Google GDC 2019 Keynote

I don't really have any inside scoops. For all I know it's going to be a limp announcement of streaming games using Chromecast. Buuuut. The Project Stream beta test seemed to run well for folks and Google has a number of gaming hires that suggest there's something interesting going on.

Conference starts in 10 minutes!

I think you'd have to be a sucker (or just have way too much money to waste) to buy into whatever they're announcing here. Google has a long history of abandoning projects. What information about consumers are they going to extract from a console / streaming device that they can sell to make it worth their while? Presumably MS/Sony/Nintendo are already selling that same information.

Project Stream = Stadia

Well played, Google.

Not only is Stadia a streaming game service, but it's integrated into YouTube. Interesting, I guess, hopefully.

I get the skepticism but Project Stream was right up there with my first time in VR for holy #$4t moments in gaming technology. From getting the email for the beta to playing took 10 seconds and I never experienced any lag over tens of hours of playing.

Freaking magic.

Badferret wrote:

I get the skepticism but Project Stream was right up there with my first time in VR for holy #$4t moments in gaming technology. From getting the email for the beta to playing took 10 seconds and I never experienced any lag over tens of hours of playing.

Freaking magic.

I actually couldn't play via Project Stream despite having a 100mb connection. NVIDIA's GeForce Now service was flawless for me (Witcher3 at 60 FPS) but I couldn't even get past the welcome screen with Google because they said my connection wasn't good enough.

Was that the Konami code on the bottom of the controller?

billt721 wrote:
Badferret wrote:

I get the skepticism but Project Stream was right up there with my first time in VR for holy #$4t moments in gaming technology. From getting the email for the beta to playing took 10 seconds and I never experienced any lag over tens of hours of playing.

Freaking magic.

I actually couldn't play via Project Stream despite having a 100mb connection. NVIDIA's GeForce Now service was flawless for me (Witcher3 at 60 FPS) but I couldn't even get past the welcome screen with Google because they said my connection wasn't good enough.

I hear you, but I would guess it was bugged for you. I have regular ol Charter that's probably around 100mb and I'm in a rural setting. It just worked for me.

Badferret wrote:
billt721 wrote:
Badferret wrote:

I get the skepticism but Project Stream was right up there with my first time in VR for holy #$4t moments in gaming technology. From getting the email for the beta to playing took 10 seconds and I never experienced any lag over tens of hours of playing.

Freaking magic.

I actually couldn't play via Project Stream despite having a 100mb connection. NVIDIA's GeForce Now service was flawless for me (Witcher3 at 60 FPS) but I couldn't even get past the welcome screen with Google because they said my connection wasn't good enough.

I hear you, but I would guess it was bugged for you. I have regular ol Charter that's probably around 100mb and I'm in a rural setting. It just worked for me.

That's the big catch with streaming and why people keep saying it's a decade away, but Google probably has the best chance of having this work based on the fact they have data centers everywhere.

Vulkan API is a good thing too. Sounds like they're doing it right.

Now tell us pricing.

Will it run Crysis?

I have a Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC....what is going to make me what to add this?

The audience for this looks so bored.

farley3k wrote:

I have a Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC....what is going to make me what to add this?

More affluent folks aren't likely to be the main target.

Who watches the most YouTube? Full grown adults? Kids watching Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, etc. will now be able to play those games without having to buy a new console or PC. Potentially.

The interactivity with YouTube seems a potential big hook.

Veloxi wrote:

The audience for this looks so bored.

People like hardware. There isn't any.

farley3k wrote:

I have a Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC....what is going to make me what to add this?

Because this might be the beginning of the end of all those devices as needed boxes. Microsoft and Sony have the same tech in their pipeline and I bet Amazon does as well.

The Dongle is the new Console.

This is the netflixification of gaming.

The part where you can load into a game with 5 seconds of clicking on a YouTube link? Pretty cool.

I just want to know what the monetization structure is.

It sure reads to me like a storefront and buying individual games right now. The click link to play thing is cool but I wonder if that will be to a timed demo if you don't already own it. It doesn't feel like they're making a "Netflix of games" pitch.

Perhaps not, I just think that is where we end up with everyone and their brother investing in streaming.

It will probably eventually work just like movies. New releases still full price, older games rotate in and out of a netflix like instantly available streaming service.

Play anywhere would absolutely kill my productivity at work, lol.

Looks really neat though.

Wish 'em the best.

Yeah, I don't get it. But then I don't get why people want to watch other people playing games so maybe I'm just old.

Once again, Google has a great idea that's ahead of it's time which they won't support properly and will likely kill in a few years. There's no way I'm spending money anytime soon on this to "buy" games. In the short term, it may make for a nice game rental service if the price is right. Project Stream actually ran okay for me, but it was not a perfect experience or anything close to having local hardware.

Although the demo was cool, I doubt hopping from device to device will be that easy either. For instance, I cringed when they mentioned using a Chromecast. Those devices have been way too unreliable for me.

IF, conditional statement, it works as advertised, is this the beginning of the end of consoles?

One area where I could see this tech being pretty huge is actually VR.

Now you don't need to have a high powered machine capable of running a game at a high framerate to feed a headset, you just need to be able to stream at that resolution. You don't have to be tethered to your PC or console, since it'd be getting its signal directly over wifi. If they managed to get inside-out tracking working well, you wouldn't even be restricted to a particular VR room, since anywhere with wifi would work.

The big question would be whether there's any lag between movement and visual feedback, since VR is pretty sensitive to that. But theoretically, this could allow them to do pretty high end VR at a relatively low cost.

As someone who's gotten very interested in VR with a PSVR, but knows that jumping up to PC VR would require buying a headset and also a pretty significant PC upgrade to drive it, that'd be a compelling pitch.

Not super interested. It's a storefront, from Google. Where will my purchases go when they cancel the service in 18 months?

Netflix Style, sure I'd sign up for a few months, but with the way Google cancels things I struggle giving them any money without a definitive "This is what will happen when we wind down the service" plan

I’ll be interested to see what their first-party studio is developing and if they can come up with any exclusives that draw people to the service.

Project Stream was amazing but I'm not particularly interested in spinning up yet another digital-only game library. This is especially true on a completely unproven platform from a company with a questionable track record on long-term support of their products. I don't trust them not to just abandon this in a few years along with my purchases. They'd have to do some heavy discounting or a subscription model to get me in.

This actually made me more interested in whatever streaming service/device that MSFT is going to announce at E3. At least with the MSFT solution I think it's likely they'll allow me to play the games I already own digitally.

Nevin73 wrote:

Yeah, I don't get it. But then I don't get why people want to watch other people playing games so maybe I'm just old.

jrralls wrote:

IF, conditional statement, it works as advertised, is this the beginning of the end of consoles?

I have no idea if Google/Stadia has legs, but I'm now 100% convinced that streaming is the future (maybe a streaming catch-all is warranted?) and maybe a very near future.

I have a pretty decent gaming rig but have skipped several generations of consoles because for me, it hasn't been worth it for a few Sony exclusives.

In a year or two if I can sign up for Sony's streaming service and only have to pay out 50 bucks for puck/dongle, then yeah, I'll happily catch up on Zero Dawn and God of War with a sub for a month or two.

Also, I don't know that a lot of the folks commenting here appreciate how transformative instantly playable is.

I have probably 30 games in my Steam library that I have never even bothered to install. Quite possibly I am missing out on games that I would enjoy, I mean they piqued my interest enough to buy em, but then taking the time to actually download and patch something keeps me from even bothering. This tech will take that self imposed barrier away.

I really feel game streaming is like VR, in that you will have to try it to believe it. One very big positive for Google is it looks like they will have zero barrier to entry.

OK, good call. Let's keep this thread about Stadia in specific.

Here is a thread about streaming video games in general,

jrralls wrote:

As a reminder:

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Remember everyone:

Google is not a hardware company.
Google is not a software company.
Google is an advertising company.

I just read recently that the majority of households in the US have <25mb therefore would be below the specs for this service. They may still be able to use it but at a much lower resolution.

jrralls wrote:

As a reminder:

https://killedbygoogle.com/

I find this page a little disingenuous. Many of the products/services listed have been renamed, combined into other products, supplanted by similar products or even integrated into the OneBox