Jensun Huang Comments on the Viability of Streaming Games

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Jensen Huang had a long press Q&A session at CES this year, and VentureBeat posted a transcript of the whole thing. Nvidia's CEO talked about the impact of blockchain, AI, their current GPU lineup, and a wide array of other things, but one of the most interesting comments he made was on the future of game streaming services. Microsoft, EA, Amazon, and other industry giants reportedly see cloud streaming services as the future of gaming, and Huang mentions that Nvidia runs one of the most successful game streaming platforms to date, meaning he definitely has a vested interest in the growth of the game streaming industry. But he also mentions that streaming services are fundamentally limited by the speed of light, as physics only allows for a certain amount of latency over great distance. Now, there are (theoretical) ways around that that Huang doesn't mention, like delivering content from local "edge" servers (as Netflix already does) or using local hardware for some sort of interpolation/compensation, but nevertheless, it's interesting to hear Huang's skepticism on the matter.

Check out a clip of the interview here.

First of all, if your question is, "How long before streaming can be as good as a PC?" the answer is never. The reason for that is because there's one problem we haven't figured out how to solve, and that's the speed of light. When you're playing esports, you need the response in a few milliseconds, not a few hundred milliseconds. It's a fundamental problem. It's just the laws of physics. However, we believe in it so much that we’ve been working on this for a decade. Our strategy is this: we believe PC gaming is here to stay. We believe everyone will at least need a PC, because apparently knowledge is still important. You can't do everything on TV. You can't live with TV online. But you could live with a PC alone. PCs are used by young people all over the world. It’s their first computing device, or maybe second after a mobile device. Between those two devices, those are the essential computing platforms for society. We believe that's here to stay.
 
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When you're playing esports, you need the response in a few milliseconds, not a few hundred milliseconds. It's a fundamental problem. It's just the laws of physics. However, we believe in it so much that we’ve been working on this for a decade.
So he knows it's a physics problem but yet spent god knows how many millions to work on it? He's not going to admit that game companies want this as the final form of DRM, which is the only reason Nvidia developed it.

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First of all, if your question is, "How long before streaming can be as good as a PC?" the answer is never. The reason for that is because there's one problem we haven't figured out how to solve, and that's the speed of light. When you're playing esports, you need the response in a few milliseconds, not a few hundred milliseconds. It's a fundamental problem. It's just the laws of physics. However, we believe in it so much that we’ve been working on this for a decade. Our strategy is this: we believe PC gaming is here to stay. We believe everyone will at least need a PC, because apparently knowledge is still important. You can't do everything on TV. You can't live with TV online. But you could live with a PC alone. PCs are used by young people all over the world. It’s their first computing device, or maybe second after a mobile device. Between those two devices, those are the essential computing platforms for society. We believe that's here to stay.

Huang has an interesting philosophy. On one hand, he has a vested interest in selling cards to gamers at "terminals" of gaming network. On the other hand, if streaming takes off, he will have a interest in selling to the streaming services. Right now, he seems to fall in the first camp. I think this philosophy is what is going to get Nvidia lapped. Streaming gaming doesn't have to be the latency "equal" of a PC. It just has to be "good enough." Currently, it is not good enough. But very smart people with a lot of money, that control the infrastructure to make it "good enough" are working on the problem.

Eventually, i think, the streamers will solve it. and Huang will change his tune.

just my belief though.
 
An hour away from me, where I have fiber/gigabit internet available to me, there is no broadband internet whatsoever available to my home town. This is still the case for countless rural communities around the US (and world) and probably will be for the next decade or so at least. Streaming can only reach niche status for as long as that's the case, which will definitely be for the foreseeable future.
 
I think streaming games will get there (whether we want that or not is a different conversation) eventually. The technology will improve or the game code will improve. Eventually.

OTOH, what about the huge chunk of the world that has crappy or no internet? If the world goes all streaming, I guess those people will be SOL.

Then there is the data cap thing, but that's a company management decision, not a technical hurdle.
 
I don't think that is a "technical" problem.. more of a stupid business decision and one EASILY solved by reasonable people.

Meaning the ISP get a cut of the action and it becomes waived for those certain promoted products?
 
You guys thinking that it "will get there" need to understand the fundamental issue preventing it from being viable for all games is the laws of physics. You are not going to rewrite those laws and change them so it "will get there".

It is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact.

Here is the cool thing. You do not have to believe anyone. Grab a book or three, learn the math, then do the math. Me, I already did.

Real time gaming will never work well in a streaming system. It will never work like it does on a local PC.

Only reason it might succeed will be due to the streaming services counting on enough ignorant people to support it. You know the ones. The ones that plunk down a bazillion dollars for something stupid and when you ask them about it, the anwser is always "AWSEOME!".
 
Real time gaming will never work well in a streaming system.

I agree. But there is a difference between well and 'good enough' as far as these companies are concerned. If it becomes the only viable method of gaming i will look to a different hobby.
 
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The day movies go streaming only I'm going to stop watching movies.

I joke. but seriously streaming is the future. Latency will be reduced. Caps will get removed when people put actual pressure on their elected officials to pass sane regulation. Broadband and fiber will only continue to grow.

To think that streaming will effect... every entertainment industry accept gaming is silly.

Jensun sounds butt hurt a bit to me... almost like someone who has perhaps already lost a bunch of big contracts. Nvidia has a terrible reputation in regards to being a company you want to deal with. They lost the amazon contract clearly.... AMD picked that up. If MS launches a service they are going to go AMD as well clearly (or perhaps even Intel) almost for sure they won't be looking to Intel. Same goes for Sony... if they decide to launch some form of streaming platform they are going to go AMD.

So Nvidia has very little chance of being part of a game streaming future... unless they go all in and build their own Edge server clusters for their own service and spend I would imagine 100s of millions on marketing to take on the likes of Amazon/MS/Sony. The 2020s will be the stream platform wars I have no doubt... with each spending a ton of money on servers and marketing... and perhaps even political lobbying. If that comes to pass... chances are Nvidia will have a much reduced place in gaming in general.
 
You guys thinking that it "will get there" need to understand the fundamental issue preventing it from being viable for all games is the laws of physics. You are not going to rewrite those laws and change them so it "will get there".

It is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact.

Here is the cool thing. You do not have to believe anyone. Grab a book or three, learn the math, then do the math. Me, I already did.

Real time gaming will never work well in a streaming system. It will never work like it does on a local PC.

Only reason it might succeed will be due to the streaming services counting on enough ignorant people to support it. You know the ones. The ones that plunk down a bazillion dollars for something stupid and when you ask them about it, the anwser is always "AWSEOME!".

MMO gaming has been around for a long time. I'm sorry all the latency stuff is a BS argument. Reminds me of audiophiles arguing that music streaming would tank cause people will hear the difference. And cinaphiles making the same arguments about streamed films... at first it was they won't be able to stream high quality all the time people will balk. Then it was they won't be able to do better then 720p it will die. Then it was 1080p isn't enough. Compressed audio is terrible. ect ect. The point. The masses don't care.

Of course gaming is the most demanding streaming application yet. Yes its not going to be possible on lite package slow speed broadband. However the internet has not stopped evolving higher speed and lower latencies since the 90s... any slow down in the US is due to political lobbying by cable companies. One advantage of game streaming coming is there will be some heavy money entering the fight on the side of consumers getting more for their buck.

Sttreaming may never be fast enough to provide VR... but I wouldn't bet on that either long term. However for the majority of gamers that are still impressed by their PS4s and Xbone games. Streaming will be quite viable.
 
MMO gaming has been around for a long time. I'm sorry all the latency stuff is a BS argument. Reminds me of audiophiles arguing that music streaming would tank cause people will hear the difference. And cinaphiles making the same arguments about streamed films... at first it was they won't be able to stream high quality all the time people will balk. Then it was they won't be able to do better then 720p it will die. Then it was 1080p isn't enough. Compressed audio is terrible. ect ect. The point. The masses don't care.

Of course gaming is the most demanding streaming application yet. Yes its not going to be possible on lite package slow speed broadband. However the internet has not stopped evolving higher speed and lower latencies since the 90s... any slow down in the US is due to political lobbying by cable companies. One advantage of game streaming coming is there will be some heavy money entering the fight on the side of consumers getting more for their buck.

Sttreaming may never be fast enough to provide VR... but I wouldn't bet on that either long term. However for the majority of gamers that are still impressed by their PS4s and Xbone games. Streaming will be quite viable.

I think its funny you think this move will improve the consumer experience, when almost all evidence is to the contrary. Your right that streaming is inevitable, but the day games become streaming only is the day I stop gaming completely.
 
I am very skeptical of game streaming vs. running local. I tried the whole steam box thing and while I am sure better solutions will come along, on a wired connection streaming off a very capable PC, the latency made any action game essentially unplayable. You can get away with shit like turn based games since the input latency isn't a big deal but anything requiring fast response like basically any action game (from my experience) isn't feasible. I can see doing something like running a light weight engine locally but loading assets from the cloud as a possible middle ground, but not streaming to a 'dumb terminal'.
 
I can see streaming being a positive thing, especially for consoles, if they can somehow use the streaming to pump extra horsepower to the systems. Consumers get more bang for their buck, and publishers get their final solution DRM. Lots of things like enemy AI, dynamic weather, a unique evolving world in real-time like say, having buildings that are all unique being built or destroyed in unique ways for every play-through for every player and even having unique meshes and textures generated on the fly would all be awesome ways streaming from large servers could really bring a lot to the table without any issues on lag or just not having enough horsepower to do it.

Hell, even ISPs would love that, like my real-time generated meshes and textures for certain things would need to take into account your connection speed and slow ass connections might only generated 512 x 512 textures while a gigabyte connection would allow for 2048 x 2048 higher quality textures. Imagine the sheer volume of kids who would be clamoring for their parents to get the faster internet connection.
 
Latency in high speed real time games is not just BS and you cannot get passed the speed of light. Even it that data speed was attainable (it is not due to the mechanics of moving data from point A to point B and ll the hardware in-between)it still carries latencies significantly higher than gaming on the PC does.

Yes, if you are playing chess, then latencies are irrelevant, but if you want to dogfight at Mach 1.2 against another player, do the math.

Latency is not a solvable problem once you hit the speed of light.
 
Latency in high speed real time games is not just BS and you cannot get passed the speed of light. Even it that data speed was attainable (it is not due to the mechanics of moving data from point A to point B and ll the hardware in-between)it still carries latencies significantly higher than gaming on the PC does.

Yes, if you are playing chess, then latencies are irrelevant, but if you want to dogfight at Mach 1.2 against another player, do the math.

Latency is not a solvable problem once you hit the speed of light.

Right, the moment the input and network traffic from your joystick button press has to pass through a single router, you are already way into noticeable lag territory.
 
Latency in high speed real time games is not just BS and you cannot get passed the speed of light. Even it that data speed was attainable (it is not due to the mechanics of moving data from point A to point B and ll the hardware in-between)it still carries latencies significantly higher than gaming on the PC does.

Yes, if you are playing chess, then latencies are irrelevant, but if you want to dogfight at Mach 1.2 against another player, do the math.

Latency is not a solvable problem once you hit the speed of light.

The vast majority of games on the market do not require frame specific timing. Even arcade-y racing games could probably handle the latency, provided the connection at both ends is reducing it to the lowest possible amount. Now things like fighting games, twitch shooters, racing or flight sims, and other games more reliant on accuracy within a tiny number of frames are likely never going to be super viable on streaming.
 
I pretty much did. That in combination with most movies today suck.

Hard to argue most new movies do suck. But ya most people watch as many and perhaps more movies then they ever did. Streaming is good enough for the masses. And quality wise at this point it is far better then DVD quality which was the mass method of consumer movie consumption prior to streaming.
 
I think he's just hedging his bets. While here on [H] there are plenty of people spending hundreds / thousands on graphics cards - he knows they're the exception and not the rule. The majority of people want little computer boxes that can do whatever they need even if it means sacrificing a little bit of performance / graphics here or there. If he can sell to both demos, he will.

I tried the Google streaming service for AC Odyssey and was pleasantly surprised. Sure it wasn't as good as 4K ultra settings on my local box but given that most people are used to console graphics / resolution, what they did via streaming was more than enough to tickle that gaming itch. Of course that begs the question that has already been asked above about "How good is your ISP?"
 
Oh and as for latency - if it's a mixed game with both local and streaming players - the game devs could theoretically add artificial lag to the local PC players to the same level as the streaming players. If they wanted to that is.
 
Hard to argue most new movies do suck. But ya most people watch as many and perhaps more movies then they ever did. Streaming is good enough for the masses. And quality wise at this point it is far better then DVD quality which was the mass method of consumer movie consumption prior to streaming.

i suppose im just old fashioned and like the idea of private ownership.
 
I think its funny you think this move will improve the consumer experience, when almost all evidence is to the contrary. Your right that streaming is inevitable, but the day games become streaming only is the day I stop gaming completely.

Well you are going to be paying for your broadband anyway. All local gaming has given us as consumers far is ever increasing GPU costs, and game costs. When I was a kid I remember picking up games for the family computer for grass cutting money. Heck cut the neighbors grass once and I could pick up a couple games. Now a new AAA title is what 70 or 80 bucks... I don't know what you pay your neighbors kids to cut your lawn but I know I don't pay them 80 bucks. lol

Yes streaming has the potential to provide people with sub cost gaming... in the same way Netflix is cheaper for a month of streaming then it was to go to blockbuster a couple times a month. So ya cheap streaming hardware + a sub... means you don't need a stupidly expensive GPU that will be next to worthless in 2 years, and hopefully you won't need to dish out 80 bucks per major title.

Will streaming be better then local top of the line PC... of course not. But will it be better then a local mid range pc.... I am betting it will be if your connection is up to the task.
 
MMO gaming has been around for a long time. I'm sorry all the latency stuff is a BS argument. Reminds me of audiophiles arguing that music streaming would tank cause people will hear the difference. And cinaphiles making the same arguments about streamed films... at first it was they won't be able to stream high quality all the time people will balk. Then it was they won't be able to do better then 720p it will die. Then it was 1080p isn't enough. Compressed audio is terrible. ect ect. The point. The masses don't care.

Of course gaming is the most demanding streaming application yet. Yes its not going to be possible on lite package slow speed broadband. However the internet has not stopped evolving higher speed and lower latencies since the 90s... any slow down in the US is due to political lobbying by cable companies. One advantage of game streaming coming is there will be some heavy money entering the fight on the side of consumers getting more for their buck.

Streaming may never be fast enough to provide VR... but I wouldn't bet on that either long term. However for the majority of gamers that are still impressed by their PS4s and Xbone games. Streaming will be quite viable.
We should be concerned that we are no longer going to be the actual owners of the game. Nvidia is going to move from focusing on video card production into providing services. I for one am not interested i'm streaming because it does require a internet connection constantly to play a game. I don't see this taking off because it alienates customer base to those without internet access or subpar access.
 
Well you are going to be paying for your broadband anyway. All local gaming has given us as consumers far is ever increasing GPU costs, and game costs. When I was a kid I remember picking up games for the family computer for grass cutting money. Heck cut the neighbors grass once and I could pick up a couple games. Now a new AAA title is what 70 or 80 bucks... I don't know what you pay your neighbors kids to cut your lawn but I know I don't pay them 80 bucks. lol

Yes streaming has the potential to provide people with sub cost gaming... in the same way Netflix is cheaper for a month of streaming then it was to go to blockbuster a couple times a month. So ya cheap streaming hardware + a sub... means you don't need a stupidly expensive GPU that will be next to worthless in 2 years, and hopefully you won't need to dish out 80 bucks per major title.

Will streaming be better then local top of the line PC... of course not. But will it be better then a local mid range pc.... I am betting it will be if your connection is up to the task.

1. Broadband offers a hell of a lot more than just gaming access (also you will be charged more for data and bandwidth as streaming games comes online, there is no way people are getting those things for the same price as today.)

2. Games today are by and large far more complex than the games I got when I was a kid, there really isn't a comparison, and by in large, game price has not changed much in the last 20 years excluding the DLC/Legendary editions.

3. You only need to chase the GPU dragon if you want to, its not a requirement, especially at 1080p gaming. Many of my friends are still rocking AMD 400 series and nVidia 900 series and they do just fine.

4. The streaming market will be fragmented, you will likely be paying $15-20/month for every major publisher.

5. Latency is an issue, regardless of what you have said or believe, if its an issue running a dumb terminal on Cat6 cabling and a Ubiquiti networking system in a single dwelling, it is damn well an issue over the internet. My bet is they (publishers and service providers) will use all sorts of tricks to make it seem like it isn't, and when that happens the experience is usually worse for everyone (IE forced minimum latency for all gamers regardless of streaming v. owning).

I doubt it will be better than a mid range PC, hell I doubt it will be better than a PS4/Xbone experience. It might look nicer, but that will be all.
 
mostly agree.

I've done streaming on the shieldTV and it depends on the game, but IMO the experience is far from perfect.

Games like the arkham series play really well. They are not that susceptible to latency. You have to check your timing though.
Driving games are mostly fine actually, much better than I expected. Again work on your timing.
Fighting games. This is the Achilles heel. Good luck performing a dragon punch or a flash kick at the right time
Don't even bother with fast paced shooters. My 11yo tried Fortnite and while it plays well, timing is critial here so even the slightest lag kills the experience.

Thing is that even under ideal conditions many problems persist. You'll see ocational choppiness, pixelation and of course lag.
With video streaming you can get by with network hiccups by caching, but with games caching is minimal, so you'll notice them and it will affect gameplay
 
MMO gaming has been around for a long time. I'm sorry all the latency stuff is a BS argument. Reminds me of audiophiles arguing that music streaming would tank cause people will hear the difference. And cinaphiles making the same arguments about streamed films... at first it was they won't be able to stream high quality all the time people will balk. Then it was they won't be able to do better then 720p it will die. Then it was 1080p isn't enough. Compressed audio is terrible. ect ect. The point. The masses don't care.

Of course gaming is the most demanding streaming application yet. Yes its not going to be possible on lite package slow speed broadband. However the internet has not stopped evolving higher speed and lower latencies since the 90s... any slow down in the US is due to political lobbying by cable companies. One advantage of game streaming coming is there will be some heavy money entering the fight on the side of consumers getting more for their buck.

Sttreaming may never be fast enough to provide VR... but I wouldn't bet on that either long term. However for the majority of gamers that are still impressed by their PS4s and Xbone games. Streaming will be quite viable.

Thats because they are audiophiles, they are seeking quality and service (through manually handling ripping, converting and archiving it) not price (cheap streaming) and service (click and play). Cheap and easy wins out for most consumers because they don't care to know, hear, see or taste the difference; it is lost on them.

Not that I know much about US internet topography, eventually everything will be connected via light and this should help immensely. The question is when does anyone expect us to get there?
 
Something big would have to change in the way communications work. To get the latency down so low, you can't tell the difference between stream and local
I been stuck around 39 latecy for world of warcraft for years now. Which is fine, but hasn't going down either
 
We should be concerned that we are no longer going to be the actual owners of the game. Nvidia is going to move from focusing on video card production into providing services. I for one am not interested i'm streaming because it does require a internet connection constantly to play a game. I don't see this taking off because it alienates customer base to those without internet access or subpar access.

If you have games on Steam this is already the case. Unless all digital games you own are from DRM-free services like GOG. What would happen if one day Steam bankrupts and ends their services? We do not "own" any of those games (unless they are DRM-free).

One thing people need to realize is that it will likely never be a streaming only solution. As long as a market exists on both ends and there is money to be made from both game and hardware sales, you will likely see streaming provided alongside on-premise. Can we not buy individual albums/movies anymore?

Also, most of the latency issues can be solved by having multiple datacenters close to areas where the streaming demands are denser (like urban areas). Of course it will not be as good as a local PC, but for the vast majority of games you will not see a significant impact. One would argue that the rural areas would be the niche and that most of the demand would be around urban areas anyways. And again, it is highly unlikely that there will be a "streaming only" solution to this, as long as there is a market. At least until we distribute streams via quantum entanglement or something.
 
If you have games on Steam this is already the case. Unless all digital games you own are from DRM-free services like GOG. What would happen if one day Steam bankrupts and ends their services? We do not "own" any of those games (unless they are DRM-free).
There are games you can play on steam while it is offline. There is even a feature that allows you to turn steam into offline mode. Also my point is if you lose internet connection while playing you are done. I'm pretty sure when you are playing a single player game while in steam it won't kick you out of the game because you lost connection. (I not 100% certain, I will have to confirm it for myself).


2. Games today are by and large far more complex than the games I got when I was a kid, there really isn't a comparison, and by in large, game price has not changed much in the last 20 years excluding the DLC/Legendary editions.
I would like to call your bluff on this.....I remember buying games for 30-45 bucks in the late 90s early 2000s. That was mainly for the AAA title for all platforms. Only in the last 10-12 years has the trend gone to $60 base game. DLC didn't exist back then so you can't exclude this, so instead of giving us all the full game today they chose to "keep the same pricing" but release less than a full game. The gaming market has changed a ton in the last 20 years.....
 
I think streaming games will get there (whether we want that or not is a different conversation) eventually. The technology will improve or the game code will improve. Eventually.
You think the consumers don't have a choice? That's a very scary prospect of capitalism I don't want to see. Believe me people won't buy into game streaming. I do see companies making exclusives to streaming services, but gamers will load up their favourite DDOS and crash the servers when they see this.

How is game streaming working out with VR on the horizon ?
About as badly as it'll working out for keyboard and mice. The lag will be super noticeable. I imagine gamepads won't have as much of an issue due to the nature of analog sticks and aim bot.

The vast majority of games on the market do not require frame specific timing. Even arcade-y racing games could probably handle the latency, provided the connection at both ends is reducing it to the lowest possible amount. Now things like fighting games, twitch shooters, racing or flight sims, and other games more reliant on accuracy within a tiny number of frames are likely never going to be super viable on streaming.
The vast majority of games you play must suck. The only game I can think of that I played recently where I can deal with latency is Persona 5, and that game sucks monkey butts.

Oh and as for latency - if it's a mixed game with both local and streaming players - the game devs could theoretically add artificial lag to the local PC players to the same level as the streaming players. If they wanted to that is.
That's what I think some games do now, but I think they do it because of console ports having a delay with wireless gamepads. So it's mostly shitty console ports that do it.

I hear you... but ya the masses have already choosen. Netflix Spotify ect ... the masses don't seem to care much about ownership anymore.
Movies and music was something nobody cared about ownership because you rarely want to see a movie twice in your life. This is mostly cause 99.99% of movies suck. Even if you find a good song you like, there's only so many times you can hear it before you get sick of it. Video games are different in that a good game you may want to play, over and over. Unfortunately there's a lot of shitty games too, and you know they're shit cause you play it once and don't want to play them again. I've played Fallout 4 countless times and the mods make it easy for me to come back. I've had 3 months binges of Dark Souls repeatedly in my life, cause once you pick it up you just can't stop. Most games today especially UbitSoft games are just a huge grind that makes you regret ever playing that game. It's so bad that I totally avoid UbiSoft games now cause I expect them all to be an open world grind devoid of content.

Games are not the same as movies, it should go without saying.
 
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