Why are you assuming the consequences should be draconian?
There might not even need to be any consequences in any given case, but there should be an appropriate and fair approach to rewards and possible consequences.
There might not even need to be any consequences in any given case, but there should be an appropriate and fair approach to rewards and possible consequences.
That's the sort of thing you have engineers for - so you don't sink money in something so idiotic. Not to mention that they picked the worst possible business model: pay price for title and pay a subscription at once.
The one who greenlit it, and proposed it should be under scrutiny.
Nvidia's GeForce go is under the same physical constraints and Cyberpunk 2077 is very playable there (so I can play it on my IPad Pro using XBox bluetooth controller...) . There are lot's games where brief latency is not a problem. I agree for some games latency is a dealbreaker but hardly for all.
But at least Nvidia's initial conceit was that it would piggy back on someone else's content ecosystem rather than building their own - building your own gaming content ecosystem is a) incredibly hard b) a fifteen year plus project and c) costs a hundred billion dollars. Google weren't willing to do those but launched a project that needed them.
Like, 600 ms latency is still 100% acceptable and enjoyable.
And not only graphics. Turn-based strategy genre can also benefit from gigantic ram and cpu resources - all to make ai smarter, more enjoyable to beat the ever.
I think stadia and cloud gaming in general is a gold mine. But it is a different platform, games should be optimized for it.
You can apply the same logic to anything new. We had VR headsets before HL:Alyx and anyone could say "VR has no good games, idea is toast".
And there were great VR games before HL:Alyx and Alyx is no killer app.
You can make amazing AI that beats humans 100% of time pretty easily, the hard part is making it challenging enough for people to have chance to beat it... It also just needs game state, without all the cruft of stadia(visual side, sounds, graphics, inputs etc).
Also did google partner with any of developers of such games?
Did they develop their own? or even formed any form of partnership for them?
No. They went for action titles, or titles with great graphics.
It was disaster from business perspective no matter how you look at it. Do not expect game developers to just bend over for google just because they release a new platform(and where are doubts about sustainability and quality of that platform from the beginning).
What kind of games will emerge 3 TB of assets will be totally fine amount? For a mobile turn-based game, no less. Or when 6 2080tis will render graphics for your phone no problem?
Roguelikes like Cataclysm DDA also tend to be extremely heavy on the complexity side despite having "extremely poor" graphics by your standards.
6 2080TIs? How are you going to pay for that waste? Do you know how delusional you sound?
I am talking about future of gaming.
What boggles the mind is that nobody is able to formulate who is Stadia even meant for. Who are the target customers?
Draw a Venn diagram of people who:
- care about gaming
- are OK paying full price for their games
- are OK paying 10 euros a month subscription
- are OK buying an extra controller
- have top-notch, 100% reliable internet connection
- are willing to accept occasional technical glitches
- are OK with Google's mercurial approach to product lifecycles
- have a computer
- have a console
- have a Steam library
- mod their games
- subscribe to Nvidia's cloud gaming service
Right now they are still giving away the product for free if you just use 1080p, which the vast majority of their target audience will be perfectly happy with, if you care about 4K and 120hz you probably want to have optimal latency as well and just get a local box anyway. So where do they expect the money to make the service profitable will come from?
I've said the same thing so, so many times from even back when there was OnLive. Streaming games to paying customers is an interesting idea and some people will love it, but I just fail to see the business model. If you can pick up a cheap second hand console for less than 1 year of subscription service, who are the people who are going to keep paying for your service because they 'just want to play a game every now and then'? You have to build and maintain servers all around the world to make the service work, and you expect people who are not really into gaming enough to just buy a $400 console once every ~5 years, who just want to play every now and then, to be willing to spend enough on your service to cover the cost?
It boggles the mind how much money has been going into these kinds of services without any one of them ever seeming to have an obvious and solid long-term business plan...
I think it’d make a lot more sense if they didn’t charge full price, allowed rental/trial periods, or cut a deal to recognize your existing Steam/Epic/GOG purchases - making it a good deal for people who are traveling, don’t want to fire up a desktop at the moment, etc. – and worked on some unique features like hitting GCP strong points – AI at a new level or massive scaling for things like Sim-style games, etc. — so the value pitch wasn’t so narrow.
Also, what makes you think that 5/6 of the world has fast internet? I have good internet but if you asked me 3 years ago I would have said no.
Google's fundamental theory seems to be "users will always forgive us" or "there are always new users" and neither is true.
Not to mention that 100ms of latency in TVs is constant usually, it isn't the case with network latency.
The problem with stadia for me is that gaming platforms are social networks and Stadia is relatively small. No one else I know has Stadia and for many games you can't even expect to find randos willing to play at all. Embr and GetPacked are basically useless.