Microsoft and Nvidia Announce Expansive New Gaming Deal | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft and Nvidia Announce Expansive New Gaming Deal

nvidianews.nvidia.com

65 pointsmrzool60 comments

It’s to placate regulators and shutdown a very vocal critic of the Activision merger. NVIDIA was one of the loudest voices against and not anymore.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/02/21/microsoft-will-bring-xbo...

NVIDIA sees Microsoft as a major competitor but Microsoft on the other hand doesn’t see NVIDIA in the same light they much more worried about SOE.

NVIDIA knows that Microsoft cloud gaming and consoles are a direct threat to their PC gaming market. And with Microsoft having a cloud gaming service already NVIDIA fears that the money train might stop.

The next console generation (not the mid Gen refresh) might actually be a cloud only box, it would not surprise me if NVIDIA sees GeForce Now as it’s life raft if 5-10 years from now there would be very few who would buy a gaming PC with a GPU.

> The next console generation (not the mid Gen refresh) might actually be a cloud only box

It would be a mistake to not research and ship a cheaper cloud-only option given the rent-seeking potential.

But unless we see a massive deployment of low-latency high-speed internet in most populated areas, I don't see it replacing offline compute boxes.

I think outside of the US/North America fast fiber internet penetration is a lot higher. And Nvidia smartly is partnering with ISP's so that servers are local and haver lower latency instead of servers on the other side of the world. I don't game enough to have a yearly subscription but I subscribe once in while when I really feel like gaming as its cheaper than paying for $800-900 card that I would barely use otherwise.

Fiber might be but good luck having good pings to Nvidia data centers. Unless this would scale similarly to Netflix with boxes in ISP's own data centers I see small chance of this succeeding.

Which is what they are doing

The next generation of consoles will be in 5-6 years.

Fiber rollout is increasing and Starlink can offer 20ms under good conditions right now and it or competing networks can get lower still.

A hybrid console is also possible it will have enough horse power to run “casual” games but if you want the top tier you’ll have to stream.

Console makers usually don’t make money on hardware so if they can move everyone off it and just stream that’s a no brainer for them.

> Starlink can offer 20ms

Note that for remote gaming you need a roundtrip for every interaction, meaning the minimal felt latency will be 40ms, that's almost 3 frames, not counting all the software bookkeeping and video encoding dance.

This is okay for casual games, but these can run on the hardware needed to stream games in realtime as you said, not much of a point streaming them.

> A hybrid console is also possible it will have enough horse power to run “casual” games but if you want the top tier you’ll have to stream.

Good point, I guess we're seeing a preview of that today with the Nintendo Switch and cloud games.

20ms is an unacceptable amount of lag for many popular genres of gaming. Network lag (esp wireless) is often variable, which would make controls feel inconsistent. I think a significant high margin portion of the market will agree with me here. Take a look at gaming lcd monitors as an example. The response time has gone down from ~8ms to ~1ms, and these improvements are generally seen as significant.

Like what? Unless you’re a professional gamer playing a very active really time game like Counter-Strike, there is a 0 chance you notice any sort of measurable different between 10 and 20ms.

20ms on Starlink is the best case right now for a round trip latency.

Today on R6S with a GSYNC monitor using a 4080 240fps tier stream on GN you get an end to end latency of 23ms this is comparable to what you’ll get on a 240hz PC build with reflex on. Yes 360hz with reflex will be better on a dedicated PC and can lower the end to end latency to 14-15ms but GN for esports is actually usable today at least in the UK.

I hate cloud gaming more than most people, but you should check the keypress-to-screen latency on recent AAA games. There's a hilarious amount of bloat there that you can invisibly cut into with clever techniques to make most games playable

Twitch shooters and fighting games played at high skill levels are impossible, but a lot of stuff is entirely doable

You can hide the latency in very interesting ways. For example, oculus link encoded a fraction of the screen and starts sending that while the remainder is still encoding. That hides a non trivial part of the encoding latency. If you could reach further into the rendering pipeline (ie rendering the top 1/4 of the screen before the others) you could imagine reducing the effective latency even further by overlapping rendering with network transmission. It’s obviously tricky due to several reasons, but it’s not impossible (eg mobile games are rendered this way and mobile GPUs are particularly geared towards tile-based rendering). There are obviously limits to what you can do with reactivity to input but a lot of that can be mitigated with local prediction rendering.

> Fiber rollout is increasing and Starlink can offer 20ms

in terms of input latency it's like throwing away your nice 144hz monitor and going back to a 50hz one

there are going to be zero takers amongst nvidia's best gaming customers

It’s really not, Reflex and all the other tech were getting now on PC is due to direct work NVIDIA has put into GeforceNow.

On the 4080 tier in 240hz mode you are getting an end to end latency of 25ms or lower with a GSYNC monitor on e-sports titles like R6S with that Windows app that is comparable to the end of end latency of a e-sports optimized PCs today.

Latency is additive, GFN and other cloud bullshit isn't a magic ticket to getting rid of all other latency sources.

I know but an end to end latency of sub 25ms is achievable in esports titles such as R6S and Apex on the 4080 240fps tier as measured with LDAT when combined with a GSYNC display and the windows GFN app.

That’s as good as about any PC at high frame rate unless you go up to 360hz you’ll probably wont see much lower latency with a gaming PC.

15 years ago or even just 6 I would have been outraged at that idea. But reality has caught up with me (or the other way around I suppose). Despite my desire to own things and control them, the ammou t of time I have to game is usually a few games a year and only when one really piques my interest. I will play regularly for a month and then be occupied with other pursuits for a couple months or longer before picking up another game. Intense but casual is my gaming style.

So if I could treat gaming like Netflix, subscribe when there's a show I want to watch, binge and then cancel, that would be great. The only reason I don't do that is because I got a switch to game with my kids and just can't justify two gaming consile for the amount of time me and my family spend on them.

> SOE

Special Operations Executive?

Society of Operations Engineers?

Any chance you could type a few more characters so we don't have to play guessing games?

EDIT. It was Sony. So you saved 1 character...

It's not even correct, the PlayStation division is Sony Interactive Entertainment, SIE. Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was the EverQuest developer. They were sold off years ago and are now known as Daybreak.

To be fair, I do think they were referring to Sony Online Entertainment. However I do admit I have no idea why as using Sony would have been understood just as well.

> NVIDIA knows that Microsoft cloud gaming and consoles are a direct threat to their PC gaming market.

And so does raising prices to crazy levels, GPUs are so expensive now, you might as well buy a console.

I really hope in a couple of years Chinese GPU designers will be a viable option for a lot of people and pressure the duopoly GPU prices down.. It's absurd to ask the current prices for GPU in a economic down turn period.

> Microsoft on the other hand doesn’t see NVIDIA in the same light they much more worried about SOE.

What does SOE stand for in this context?

Edit: worked it out. Sony Online Entertainment.

> [...] Microsoft cloud gaming and consoles are a direct threat to [nvidia's] PC gaming market. [...] NVIDIA fears that the money train might stop.

They should be more afraid of killing the PC gaming market by pricing everyone and their grandmother out of it IMO. That's where that train is heading.

> And with Microsoft having a cloud gaming service already NVIDIA fears that the money train might stop.

When I used Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service about 8 years ago, I was blown away. Where is it?

Its called Geforce now

Cloud hardware will be part of the strategy but not a primary one. It's not about cloud-only, but gaming as a service. In order to sell your service, you need games.

When people have to choose between Sony's version of the service, Nintendo's (paltry) offerings or Microsoft - who do you think they'll choose?

The one with the most games, but more importantly.. the one with the most multiplayer/online games.

Imagine World of Warcraft and Diablo being bundled into Microsoft Xbox Live.

>NVIDIA fears that the money train might stop.

They are doing that themselves by pricing everyone out of the market for GPUs lmao. Which only makes consoles and cloud attractive

There may be a hole in the market for a reasonably priced entry level AMD GPU, though the second-hand market might take care of that.

If there is a place for an AMD GPU there is more than a place for an NVIDIA one.

NVIDIA is seeing a future where there is no place for either.

This is also likely why it wanted to buy ARM it sees a future within 5-8 years where dGPUs might no longer be relevant if we do get high speed always on internet via sats, 5G++, Wifi 56 or w/e is coming down the pipe.

NVIDIA is trying to create a future where there is no place for either.

Makes sense. They would both rather have gaming as a subscription service, rather than something you run on your own hardware.

NVIDIA very much doesn’t want that, but it sees the writing on the wall and needs to secure its future revenue stream when game streaming becomes fully viable for all.

GeForce Now at the 4080 tier costs $20 a month an RTX 4080 costs $1200>… if you live within the coverage area where you can stream at 120-240fps it’s almost a no brainer since the price of a high end GPU is 5-6 years of service in which you’ll get an upgrade every 18-24 months.

What NVIDIA lacks is deals with publishers or its own gaming IP.

I think that Google killed of Stadia not because it thought that game streaming is a dead end but because it calculated that it already has lost the fight to Microsoft and maybe even Sony since both of them now have racks or consoles to stream games from.

NVIDIA is just looking for a life raft because it can’t drop out of its primary market.

You're missing two key points to the cost benefit analysis.

1. Modern GPUs are remarkable at holding value. 3080s are selling on ebay at over half the launch MSRP.

2. You'll get better performance locally. People buy 4080s because they want the best.

Agree with the Stadia. I think the calculus was around cost vs. potential for a moat. Streaming PC ports is not a moatable platform. They wanted to do unique things for games that no other platform could do. Unless the game industry latched onto that the moat just isn’t there. Might as well run a commodity GPU PC streaming service and sell the utility to others. This is exactly what they are doing with Stadia in the cloud.

> Google killed of Stadia not because it thought that game streaming is a dead end but because it calculated that it already has lost the fight to Microsoft

Agreed on this. What IP did they actually own? Google did the math and decided it wasn't going to be successful.

$20 a month is the loss leader price. Thats gonna go up when the sector (eventually) matures.

Microsoft wants the IP behind Activision/Blizzard.

This is much bigger than Call of Duty - everyone is just so short-sighted. Call of Duty is the loss leader for Microsoft. But, as an IP, it is somewhat limited so it's ok to pimp this out. This will be Microsoft's Madden, because they will lose more money by limiting it to one platform.

Cross-platform support and play will be a keystone strategy, because they get to plaster Microsoft Gaming everywhere.

- World of Warcraft on consoles (work has been underway for a while to add direct controller support). And this gives Microsoft instant access to a competitor to Sony's FFXIV. Plus Hearthstone can compete with Wizards of the Coast, and Heroes of the Storm gives them a League of Legends competitor.

- Overwatch, combined with Call of Duty and Halo, will lead the way for Microsoft Gaming to have an eSport division for gaming.

- Starcraft - eSports. It gives them something to add to their strategy games stuff, and I would imagine that it's not going to be too difficult to integrate aspects of Starcraft into Halo (or vice versa).

- Mobile games division (Candy Crush) - with access to a division that knows how to profit off mobile, Microsoft can bring this to other games (or other games to Mobile while profiting - something Nintendo screwed up royally and Sony has no clue how to do).

- Crash Bandicoot and Spyro will give Microsoft new mascots to work with, on top of Minecraft, and allow them to attract younger gamers. This has always been a problem for Microsoft - they've always managed to appeal to young adults / new adults, but teenagers that are the target audience of Nintendo are hard. This segment of the market is much more profitable, and increases mindshare for Microsoft.

It's not hard to see how this fits in the overall Microsoft Live streaming strategy, because in the future, it will be about streaming games and less about the hardware. In order to stream games successfully, you need IP.

Starcraft and Heros of the Storm have both ceased development and I doubt Microsoft is interested in reviving them

But I can see them reusing those IP as universes for future games just because it's easier to reuse a well known IP than creating from scratch

True, but they are still being played.

You can still download and install Heroes of the Storm (and it is a pretty decent game). Reviving it and adapting it to the Xbox console would be an easy step.

Starcraft is still being played - and the lore is well established, known and popular world-wide.

God, I love Heroes of the Storm, I've played for so many years, it's a shame no more content is delivered, made so many friends there.

I hope MS revives that game.

Yes that is the real deal, and while Sony keeps whinning they have a very solid first place on this generation, and plenty of exclusives, they are only good boys for those that don't have any clue about the gaming industry, which they are using to their advantage on the regulators.

Nonsense, Sony have every right to be aggrieved at this deal. They have worked hard to maintain their position and work closely with third parties to create excellent games that consistently approach GOTY status.

Microsoft tried this approach and spectacularly mismanaged a large amount of the successful IP they managed to create (Halo, Gears of War, Forza, Fable). They’re now attempting to catch up not through the creation of quality products, but by throwing around ridiculous amounts of capital gained through other parts of the business. Why would any direct competitor not feel aggrieved? It’s essentially impossible to compete with companies as large as these tech giants.

The parent posts talks about Spyro and Crash Bandicoot as potential Microsoft mascots. Those were characters and franchises that Sony helped create and were the original PlayStation mascots.

Right now Sony are ahead, but over an extended period it will become impossible for them to constantly create new IP to compete with nostalgia and established brands - I find it difficult not to sympathise with them.

Sony's has markshare and exclusive deals in much higher quantity than XBox will ever get, lets not pretend it is otherwise.

"Mama/Papa they are also doing exclusive deals".

Limited exclusive deals and outright buying two of the largest publishers in the industry with mountains of valuable IP are two obviously completely different propositions. There’s little point in a discussion if you’re going to try to conflate the two.

That is what Sony is playing at.

in WoW characters have something like 50 abilities

unless they remove 95% of them from WoW I don't see how it could ever be possible to play on a controller

(vs. something like overwatch that has maybe 4 abilities per hero)

There are already mods like ConsolePort which allow you to map abilities and actions to certain button combinations. Certainly not straight forward, but it's allowed for playing WoW on the steam deck, for instance.

https://github.com/seblindfors/ConsolePort

WoW also supports controller directly, now.

In WoW classes have between 21-39 abilities, the average is around 30, in FF14 it is fairly similar (33 is the max). I recommend to look at the FF14 Comprehensive Controller Guide if you want to see how this problem has been solved. And it is viable as some of the FF14 top tier raiders are playing on controller along with a lots of average player.

https://www.akhmorning.com/resources/controller-guide/

edit: typos and punctuation and link updated to the up to date guide

I play on controller for 90% of my interactions.

- with L1, R1 shoulder buttons, I'm able to map ALT (L1), SHIFT (R1), ALT+SHIFT(L1+R1) for directional buttons UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, A, B, X, Y giving me a combined total of 32 buttons.

- With Right Shoulder, I'm able to map CTRL, and gain an additional 32 hotkey buttons by combining it with L/R (Alt/Shift)

- I leave Left Shoulder free for targeting commands (L2+Down for nearest, Up for mob targeting me, L/R for selection, and so on).

- L3 (analog click) and R3 (analog click) buttons do other things, such as activate mouse click under my crosshair, or in combination with CTRL/ALT/SHIFT do more, like mount+dismount.

It's very easy... my main struggle is with targeting which FFXIV has gotten down pat. ConsolePort addon solves this in part, but isn't perfect. Blizzard has to work this out, then it will be fine.

In fact, it is superior to a keyboard/mouse combination because I can have 64 commands on hotkey, plus movement + look separate from that and Left/Right mouse clicks.

How many buttons can you press on the keyboard without lifting your fingers away from WASD or movement keys?

> Blizzard has to work this out

Action targeting is the harbinger of that. On some melee classes you don't have to target anymore if you're using CC's.

Just checked it out -- definitely a step in the right direction.

Plenty of FFXIV players get along just fine with official controller support, and a few WoW players already playing with controllers. (Let's ignore any mages using Kinect gestures for now...)

However, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some friction from existing WoW players, that might not be so patient with some of the new players jumping on with controllers. The atmosphere just isn't the same there.

Ffxiv players get along fine because of the higher global cooldown and streamlined button press sequences, with very few procs that change what you have to press

1 sec GCD + proc fest wouldn't work well with the same control scheme, and the community would have a meltdown if they changed that

I always find it amusing just how conservative gamers are

Controller users benefit from lower cool down, more action sequence. In a basic controller set-up, you have access to 32 hotkeys, in addition to directional and camera movement (L/R analog). With some additional setup, you can get up to 64 hotkeys easily without too many compromises.

How many keyboard users can access that many from one hand?

How is it resolving any concerns? MS not releasing games outside MS platforms can still be a problem regardless of any streaming deals.

Activision-Blizzard was missing from GeForce Now for no reason (GeForce Now is a Windows PC after all). Assuring that gives Nvidia a massive popular library to hook players with.

Xcloud is a competitor yes but don’t forget GeForce Now caters to PC players, and they’re looking to stay on mouse and keyboard. Xcloud streams from a console and doesn’t support M&K except for a select few games that support that on a port-on-Xbox level. Even if/when Call of Duty/Overwatch arrives on Xcloud, PC players won’t stream it off Xcloud.

Outside of the huge ramifications of the Microsoft acquisition, I think that it'll set the new standard for when antitrust gets used.

Essentially if this deal goes through it'll most likely neuter antitrust cases for years to come.

Same thing with the Adobe figma deal.

This is great news!

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