Rumor: google is working on its own game streaming platform

Dragnelus · June 2018

https://www.vg247.com/2018/06/29/google-game-streaming-hardware/

rojoArcueid · June 2018

if true it will probably be as popular as Nvidia shield. Not a gaming competitor in any way. Streaming never stood a chance against direct gaming.

EDIT: Even Sony is supposedly letting people download the games they pay for (like Xbox gamepass) on PSNow in a future update, because streaming isn't worth a dime.

Amathe · June 2018

I no longer underestimate Google. I remember when they went public, and I looked at the share price and thought all the value possible anytime in the foreseeable future was already reflected in it. Ugh. Missed that boat.

Arglebargle · June 2018

Maybe if they run it over their fiber system. However, that's taking a long time to implement in the test zones.

Quizzical · June 2018

The laws of physics won't change just because Google asks nicely, or even jumps up and down screaming at them. To get a given quality of gaming experience is massively more expensive to do by streaming than by rendering the game locally. There's nothing that Google can do to change that, and we'll see if they're inclined to burn a ton of money to demonstrate that point once more.

Sephiroso · June 2018

Amathe said:

I no longer underestimate Google. I remember when they went public, and I looked at the share price and thought all the value possible anytime in the foreseeable future was already reflected in it. Ugh. Missed that boat.

It's important to not overestimate them either. People seemed to think Google fiber was gonna take over the world overnight and that proved false. They've completely given up in most areas(though at no real fault of their own, its shady business practices that cities allowed to happen which should have been illegal as fuck).

Google isn't some infallible beast. Just look at Youtube's constant fuckups.

ScotchUp · June 2018

If someone doesn't stop them they are going to be way too big as an monopoly, with hands in everything. This should worry everyone.

Quizzical · June 2018

It's possible that Google is trying to get into gaming and the rumors that it will be by streaming games are simply wrong. It's also possible that they'll only stream games that aren't terribly active and thus aren't latency sensitive. Or that they could be working on a different kind of streaming that focuses on streaming the data to players that they need to render the game locally. Or that the streaming will be over a LAN so that you can render a game on a desktop in the basement and play it from a smaller device elsewhere in your house.

But if they're going to go the OnLive approach, then it's only a question of how much money they lose on it before they give up.

Sephiroso · June 2018

Quizzical said:

But if they're going to go the OnLive approach, then it's only a question of how much money they lose on it before they give up.

That will depend entirely on how much data they get. Youtube operates at a substantial lost year after year but its worth it for the amount of information they get from its users.

Loke666 · July 2018

ScotchUp said:

If someone doesn't stop them they are going to be way too big as an monopoly, with hands in everything. This should worry everyone.

That happened years ago.

cheyane · July 2018

I was reading about toys r us and thinking giants fall.

When I was living in Singapore in an apartment complex that was across from a toys r us I would take my little boy there and marvel at how big a place it was. Amazon managed to kill that so don't underestimate the damage Google can do .

Phry · July 2018

To be clear, i don't like or trust Google, so interest in a streaming platform run by them is something i would not use just on principle alone.

Ozmodan · July 2018

Google is into a lot of things that never seem to pan out or once implemented die out later after Google loses interest.

Streaming games is too problematic due to lackluster infrastructure for most people. I certainly won't waste time with it, too many ISP's slow down significantly during times of high use.

Sephiroso · July 2018

cheyane said:

I was reading about toys r us and thinking giants fall.

When I was living in Singapore in an apartment complex that was across from a toys r us I would take my little boy there and marvel at how big a place it was. Amazon managed to kill that so don't underestimate the damage Google can do .

Amazon didn't kill Toys R Us, they failed to adapt plain and simple. Their prices were too high also. The blame for Toys R Us dying is solely on its leaders failure to adapt to the times.

Quizzical · July 2018

Suppose that widgets are a major product in society, and they cost $20 each to produce. Some other company finds an alternative way to produce equivalent widgets. Will that allow them to greatly disrupt the widget industry?

A major part of the answer is, it depends on how much it costs them to produce widgets by the alternative means. If they can build widgets for $10 each, then yes, that's going to be hugely disruptive. The incumbents in the widget manufacturing industry will have to adapt or die.

But if it costs $30 each to produce widgets by the new method, then that's not going to disrupt anything. That's useless, and if the new company tries to compete by producing widgets at a much higher cost than their competitors, they're just going to lose a bunch of money for a while until they give up and shut down.

If you try to make a game streaming service that allows players to play games by rendering the games remotely and then streaming the completed frames over the public Internet, that's like finding a way to produce widgets for $30 each. They might try to compensate and cut prices by making it an extremely inferior service that makes many games only marginally playable. It's sometimes touted that the game rendered remotely could be run at max settings, but that's pretty useless if the compression losses and added latency are so awful that it's inferior to running the game locally at medium settings.

Companies can sometimes get customers to make serious mistakes in industries where you don't purchase things repeatedly. If you need a kidney transplant, you don't go back to the same doctor who performed the last three kidney transplants for you and buy another, as you generally need at most one in your life.

But people switch from one game to another, or one gaming service to another, all the time. How many posts has this forum seen of someone saying that they tried a new game and quit within minutes? If a gaming service is markedly inferior, gamers won't stick with it. They'll quit and go elsewhere, and marketing can't make up for that. Making an OnLive-style game streaming service that isn't markedly inferior in either price or performance to just running the game locally is technically infeasible, and gamers who try it will notice immediately.

Cryomatrix · July 2018

Kidney transplants last on average 15 to 17 years. There are kids getting new kidneys and they will need them sometimes 3 or 4 times.

Quizzical · July 2018

Cryomatrix said:

Kidney transplants last on average 15 to 17 years. There are kids getting new kidneys and they will need them sometimes 3 or 4 times.

Okay, so I didn't actually know what I was talking about with that example. Let's use an appendectomy as my example, then. I'm pretty sure that it's impossible to remove it more than once.

Sephiroso · July 2018

DMKano said:

The problem with Google is how often they abandon their attempts - look at Google fiber - it's ground to a halt, and Google has no interest in it anymore.

Some of the google failed/abandoned projects

Picasa
Google Search appliances
Google Glass
Google notebook
Wave
etc...

It's amazing how quickly they just throw in the towel.

I wouldn't count Google Fiber against them. They were setup to fail from the beginning due to exclusivity contracts cities made with ISP companies which should be illegal imo. So i don't see that as them losing interest. It's simply no possible way for them to progress, because they're not allowed to which should be ringing some major monopoly bells but no one gives enough of a shit to do anything about it.

The rest though..yea. It's why i tell people not to overestimate google too.

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Rumor: google is working on its own game streaming platform

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