

If bandwidth is concerned, it is no different than watching Netflix, Hulu, Twitch, Prime Video, or YouTube. Consumers are already aware of their data caps if they're hitting them.

Data caps aren't a huge issue for anyone with a wired broadband connection. It takes a lot of streaming to hit a 500 GB quota in a month, you need to be doing 1.5 mbps 24/7 just to reach it... And I haven't had a 500 GB quota in years.

The problem is going to be latency, not data caps. Currently streaming services are relatively stutter free because they buffer content, they can do this because the content is static so they can easily download it in advance. Amazon regularly detects my connection as being slow so starts off with a low quality stream until I tell it to use 1080, it still takes a minute before it's gone through the buffer of low quality content.

With streaming games you cant do this. You need to send the input signal over the internet, then return the processed graphics. This creates a huge input lag that will be noticed. Steam Link users complain a lot about input lag and in that case the "server" is a gaming PC in their own house on the same network, not in a datacentre 400 miles and a dozen routers away.

Why the fuck would I even want this?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

This is worse than renting games. Streaming them too? I have great fibre service where I live and I'd still rather just install them on my top end gaming pc and enjoy them with the best experience I can get.

Why would I want to lag in a single player game, for instance?

A solution looking for a problem.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I ever want this solution from Google? It'll be dead inside a decade.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a player? There are a few reasons:

Because for online games, it should (in theory) completely eliminate cheaters because they'll no longer be able to use the game's own data against it. (Until AI gets good enough to be able to play games based on the video itself.)

Because it will have better hardware than you do, meaning you should get better graphics than you would on your own hardware.

Because you won't have to download and update the game, it will be instantly available, just about always. Because it's on a known platform, crashes and bugs should be rarer than on PCs. (Although presumably about the same as on consoles.)

So there are a few reasons. But the real reason people are pushing game streaming has nothing to do with the players, it's to provide the publishers with perfect DRM. No beating the release date, the servers won't start until the game is out. No more pirating the game - it's only on the servers and can't be played offline. It will also likely be a subscription service: no more paying for the game once and that's the end of the revenue stream, instead it will (likely) be a monthly fee. (Or, because it's Google, possibly be ad-supported.) Because it's online there will be no cheating which means that there's yet another monetization stream: don't want to spend hours grinding? Open your wallet.

Is this overall a positive for players? For games with a large online component, maybe. The elimination of cheaters might be worth it. For single-player games? I doubt it.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[AHuxley]

The average CPU and GPU can't create an expected game world.
Use a super computer and send the data sets out as the users move around a larger game world in real time.
Better graphics, better looking worlds. More different graphics data than can fit on one ~30~100 gig game download.
The placement of real time ads in data sets.

Re: Why the fuck would I even want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because somehow those same people with slow computers are going to have something like fiber?

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[exomondo]

This is worse than renting games. Streaming them too?

What's wrong with renting games? I like go-karting and dirt-biking and I don't feel the need to buy every track I want to race on, I've often been to theme parks like Disney Land and not felt a need to own every one of them. I don't see the need to own everything you pay to enjoy.

Why would I want to lag in a single player game, for instance?

Most people have more lag between the video output and the screen generating photons than you get sending a signal across the country. When you look at the input, processing and display lag there are a large amount of places you suffer significant lag already that can easily be eliminated.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[UnknownSoldier]

I predict it will be abandoned in 3 years and shut down in 5.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[WaffleMonster]

Most people have more lag between the video output and the screen generating photons than you get sending a signal across the country.

Thanks for playing. RF PHY of my cable modem by itself introduces more latency before signal can even travel down the street.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[exomondo]

Most people have more lag between the video output and the screen generating photons than you get sending a signal across the country.

Thanks for playing. RF PHY of my cable modem by itself introduces more latency before signal can even travel down the street.

How much?

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[locopuyo]

It doesn't completely prevent cheating. There are aimbots and other cheats that simply read the screen or identify colors or text and simulate input.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[Cederic]

Because it will have better hardware than you do, meaning you should get better graphics than you would on your own hardware.

I don't get video encoding artefacts on my hardware. I don't get stuttering graphics due to packet loss between the video card and the monitor.

you won't have to download and update the game, it will be instantly available, just about always

I use less bandwidth downloading the game than I would streaming it.

But the real reason people are pushing game streaming has nothing to do with the players, it's to provide the publishers with perfect DRM. No beating the release date, the servers won't start until the game is out. No more pirating the game - it's only on the servers and can't be played offline

While some game companies will be drooling at the idea they'd need to remove entirely the existing games market to achieve this. Release a game on Stadia, PC and other consoles and you don't get those benefits.

It will also likely be a subscription service: no more paying for the game once and that's the end of the revenue stream, instead it will (likely) be a monthly fee.

Metaboli charged a monthly fee and gave value for it. It also gave me a chance to try many games that I've subsequently bought on Steam (or bought the sequels). So that's not necessarily a poor outcome for gamers.

another monetization stream: don't want to spend hours grinding? Open your wallet.

Sadly too many games are already there. They didn't need streaming to impose grind mechanics.

Is this overall a positive for players?

I'm going to say yes, because more choice is always better. I wouldn't however recommend that anybody actually buys this, or games through it - as with so many other people posting, I don't think Google will keep this product active.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[Cederic]

Most people have more lag between the video output and the screen generating photons than you get sending a signal across the country.

I looked at the site you linked. Cheap shit monitors from Acer have input lag at the 9-11ms level. That's lower latency than pinging the ISP gateway my cable modem connects to.

Sure, that includes the wifi latency - but so would streaming. I'm really not seeing any wins here.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[bane2571]

A solution looking for a problem.

Nah, it's a revenue stream looking for a sucker.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[exomondo]

It's more about the TVs where console gamers are used to having 50-75ms of lag anyway.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[Cmdln Daco]

Not necessarily 'ads.' Google is probably thinking beyond that. Now, 'suggestive content.' That sounds scientificky and all that stuff.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[Cmdln Daco]

Be careful. He might get dangerous now that you've challenged his acronyms.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[N1AK]

I can't help but see your argument as the logical equivalent of: I have a car and can afford taxis if I don't wish to drive thus this idea of public transport is a solution looking for a problem.

Frankly anyone shoehorning how they own a "top end gaming pc" into a post where it isn't vital information just comes across as insecure.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[AmiMoJo]

Depends how it works, if you can pay a flat monthly fee to play as many different games as you like that seems like a good deal. Similar to how Netflix is better than Blockbuster, it's not only more convenient but also flat rate for all you can eat.

As for lag, actually many games build in lag now. One of the most famous games is Street Fighter 5. Way back when SF2 became popular there was basically zero lag - the arcade machine reacted to button presses in less than 1 frame (16ms) and any delay was entirely under the control of the game designers.

Due to the rise of online gaming and base ping times of 3-4 frames (30ms to the server, 30ms to the other player) for SF5 they decided to just make the game constantly lag by 8 frames (128ms) in all modes, including single player. That meant there was no advantage to having a faster internet connection and momentary spikes in ping time could be tolerated. Players got used to it pretty quickly and just accepted it as part of the game.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[thegarbz]

I have great fibre service where I live and I'd still rather just install them on my top end gaming pc

I highlighted the reason why you don't want this but other people may.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Those certainly aren't reasons why I would want it. And my hardware is top of the line and LOCAL so no artifacting or lag.

None of the other reasons is really a positive for ME, the consumer.

My question stands.

Re:Why the fuck would I even want this?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

As for lag, actually many games build in lag now. One of the most famous games is Street Fighter 5. Way back when SF2 became popular there was basically zero lag - the arcade machine reacted to button presses in less than 1 frame (16ms) and any delay was entirely under the control of the game designers.

Due to the rise of online gaming and base ping times of 3-4 frames (30ms to the server, 30ms to the other player) for SF5 they decided to just make the game constantly lag by 8 frames (128ms) in all modes, including single player. That meant there was no advantage to having a faster internet connection and momentary spikes in ping time could be tolerated. Players got used to it pretty quickly and just accepted it as part of the game.

If the game can somehow calculate the connection lag and use the inherent lag to flatten it, that might be a point, however, a remotely hosted game that is streamed is going to add the connection lag (and the compression artifacting) to the mix and be an inferior experience.

Now this will be interesting

[SuperKendall]

I've always figured watching 4K content here and there, I'd never come close to maxing out my bandwidth cap - and indeed I have not.

But it really is true that bandwidth caps everywhere are going to be hit hard if game streaming becomes popular, games you usually play for a lot longer than any movie, even a series... Never mind ISP caps, you could easily see mobile caps being hit even harder and sooner by people streaming games to phones to play them on the go.

Even with Google pushing this you have to wonder if this is a viable business just because of the caps.

Re:Now this will be interesting

[imidan]

Even with Google pushing this you have to wonder if this is a viable business just because of the caps.

Not to worry; the way Google operates, the service will be cancelled before anyone has a chance to reach their bandwidth cap.

Re:Now this will be interesting

[AHuxley]

Its not watching data like TV.
This is moving vast amounts of game data in real time every time a person in a game moves around in real time.
Less use of the GPU and CPU, vast amounts of needed graphics and sound data is pushed down to the user playing the game.
Every movement and change in the game is sent up and new data sets get pushed down to the user.
Every hour in game is like downloading select parts of a 30-90 gig game again and again.
That is the data use per day.

Re:Now this will be interesting

[WindowsStar]

I stream games and NetFlix and such and I have been hitting my CAP and going over each month. Received a $250 overage everyone in the house is now curving their habits. So much for being a cord cutter and saving money. Errrr.

it is hugely different

[SuperKendall]

If bandwidth is concerned, it is no different than watching Netflix, Hulu, Twitch, Prime Video, or YouTube.

Sure it is, much different.

First of all, most of that content you get from those providers is not even in 4k yet.

Secondly, all the TV/movie streaming providers compress the video quite a lot more than a game can, without noticeably losing lots of detail. In movies or shows the focus is not so much on tiny minute details bu instead on large figures on the screen.

Lastly, most people spend a LOT more time on a game they like than movies or TV. I know in the times when I am really into a game I put way more hours into gaming than I ever would watching video content.

So this service will indeed sneak up on people who otherwise never notice bandwidth caps (which is I would say, most people). This people are also not truly aware of data caps from a practical sense since it does not affect them today.

Re:it is hugely different

[should_be_linear]

Plus the most obvious difference: non-existent buffering for game streaming. Smallest hiccups in data transfer amounts to broken service / unplayable game. For video streaming like YouTube, multiple seconds are buffered.

Re:it is hugely different

[_Sharp'r_]

Exactly. I have gigabit up and down, from Google. They can't currently stream YouTube at 4k without buffering, it stalls occasionally. Seems like they're going to have some growing pains on this while they create gaming content servers in every local area.

The good news is that they'll probably be underutilized for a long time, until more people get good enough connections for it to matter.

Re: it is hugely different

[Type44Q]

Secondly, all the TV/movie streaming providers compress the video quite a lot more than a game can

I don't think you quite understand streaming gaming.

Don't worry; it sucks more once you do.

Re:it is hugely different

[rtb61]

I used wired control gear for my gaming on PC because I can not stand the lag of wireless. Oh yeah I would love trying to stream a game, now not on a 1.5 metre cable or say 3.0m of radio transmission that has to be reprocessed but I don't know, tens of kilometre or hundreds of kilometres or even thousands of kilometres, my inputs and their outputs, none of the outputs processed locally.

The reality here, really shite gaming and online, your will be slaughtered by players running locally processed outputs, so online only with near identical lag players, otherwise welcome to the rage machine, so many really pissed off players.

Google Stadia, spying upon every single element of your gaming to analyse you and alter anti-comsumer really shite gaming practices of gambling loot boxes and micro, transactions, targeted individually at you. I would never touch one, bin worthy only. Alphabet/Google, those manipulative asshats, definitely not a corporation to be gaming with.

Re:it is hugely different

[Calydor]

Not to mention that if you pause your movie to go make some dinner, visit the bathroom, walk the dog etc. then your download is paused.

If you pause your game for the same reason you stream the pause screen for that long.

Re:it is hugely different

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention how many people are gonna be willing to give up EVERYTHING ELSE just to game with this service? Because I can tell ya with a 1Tb a month cap between the wife and her YouTube, Daughter in law and her netflix, 2 Grandkids streaming video and the third getting games from the XB1 store plus my own PC games? I've come within 80Gb of hitting my cap, and that with the games all being bought and downloaded ONCE.

Now most of the gamers I talk to are like me, they aren't the only member of their household, despite the "gamers are lonely basement dwellers" BS we've seen in the media and those wifes/GFs, kids, brothers/sisters etc? They want to use the Internet too and this service is not only gonna blow through the caps like crap through a goose but how bad is it gonna be for those that are also trying to use the net? I can't even imagine how bad its gonna suck for anybody else trying to use the net when someone in the house is streaming 1080p 60fps, much less 4k.

Finally the last elephant in the room which is now that the mining bubble burst PCs capable of gaming? Pretty damn cheap, hell you can buy 8 thread Xeon workstations that are total overkill for gaming for sub $200, the FX-8350 which can still play most 2019 games at 1080p is going for $65 on Newegg and the big hang up was GPUs and now eBay and the stores are just flooded with 'em, hell you can get a R9 380x for like $60 and I've seen GT1060s going for sub $130. When you figure up how much going over the data cap is gonna bite into your wallet? This entire idea is just dumb, especially with the market so flooded with cards you can grab a $100 PC off of eBay and slap in a $60 card and do 1080p 60FPS all day long without screwing everyone else in the house out of bandwidth or constantly throwing more cash at your ISP as you keep blowing the cap.

Re:it is hugely different

[AmiMoJo]

Secondly, all the TV/movie streaming providers compress the video quite a lot more than a game can, without noticeably losing lots of detail.

This. Low latency video encoders are significantly lower quality than offline ones that can do multiple passes over the entire video stream. The only solution is to crank up the bitrate.

Re:it is hugely different

[Dayze!Confused]

Are you certain that's how they implement sending the pause screen? Why wouldn't they do the same thing for game streaming as they do for movie streaming?

Re:it is hugely different

[Calydor]

First off the stream would have to understand what the pause screen IS, which will only be possible in games made specifically for streaming. Secondly the pause screen may be a menu, inventory or the like - or perhaps, that is what players will prefer to use rather than a freeze-frame or similar.

Re:it is hugely different

[Dayze!Confused]

So you're saying there are a handful of possibilities for pausing, on a service so far has a total of 3 titles listed as being available, to figure out a way for their services to know when the game is paused? It sounds like games need to be made for Stadia, not just any game ever made that I can install. So Stadia puts in a requirement to be on their service, when you pause you send out a pause signal that the server gets notified and sends that to the client that it won't be updating the screen until it receives a play signal, or you don't get to publish the game on the platform. It's not like you have a dumb client that is purely a video streamer, the client side can have commands it receives from the server that are things other than video frames, just as it is sending input from the client to the server. It's a two way communication.

long-awaited?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who was waiting for this?

Re:long-awaited?

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

Google.

Re:long-awaited?

[Megane]

They can't wait to show copies of your stream to the rest of the world... with appropriate ads, of course. If they can stream it to the player, they can stream it to anyone. What did you think, they were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts?

Re:long-awaited?

[dstyle5]

ISPs, so they can throttle it and extort money from Google or customers in order to work as intended.

Personally I have 0 interest in such a product. No thanks Google.

Re:long-awaited?

[AmiMoJo]

No, they would be doing it for a fee.

Not everything Google does is about showing you ads. You can pay for their services and they are ad-free, e.g. cloud storage or books/movies on Play.

Given that they don't have ads on movies you buy from them and don't... I don't know, live stream your emails??? it seems bizarre that you would think they would try to do it on this service.

Already Pay for Unlimited

[smist08]

I already pay for unlimited because family use of Netflix always maxed us out. Now adding this is fine as long as itâ(TM)s cheap.

How many people have high end gaming PCs?

[SuperKendall]

Why would I want to lag in a single player game, for instance?

What makes you think there is lag?

It's not like streaming is new, and most people report the experience with a good connection, does not have noticeable lag. I'm sure there are some but is there enough that most people would notice, I'm not sure...

I think that there is a pretty large market of people who would rather choose much better looking graphics over slightly more lag. To maintain a really high end gaming PC takes a lot of time and effort, more than most people are willing to invest - this service is a way to experience high-end graphics with none of the hardware pains that comes with owning and maintaining a gaming PC. Yes there are downsides but more casual gamers will happily take that tradeoff.

If Google is smart, they would offer games that are PC only and not on consoles from this service, that would probably be the fastest path to get adoption rates up.

Re:How many people have high end gaming PCs?

[Voyager529]

To maintain a really high end gaming PC takes a lot of time and effort, more than most people are willing to invest - this service is a way to experience high-end graphics with none of the hardware pains that comes with owning and maintaining a gaming PC.

You're trying to make both sides of the argument simultaneously. The people who aren't willing to invest time and effort into a highly optimized experience are the target demographic of game consoles. It's not a dig, it's a reality - they offer a solid experience with virtually no configuration required. Many have exclusive titles and franchises that make them even more appealing to that demographic. This group is already a solved problem.

The #PCMasterRace that doesn't want to spend a massive amount of time or money can go to my local Microcenter. They can pick up a Powerspec with an 8th gen i5, 16GB RAM, and GTX1060 for $800. It's not earth shattering, but it'll play most games at a quality commensurate with what this service can provide, and again, doesn't require a massive investment of time, effort, or money.

If graphics quality is a big enough draw that the aforementioned $800 machine isn't enough, we're dealing with enthusiasts. To that end, that's where tinkering and modding starts to become a part of the experience, but if one is intent on avoiding cracking open the case, then that's where Alienware / Origin / Falcon Northwest / Sager come into play with their four figure price tags.

Streaming doesn't meaningfully address any of these better than the existing solutions. About the only market for this is one where paying $20/month which covers both hardware and games is seen as superior to a few one-off purchases. There is one, but I'd argue that it's even smaller than the enthusiast community who's willing to drop $500 on a graphics card. Really, this primarily benefits the companies behind the streaming more than it benefits the end users who play them.

Re:How many people have high end gaming PCs?

[Cederic]

What makes you think there is lag?

Physics.

this service is a way to experience high-end graphics

Is it fuck. It'll be 4K with all the details turned down, especially if it's at 60fps.

none of the hardware pains that comes with owning and maintaining a gaming PC

Lets see. Go online, buy PC. Plug in keyboard, monitor, mouse. Install Steam. Play games.

Yep, seriously fucking painful that. Ouch.

If Google is smart, they would offer games that are PC only and not on consoles

Indeed, because turn based strategy games and visual novels are about all you'll be able to play with the latency involved.

Re:How many people have high end gaming PCs?

[MrDoh!]

Project Stream worked though. Assassin's Creed looked and played beautiful.

Re:How many people have high end gaming PCs?

[mjwx]

To maintain a really high end gaming PC takes a lot of time and effort, more than most people are willing to invest

I have spend 0 hours maintaining my high end gaming PC this month, about 10 mins last month clearing a bit of space on my SSD for a new game.

If you spend any significant amount of time managing your gaming PC, you really suck at it and should probably go and join the ranks of the Filthy Console Peasants who spend their time swapping discs(oh, how quaint). Long gone are the days where you need to program custom autoexec.bat files, if you're truly lazy Steam does everything for you (hell, you can even remote install games these days so it's ready to play by the time you've finished your McNuggets).

this service is a way to experience high-end graphics with none of the hardware pains that comes with owning and maintaining a gaming PC. Yes there are downsides but more casual gamers will happily take that tradeoff.

Hahahahahahaha... High end graphics.

Nope, you'll be experiencing average graphics and hideous input lag.

Stadia's purpose does not seem to be gaming...

[QuietLagoon]

... it seems to be yet another data collection vacuum for google.

Re:Stadia's purpose does not seem to be gaming...

[AHuxley]

Real time in game ads with the "new" graphics sent out every game :)

Re:The biggest in-joke of all

[Megane]

Then it's a good joke, because I'm in a GF city, and I'm not even on the map. Their map has anywhere not in the main city limits represented by a complete void.

Re:Google Fiber

[Megane]

Now if only they would get it built. It's much worse when you're in a GF city, and you're not even on the map.

Google to shut down Stadia

[WaffleMonster]

Google might as well announce date they will become bored with it and shut it down during launch to save everyone time and guesswork.

The only thing more idiotic and wasteful than the underlying concept of streaming games is relying on Google for anything.

Why would they mention it?

[superdave80]

all via the internet at a 4K resolution. One major problem with Stadia, which Google didn't mention in its presentation, is that it will require a ton of bandwidth, testing the limits of data caps that most U.S. internet service providers have.

Well, it's 4k resolution over the internet. Of course it's going to use a ton of bandwidth. Do they need to point that out for stupid people?

Re:Why would they mention it?

[cdsparrow]

Yes, they do in fact need to point that out for stupid people, lol.

But on the other hand, if i were using this service, I wouldn't be streaming 4k games as I don't have a 4k tv or computer monitor. I would imagine streaming 1080 stuff works quite nicely and will be a lot closer to average usage cases.

Re:Why would they mention it?

[Falos]

when i click the netflix bookmark, i can watch tv shows and movies. i like the Minions one.

what is bandwidth

Re:Why would they mention it?

[squiggleslash]

Presumably because they're speaking relatively. 4K resolution streamed by a standard online movie store is likely to be around 15-25Mbps, while this is likely to be above that because it can't employ the same level of compression that Netflix and Amazon can.

Amazon and Netflix compress movies offline before putting them up to be downloaded. This means the codec they use is able to examine large chunks of the video and determine the best way to compress it.

This not only cannot be compressed in real time, but has to be compressed in a limited way otherwise you'll see massive latency. At 60fps, with 100ms (one tenth of a second) latency, you're talking about it only having six frames to work with before it has to output something that can be decoded into all six frames when received by the user.

And that's ignoring the time taken to travel from Google's servers to your PC via the Internet and your slow-ass Wifi (Wifi has terrible latency), and that's also ignoring the fact your joystick movements had to travel to Google using roughly the same network.

So, rather than it being 25Mbps, we could be looking at double that, or worse, for 4K video. That's what they mean by "a ton of bandwidth". Whatever you currently use for video, it'll be a ton in comparison.

Re:controller latency

[AHuxley]

A first person game would be fine as the data needed for movement would be as now.
Ping would be as is.
The data set to set up the game and what is seen in every game would change.
A 1-100 gig load up of graphics per game to look at so every game is different?
Every part of the networked game would be much better visual quality every game.

If google is smart

[cdsparrow]

They'll team up with spacex and offer this service with starlink as it rolls out. Hell, throw some data centers in orbit and cooling is cheap... And LEO isn't too bad for radiation toasting the CPU/GPUs.

People will freak out if they do

[Mike Van Pelt]

What's unknown is whether or not Google will work with ISPs to help alleviate this concern.

Cue the chorus:

"That violates Net Neutrality!!! EVIL!! EVIL!!! Burn the blasphemer! BURN BURN BURN!!!!"

So... How can Google "work with ISPs to help alleviate this (bandwidth) concern" without getting people all hot and bothered about "net neutrality"?

Re:People will freak out if they do

[spitzak]

Co-location

Re:People will freak out if they do

[Cmdln Daco]

Whoops. I guess you can play that MMO with... the people in your town.

Re: controller latency

[AHuxley]

AC its not about predictive logic/cheating..
This is about the data set size sent to a user in real time. Can the ISP allow so much data to flow every game?
Can the series of tubes that is the "internet" all around the USA allow for so much data to flow down to new games in real time?
Will a much faster, wider series of tubes be needed with unlimited data?
How much data is needed at what download speed per new game hour?
A 100/??? connection? How much data per hour?
A 1000/???? connection?
How much data per month given a few hours of game play per day? Plus many hours more per weekend?

Re:ISPs

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC as I modded some comments.

If you are not a "huge data user" but pass the 1TB cap...

You ARE a huge data user!!

DethLok

4k60 dumb terminals

[SlaveToTheGrind]

The resolution is one hell of a twist in what otherwise is a solid round trip. Desktop revolution? Pffffft.

Add 100ms mpeg compression latency

[raymorris]

Whatever latency you have to the server, add another 100ms or so to compress and decompress the video stream.

Tic-tac-toe will work great.

Re:Add 100ms mpeg compression latency

[Frederic54]

LOL no they can compress with specific hardware in real-time, like every broadcaster is doing

Re:Pretty graphics vs what is actually shared

[Cederic]

Not if the game is being run on a server to which you're connected and you're sending input data to the server and receiving rendered game footage in return.

Then you're streaming the graphics and sound.

backwards

[l3v1]

"Why Google Stadia Will Be a Major Problem For Many American Players" That's kind of backwards. Blame a provider of a service instead of kicking the backsides of the network providers for their shitty state? Seriously, it will be Stadia that will be a major problem for the US players, not your crap internet connection provided by a crap company for idiotic prices and frequently with laughable speed and latency? Do you think Stadia would be the major problem for people having $40/6mbit connections? I remember the days when the US was leading in bandwith and prices. It was so long ago, just thinking about it makes me feel old.

NEVER!

[macraig]

Once you have a 38-inch 3840x1600 monitor (or comparable) at home for gaming, there's no way in hell you'd EVER want to endure trying to play your games scaled down to your phone's minuscule display or even a Web browser on a less impressive monitor at your parents' house. Maybe you can manage it at work if you're a very lucky tech guy or stock trader....

Streaming Studies

[WindowsStar]

New studies are showing that streaming has become a major player in harming the environment especially in the fossil fuels pollution area. In short all the servers that have to run to provide the service, all the AC, battery backup, backup generators, and then every router and switch that data has to go through is using electricity. Much of it produced by fossil fuels. A streaming ONLY service is even worse, because you use all the electricity over and over. If you download it you are only using a fraction of the electricity. I really hope Google rethinks this.

Re:Streaming Studies

[N1AK]

Care to point to any of these studies? One would assume that when you download content you would actually need to use some power to watch it and you'd also have the environmental impact of the storage resources required.

Google demonstrated the service running on devices including low end Chromebooks. Any PC capable of generating 4k60 content locally is going to have vastly higher power requirements, even when not doing intensive work, so even if Google's servers were more energy inefficient than a home rig while running you'd have to use them hard enough to counteract the power inefficiency of a local rig for an other less demanding work.

Not for me...

[Retron]

Even though I have a connection more than capable of handling the streaming there's no way I'd ever want to stream my games.

Lag aside (and it's inevitable there will be some, simply due to the physics), the lacklustre hardware they're using to render hardly fills me with excitement - heck, even my laptop is faster than their hardware (I use a Clevo desktop replacement, on the basis that if I'm going to be gaming outside of home, it'll be at a friend's place or a hotel, so will have a desk and power).

Still, for those who don't mind lag, don't mind compression artifacts and who have the bandwidth it'll be fine. The rise of streaming audio and video shows that up well enough - I'd rather have a blu-ray with high bitrate and minimal artifacts, but most people would disagree.

Re:Perhas it is because I am pushing 40, but....

[Calydor]

The fact that you can only ever play the game through this service and do not obtain a permanent standalone version for your own machine, 'leasing' is the closest term we have.

It's Alphabet. My bet is ...

[Darkness Of Course]

This is a three to four year deal.

At best. Lots of press, several levels of various presentations, demos, and blurbs at conferences. Then rollout. Whee!

Then nada. It will be too late, not consistent between the wildly different platforms. Eventually their gaming voice assistant will start bad mouthing the mediocre player stats and piss off the seventeen remaining players.

For all their noise, they really don't have the staying power for anything besides search.

Smart marketing

[vix86]

There are some technical difficulties with this, but I think it could do well if Google is smart with their marketing.

The biggest hurdle will be getting people to sign up for it. I can't see people paying a subscription fee to stream from the cloud on top of buying games to play on the cloud as well. Theoretically it could be a better investment for say a parent than just buying a game console, but I think most people will be short sighted. Lets say Google prices the sub at $10/month. Most game consoles release at about $400-500. A $10/month sub that always gets you the most top of the line [virtual] PC won't hit a comparative cost until after about 3-4 years. Unfortunately, I think people will see that $10 a month and just think its too much when compared with other subs they are probably paying for, such as Netflix, Spotify, cable TV, etc.

I think a smart way to tackle this might be to include Stadia in existing bundles. For example, if you have YouTube Premium or YouTube TV, then you get Stadia for free and maybe a 10-20% discount on your first game purchase.

Then again...

[argStyopa]

...while it may support it, how many people NEED their game delivered at 4k? Seriously?

And for those who claim to "need" it, if you offered them a choice of every game they want whenever they want, at $20/month, but capped at 1920x1280, vs buy a while console for what,, maybe $500, buy ONE game (now about $100, really) and play only that game at 4k, I'm pretty sure I can predict which of those at least 75% of the gaming population will choose.

How exactly they will achieve this is still unclea

[Frederic54]

ever heard of compression?!? You can compress a 4K60 down to 10Mbps if you want, it would be ugly, but you can, and in real-time too for the compression, even 1ms per frame. Decompression time on your PC depends on your GPU (or even CPU)

Real time is rate, not latency. Live TV 10-30 seco

[raymorris]

Live TV is 10-30 seconds behind.

Real time encoding and decoding means that if the source is one hour long, the output will last for one hour. It does NOT mean that it somehow violates the laws of physics and does things without taking any time to do it. So if you press the button to start encoding and 1 minute later the output starts, then when you press stop it takes no more than 1 minute for the output to finish, that's real time encoding.

"Low latency" video hardware is defined as three frames (100ms) or less. Per device. So 100ms to encode it, 100ms to push it out to the pipe, and 100ms to decode it would be a system of low latency devices.

A service for casual gaming

[Slashic]

Nothing exceptionnal here and it's certainly not the future of gaming consoles or PC, or a bleak future at most. PS Now and other services like Xbox game pass or Geforce now know the same technical restrictions and will never provide the same level of quality a console or a high end pc can provide for the following reasons: - Latency, even with the best ISPs in the world, you'll have to get at a sub 16ms (for 60fps) latency on the whole chain (encoding & total roundtrip network delay): Impossible today, and what's worse is if you want higher framerate, let's say 120fps, it'll be 8ms. Infrastructure is not ready for this. - Image quality: On a TV it looks ok, but on a PC monitor, even with the best encoding algorithms you can notice artifacts, granted that's a trade-off more acceptable than latency. - Variable refresh rate: Byebye Freesync & Gsync. - HDR: While you can encode HDR infos in video, the way HDR works on PC monitor for the moment is different than what you get on your TV, it'll be a mess to support on such service. - Encoding @fixed frame rate creates judder even if your game is capped at 60/120 fps, just because the encoder part can't really matches the subtle difference in refresh rate of your TV or PC - Mods: good luck with that. - VR support is impossible because of latency, 1fps delay on a headset is vomit guaranteed. For those who think: "they'll overcome all these technical issues later", that may be true for some (variable refresh rate etc...) but anything tied with latency, unless you rewrite physics laws, that won't change.

Maybe they do

[jon3k]

Your average consumer likely isn't rocking a 100Mbps+ connection

I would bet the majority of Stadia customers will have 100Mb+ connections in the US. People get hung up on average connection speeds in the US but some of that is people choosing lower speeds than the maximum available and most of these customers will be kids in relatively urban areas where DOCSIS 3.1 and fiber are routinely available. 300-500Mb/s cable modems are pretty normal these days, even in third tier cities. I used to live in a city of 50k people and the local cable provider offered 300Mb/s for $70/mo and fiber from AT&T starting at $50. At work we deploy broadband service al over the south east using local providers for direct internet access for VPN backup and we see anything from 300-500Mb/s as the standard these days from the local cable MSO. Now I live in a second tier citiy of about 600k people and I have three different gigabit options (AT&T, Google and Comcast). Neither AT&T nor Google Fiber have caps on their 1Gb service. (see here for AT&T under the "Internet 1000" plan - "No internet usage data caps").

So while the average consumer in the US might not have 100Mb/s, that does not really matter. What matters is the connection speed of Stadia customers.

Thank you Captain Obvious!

[kenh]

Who knew that live-streaming 4K video required an unusually high bandwidth connection?

Re:How exactly they will achieve this is still unc

[kenh]

Pied Piper's inside-out compression?

Re:How exactly they will achieve this is still unc

[kenh]

There's a documentary on it's development on HBO, it's fascinating!

No big deal

[kenh]

The ability to stream 4K video to those few users that own 4K devices will likely use about as much bandwidth as 4K television, but then again who has a 4K device and would prefer to stream games rather than play them on local hardware? (Are their target customers those folks with 4K devices and no $500 game box?)

This is GREAT for data caps

[dbrueck]

My cell and home ISP data caps are much higher than they were just a few years ago, and a big reason for that is the rise of online video (thank you, Netflix!).

If you hate the idea of data caps, then you should welcome stuff like Stadia that drastically drives up data usage by average joes. Caps don't get raised/eliminated due to usage by a few outlier power users, they get raised when the more typical user's consumption goes up.

This will be GREAT for highlighting data caps

[Danathar]

If this results in a mom testifying in front of congress that she received a $10,000 bill from Comcast because her son was playing Fortnite 8 hours a day for 6 weeks then I'm all for it. Maybe we'll get some legislation outlawing data caps.

Re:How exactly they will achieve this is still unc

[Pyramid]

Compression invokes considerable lag. Are you ok with 250ms - many seconds of control lag in your FPS games?

Streaming does work for some players

[Chelloveck]

I'm in the Nvidia GeForce NOW beta, which is a similar service. The games run on their servers and the display is streamed back to you. I must say that it works much, much better than I ever expected. I'm in a fairly rural area but I have a decent connection at about 110 Mbps down, 8 Mbps up. It's usually quite playable, even over wifi. It does chew through a lot of bandwidth and latency can be an issue. The biggest caveat is that I like single player turn-based games. Even when I play real-time first-person games they tend to be Tomb Raider-ish, with more of a stealth and exploration focus rather than reaction time and precision. But it lets me play games with higher minimum requirements than my old-ish laptop meets, and lets me play a world of PC games that have never been ported to my Mac.

This kind of technology can work reasonably well for a lot of people. It's definitely not ready yet for the super competitive players, and I doubt it ever will be (barring some great revolution in subspace communications...) But I think there's a market for it and I'm glad to see competitors in the space.