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Comment by mdoms | Hacker News Reader

You may speak for yourself but you most certainly do not speak for every consumer, regardless of how many superlatives you use.

I, for one, prefer the subscription model for some things. I like that I can dip my toes in and out of the Photoshop ecosystem without having to shell out hundreds up front. I prefer to rent Netflix for a month rather than purchasing DVDs or Blurays I may watch once or twice. And when cloud gaming is baked (it will be a long time away for me as I live in a small island nation) I will love being able to play any game from a huge range with no outlay other than my monthly subscription - no hardware requirements, no upgrading, just a few bucks a month, and only on the months when I choose to keep my subscription.

My only caveat with cloud gaming is that mouse + KB is non-negotiable, I'm not sure how realistic that will be. I will not play shooter or strategy games with a controller.

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I found Adobe opaque and difficult to work with. Subscriptions are presented with an $x/month but you have to pay for a year. Cancelling, at least at the time I last dealt with them, was also very difficult: I paid for a year, but then wanted to cancel auto-renewal: Nope! I'd have to wait until the last 30 days of my subscription. Since then I've decided to suck it up and deal with Gimp and Inkscape even if they lack some features and feel a bit clunky at times.

If you only need the basic stuff , lookup application portables.

I think the problem with Cloud gaming is the latency. And the network requirements push it to solving a problem for a very small subset of users (games which where latency doesn't matter can usually dont need cloud gaming).

The primary issue is the games catalog, something neither Amazon or Google can crack a dent in

Yes. All I want is a latency-optimized EC2 (I'm no twitch gamer, <= 25ms is fine) instance with a decent streaming client on pc/mobile. Let me decide to install steam or epic or origin or whatever and use my own stuff.

This is where NVidia went wrong. They're basically providing that sort of thing, but wanted to present it as their own game service as though all the other storefronts were just backend plumbing. Not a bad consumer experience, but also not what publishers are licensing when they stick their game on Steam.

25ms is a huge ask

Even locally, on a console, you’ll not get latency (input to visible response on screen) down to 25ms these days.

Some LCD TVs alone can add 40-60ms of latency, and software can add another couple of frames. Often 30hz frames, too...

Which kind of sucks if you grew up on CRTs and arcade games that often managed much lower latency.

But I guess it means that game streaming really could offer a console-like experience if as much non-network latency as possible was eliminated...

I believe that's the joke. I wish latency was getting better but every new thing that comes along moves the acceptance further away. Many don't even notice 500 ms delay from click to something actually happening. On my Atari I often had the feeling something started happening before the mouse button was all the way down.

I can't believe that people wouldn't notice 500ms of latency when playing a game. Even 150-200ms is very noticeable.

Sure, in 3D games it's a different topic but I have seen people playing with wireless mouse that lags behind quite significantly without noticing.

It's no better than my normal broadband, which is 10 to 20ms, but I suppose you're right. I've streamed games with up to 100ms without much issue with input lag so I suppose that would be fine, although 100ms would probably be too high for some types of games & multiplayer.

Under 25ms is less than current game consoles deliver. Most deliver around 100ms latencies.

I think you're missing the point: Yes, multiple pieces of equipment in the process adds some ms in between input, computer processing it, and screen outputting it.

The issue here is how much will ping time add to that when streaming a game. Consoles hover in the 100ms are depending on game. PC's it's highly dependent on video hardware, but I good gaming system, display, and keyboard/mouse will be around 70ms.

The issue of streaming game ping ms in part comes down to human reaction time, which averages around 200ms-250ms. Given this, you want a ping time that doesn't add enough latency to the setup to put you above that 200-250ms reaction time, or you start to perceive more noticeable input lag. Given 70-100ms baseline, you want a bandwidth ping absolutely no more than about 100ms on top of that.

The math squares with my personal experience as well. I've played a few streaming services, and when my ping gets to the 100ms area I start to notice a little difference. It's often sill playable, but if it gets higher it can be very distracting.

fwiw the Adobe Photography plan requires a 1-year commitment (paid monthly) and has an early termination fee if you do try to cancel, so it's not as straightforward.

> I like that I can dip my toes in and out of the Photoshop ecosystem without having to shell out hundreds up front.

I agree, that part is nice. However, once I've dipped in a toe and know I want to OWN it, I can't. The non-saas option is gone.

So now I have a perverse incentive to argue against you, for my own sake. Because the more people like you enter a market, the less likely that market is to provide a single purchase product.

> I will not play shooter or strategy games with a controller.

I was like you, years ago, but what pulled me to the other side was "couch convenience". Might be similar to the other convenience factors you list. Unless you're playing competitively (where %s matter), there's something great about playing a game like Control while lazing around on the couch

The nationwide fibre in NZ means that latency from Auckland to anywhere with fibre is very low. Cloud gaming could arrive in NZ just as soon as Azure does!

I don't have a controller. Mouse + Keyboard works well in Stadia (I played Doom Eternal). Stable low latency internet is a must though.

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