Celexi posted:

the next xbox you will reportedly be able to start playing a game via streaming while it downloads and then it seamlessly changes to the local one when it is done.

Cardiovorax posted:

Probably because they didn't, if my experience playing the game is anything to go by.

Klyith posted:

Fortnite accounts for 0.0% of google play store revenue, Epic makes everyone sideload a version that uses their own payment system.


If you're a consumer and care about having games to play that aren't a gambling microtransaction hellscape, you should. Games are caught in a trap where they cost more and more to make, but nobody can force the price above $60. The people operating the storefronts, all of which are either platforms that lock out competition or de facto monopolies, make huge amounts of money for what is now very little effort.

Just look at this thread: monopoly power turns companies like Google into corporate failsons. They can afford to fart away huge amounts of money on badly-run projects that deliver no value to consumers.

So yes, consumers should care about fees and having competition because that's 30% of your money going into a hole.

quote:

Google's busy prepping for the "next-generation of Android TV," starting with the miniature box above. Google says this new ADT-3 dongle is a full-fledged Android TV platform, with a quad-core ARM Cortex A53 CPU, 2GB of DDR3 memory, and the ability to output 4K HDR content at 60 frames per second over its HDMI 2.1 port. Before you get too excited, know that it's a developer device. Like its predecessor, the ADT-2, it's possible you'll never see one officially available for purchase.

But as XDA-Developers reported in September, the company’s Android TV road map does suggest that bigger and better things are coming in 2020, including an actual “hero” (likely Google-made, Google-branded) Android TV device with “next-gen” smart home features and support for Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service.

quote:

Could Sony/Microsoft/others be responsible for all the Stadia hate?Speculation(self.Stadia)
submitted 1 days ago by GanonZD to /r/Stadia

Normally, I’m not a conspiracy theorist at all. In general, whenever someone is accusing some big, “evil” organization of some giant, secret plot, I usually don’t take it seriously, for plots of that size are sure to get leaked by somebody at some point. However, the video game industry (especially the console part) is very unique because it is extremely divided into a couple of platforms which are being very tightly controlled by some big tech firm (Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo/Valve/etc.). Even the film media industry, which is perhaps the closest relative, is completely different: Both VHS, DVD, Blu-ray etc. were/are licensed products. Anyone can build a DVD player. Only Sony can build a Playstation and get away with it. This means that in the video game industry, you are extremely dependent on having a good relation to these companies. In other words, piss off Sony or Microsoft, and you might lose your early reviewer copy of video games, or you might lose advertising money. (Look at the firing of Jeff Gerstmann from GameSpot.)

So unlike in other industries, these kinds of conspiracies could actually make sense in the video game industry. I’m not saying that Sony or Microsoft or anyone else has explicitly requested or paid reviewers into writing negative reviews of Stadia (though this could perhaps be the case). The pressure could be much more implicit, with reviewers simply being afraid of writing anything except negative reviews of Stadia, because they sense what the consequences might be. Furthermore, it is not unlikely that reviewers themselves are interested in keeping the industry exactly the way it is now. If streaming one day becomes the default way for most people to play (just like it has happened with TV series by now), there will be much fewer things for reviewers to review. They can review games, Wi-Fi controllers, streaming devices, and similar accessories, but not video game consoles. Finally, the “rivalry” between the fan communities of the Playstation and Xbox brands, and the five-year console tech race, creates a special dynamic that drives the industry forward. You don’t see the same kind of polarized division of the communities around Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Disney+. There could be leading forces in the video game industry, both on the tech side and on the reviewer side, who are very interested in keeping things exactly the way they are now, with no extra streaming service from Google to shake up the market.

Could this kind of subtle, implicit conspiracy be one source of all the negative reviews of Stadia, and all the hate?

...! posted:

Furthermore, it is not unlikely that reviewers themselves are interested in keeping the industry exactly the way it is now. If streaming one day becomes the default way for most people to play (just like it has happened with TV series by now), there will be much fewer things for reviewers to review. They can review games, Wi-Fi controllers, streaming devices, and similar accessories, but not video game consoles.

gschmidl posted:

They're close, but it's not Sony or MS, it's the play.date.

quote:

Am I missing something? It shouldn't be hard for devs to port to Stadia. (self.Stadia)
submitted 6 hours ago by VRgamer84

I keep hearing about how difficult and time consuming it is for games to be ported to Stadia but why is this? I'm playing Shadow Of The Tomb Raider currently and it's identical to PS4 version. Same with Destiny 2, MK11 etc.

So what makes it so hard? Keep in mind we aren't talking about something like porting to the Switch where devs literally have to go back and re work an entire game engine and assets to make a game work on inferior hardware.

These games on Stadia are practically identical to other console versions, so what makes it so hard and time consuming?

quote:

VRgamer84[S] -5 points 6 hours ago

Well obviously the games speak for themselves, it's very doable considering the litany of current gen games that are out and the many more incoming like Cyberpunk 2077. I'm not implying it's as easy as walking out to your mailbox, but I also don't think it's as difficult as some of you suggest

...! posted:

Darth TNT posted:

If you're not careful you'll end up with a Stadia Avatar instead of your Satoshi one.

Celexi posted:

the next xbox you will reportedly be able to start playing a game via streaming while it downloads and then it seamlessly changes to the local one when it is done.

...! posted:

Cemetry Gator posted:

I love the line "only Sony can build a PlayStation and get away with it."

Cardiovorax posted:

It's not quite that simple, which is why outside of specialized areas like supercomputers, nobody actually evaluates computer performance in flops. In practical terms, those ten teraflops have to virtualize and take care every function that specialized hardware would be responsible for in a more typical PC or video game console. This is a ridiculous loss of performance because video game hardware is specialized to do the same rendering work faster and more easily on a physical level than a more generalized CPU can match, even if they have comparable raw computational power in absolute terms. They're massively more capable at tasks that require parallelization, for example, or that at least benefit from it.

Celexi posted:

the next xbox you will reportedly be able to start playing a game via streaming while it downloads and then it seamlessly changes to the local one when it is done.

Celexi posted:

the next xbox you will reportedly be able to start playing a game via streaming while it downloads and then it seamlessly changes to the local one when it is done.

...! posted:

Sudden Loud Noise posted:

That seems like a weird feature when it makes both experiences worse. Your streaming quality suffers cause you're downloading something, and your download speed suffers cause you're streaming something. Both on the same device. With a perfect setup and going off the leaves specs it would be possible but... Ehhhhh.

Le Reddit posted:

Dream come true! Playing Stadia on my Tab in the bedroom. Bad internet here, but still no lag. drat Stadia works great.

quote:

Great! I normally have 500mbps up/ down but 5G wifi has short range, so it's only around 20 to 30mbps in my bedroom.

quote:

Soft rollout, but I feel that's how they should start. No reason to cancel your orders, a lot of new games will be arriving soon. After all they plan to take on PlayStation and Xbox.

quote:

♡ Digital collection ♡ Been a few years since I sold my DVDs and Blu-Rays, and I have ever since been building my digital library, same with books, all on Google. So imagine that feeling when I found out I could do the same with games.

quote:

Well, I've played the game on my 4K QL Samsung TV on Ps4 Pro and Stadia, and so far I enjoy it much more on Stadia. I'm travelling this Christmas, so it'll be fun to bring the game with me on my PC.

univbee posted:

You can already sort-of do this with PSNow games manually. Start the download, start streaming the game, when it's done save and quit and transfer your save via the cloud, continue locally.

Truga posted:

i hope what they actually mean here is that "big games only need to download assets for the first level for you to start playing" which a few online games already do. both guild wars, i think starwars?, and something else i can't remember right now

doingitwrong posted:

Xbox promised the partial downloads for this generation and what we got was a few games that let you play a first level and A LOT of games these said “READY TO START” but all that meant was looking at a title screen.

If they can manage to xCloud into reasonable transition into play the game I could see it working well. You start playing right away at lower specs and when you stop playing for the night it keeps downloading and when you wake up the next day it’s all good. Eliminates the small pain of waiting a few hours for the GBs to come down. I imagine it’s like how PS4 and Xbox instituted hardware pauses for this generation, so even unskippable cutscenes could be paused by going to the dashboard. We’ll get console mandated partial downloads instead of relying on game makers.

univbee posted:

PS4 has literally allowed for this since launch. 2013's Killzone: Shadow Fall lets you specify what to install first between single player and multiplayer, and when it installs single player it installs the level data in sequence. IIRC you can start single player within 30-60 seconds of inserting the game's disc and play through the campaign normally from the beginning no problem.

How this is handled by different games varies a lot. Sports games will let you do a basic vs game with 2 specific teams, open world games will let you play the first setpiece or whatever is present prior to the game opening up (e.g. Infamous: Second Son you can play until you get to San Francisco, GTAV you can do that bank heist prologue, Sleeping Dogs you can play the first few missions which have you contained to specific areas before the game cuts you loose etc.

neonchameleon posted:

The patch with the turn times being cut down is going to drop on Thursday (along with both DLC and FLC). Mortal Empires end times are a few seconds.

quote:

I don't recall the recent Xbox or Playstation consoles having tons of custom specialized hardware to do much in games.

univbee posted:

PS4 has literally allowed for this since launch. 2013's Killzone: Shadow Fall lets you specify what to install first between single player and multiplayer, and when it installs single player it installs the level data in sequence. IIRC you can start single player within 30-60 seconds of inserting the game's disc and play through the campaign normally from the beginning no problem.

How this is handled by different games varies a lot. Sports games will let you do a basic vs game with 2 specific teams, open world games will let you play the first setpiece or whatever is present prior to the game opening up (e.g. Infamous: Second Son you can play until you get to San Francisco, GTAV you can do that bank heist prologue, Sleeping Dogs you can play the first few missions which have you contained to specific areas before the game cuts you loose etc.

Truga posted:

yeah this is the good poo poo. i don't care about it these days because i have ridiculously fast internet and 100 gigs downloads in 30minutes but it's saved me hours of sitting on my rear end in the past.

Rotten Red Rod posted:

Sadly (on PS4) you're often gated by Sony's servers which totally suck.

Presenting Nipples posted:

This paragraph is exactly what publishers want you think but none of it is actually true. They use this thinking to justify lovely business modes and labor practices, but video game profits and revenues have never been higher.

There is a kernel of truth that games have bigger budgets - but that is due to higher revenues not some innate change in how games are made.

quote:

"I remember this funny moment where we were doing Dishonored, and I asked my lead programmer how many characters I could have in combat. And he answered something between five and six. I thought well, okay. It makes sense. The AI is what it is, and we had characters with 10,000 polys or whatever they were. Fast forward four or five years, we’re doing Prey. It’s a new engine, new technology, new hardware. I’m back with my lead programmer, same question. How many characters can we have? Maybe five or six. The only difference between one generation to the next was that the budget had doubled, and because the budget was doubled, it goes into more people, instead of taking three months to make a character it takes six months now, there’s more optimization that is required, more of everything, every detail, making sure the eyes are perfect and the sun shines the right way.

Rotten Red Rod posted:

There's going to be a tipping point where you just can't chase the "AAA market" anymore. You're going to see more developers/publishers either fail, or stop trying to go after that. At a certain point it's not only too expensive but it's needless.

Like take RDR2 - oh wow, your characters' eyes dilate based on the surrounding light! Your beard grows in real-time! Your horse poops or whatever, I don't know! All of those thing and all that fidelity took millions of dollars and thousands of hours of crunch time... But was the result really worth it? Did all those things you probably notice once, say "neat" and then never think about again really sell that many copies? Is the game any more fun for all that?

Jim Sterling talks a lot about this and has good points about it, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F96FOn3R7w

Not every game needs to be AAA. And not every AAA game needs to cost more than the last. If you do that, you're just guaranteeing disappointment when they don't keep topping themselves year after year in sales. It's a system speeding towards disaster.

Rad Valtar posted:

But what if we have 12 teraflops to stream to your living room? Stadia is creating the quadruple A industry

ErrEff posted:

Later in the comments, the OP clarifies what "bad" means:


Hmm, gee, wonder if this might be a shill. Nothing but Stadia posts, including gems like this early on:

Zaodai posted:

They also vary wildly by time of day, which leads to moments where it thinks its going to take 7 hours to download a game but then realizes you're downloading it at midnight and so it downloads in 40 minutes instead.

Though I did grab one of the old PS1 games on sale recently and the download finished before the PS4 had gotten far enough along to even tell me I had a download in the queue. 450 MB games, wave of the future!

...! posted:

I've seen some Stadia shills on Reddit who are so shameless that they suggest fixing connection issues by buying more Google hardware.

"Slow internet speed killing your Stadia experience? No problem! Just buy the most expensive Chromecast, and make sure you run it through a Google-branded router. That fixed all my issues, so it should fix all of your issues as well."

Yes, I've seen that. More than once.


The thing about PS4 downloads (and I don't know why this is the case, but it has been A Thing on the PSN even going back to the PS3 days) is that some of their individual download servers are really fast and others are really slow.

Which server you get connected to is completely random. If your download is going slowly, you can usually speed it up by pausing then unpausing the download, which forces the system to randomly select a server again. You'll immediately get a much faster server 90% of the time that you do this. The other 10% of the time, you'll have to do this three or four times before you finally hit the server jackpot.

Moral of the story: Slow PSN download = pause then unpause