Amazon Is Developing a Game Streaming Service

cageymaru

cageymaru

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According to reports, Amazon is developing its own game streaming service. Amazon will be competing directly with Google, NVIDIA, Sony, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft who are all developing or have already launched similar services. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the largest cloud computing services provider in the world. Game streaming services typically require that customers have access to a broadband internet connection which will be a challenge for many potential customers in rural areas.

It makes sense for Amazon to enter this arena, as it's the largest provider of cloud computing services on the planet -- ahead of Google and Microsoft by a long shot -- and can therefore easily build out the necessary infrastructure to support a demanding game streaming service for users around the world.
 
Competition is a good thing.... I hope. Wait this isn't a new gaming store front, man fads go quick in tech :)
 
For RPG's and a lot of the casual games streaming will work fine, anything remotely close to an FPS title or anything dealing with PvP will need to basically install the game in some sort of local cache and play it from there just as you would if you had installed it properly.
 
Hopefully they offer a large discount to prime members for the streaming box and controller, when they debut this thing. Like they did with the Fire Stick.
 
Really curious how they all plan to get around latency. With games, you have it both ways, the rendered scene and the control command. Even with a really fast network, trying to stream anything at a decent resolution/FPS is going to be a crapshoot.
 
Will NVIDIA really give them GPU's that will compete with their own tech? Maybe they will screw with the drivers a bit.
 
Depends on the games I guess. If it's just more android / google play games, nah. License from MS (yeah right, I laughed just typing that) or Sony (also unlikely) to stream consoler/older gen games? PC based games?

A lot of question marks. Amazon has the cash to waste on the project for sure.

Amazon buys Sega and makes Dreamcast 4k! Make it happen!
 
Unless Amazon has some special rule that defeats physics then this service will have the same issue as every other "remote gaming service", namely input responsiveness lags. Hell, I tried the steam version of this on my local gigabit network with everything connected by Ethernet and it was shit. I have enterprise network switching too (Dell PowerConnect 7048). Remote gaming over the Internet has to be brutal.
 
I'll never understand this fascination with watching other people playing games, it's just the strangest thing to me that's come along in many a decade. Apparently it's making a lot of money for both the participants gaming and the streaming services, of course, but... Humanity... stupidity... somehow they're always just great bedfellows. :p
 
Tiberian said:
I'll never understand this fascination with watching other people playing games, it's just the strangest thing to me that's come along in many a decade. Apparently it's making a lot of money for both the participants gaming and the streaming services, of course, but... Humanity... stupidity... somehow they're always just great bedfellows. :p
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Amazon has Twitch for this. This has to be streaming the game itself to your computer.

Those services have never taken hold before. At this point, its clear there's only interest because there's a move to force games to a streaming model and then force you to a rental payment model.
 
TordanGow said:
Unless Amazon has some special rule that defeats physics then this service will have the same issue as every other "remote gaming service", namely input responsiveness lags. Hell, I tried the steam version of this on my local gigabit network with everything connected by Ethernet and it was shit. I have enterprise network switching too (Dell PowerConnect 7048). Remote gaming over the Internet has to be brutal.
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Ok good was gonna test this crap again, but this saves me time. I used Nvidia shield tablet and Steam in home streaming both with AC wifi. It was playable, but could never get over the laggy feel. However, was 4 years ago. You think things would get better by now.
 
Eymar said:
Competition is a good thing.... I hope. Wait this isn't a new gaming store front, man fads go quick in tech :)
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As already stated, Amazon owns twitch. If the service is rolled into twitch, then it wouldn't be another store front because twitch already sells games.
 
Eymar said:
Ok good was gonna test this crap again, but this saves me time. I used Nvidia shield tablet and Steam in home streaming both with AC wifi. It was playable, but could never get over the laggy feel. However, was 4 years ago. You think things would get better by now.
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Glad I saved you the trouble. By the way the I tried it two weeks ago, so my experience was very recent. The PC running the game was my SIG rig, 7700k @ 4.8 GHz w/32 GB RAM. The client was my media center with a Sandy Bridge i5 2400 and 8 GB RAM so both machines should be more than adequate.
 
I feel like they have tried something like this in the past. Their firetv box had a controller, they even made an amazon studios game developer branch (with exclusive games for the amazon firetv). Then it seems they changed course, and made lower spcced hardware (still no direct replacement for the firetv box performance-wise). Their tablets used to be pretty powerful, but now mediocre and cheap. I guess they are going to try combining mediocre/cheap and get away with streaming games instead of dedicated, more expensive hardware
 
Good luck to anyone without access to broad band. I haven't checked, but a house I owned 20 years ago is probably still rocking dial up. My only options at that house was from Hughes satellite - it was very expensive and would not have worked for me. (Price you pay when your neighbors are soybeans and cows).
 
This is not unexpected but concerning for many reasons. First, the whole idea of game streaming as a service CANNOT be allowed to take off, if we value any semblance of running our software on our own machines, with our own hardware, under our control. Its bad enough that so many things have to be licensed etc.. but I can run something like WINE/Proton to play on Linux if not supported, crack copy protection like Denuvo, mod my games with new content including injection-style mods such as fan translations etc; none of this will be allowed on any of these services, if even possible. The worst part is that so many people really don't care or will see the convenience as more important etc, so if all the different people with motivations for "no" don't work together ASAP to make these initial forays a failure... it may be so many other user unfriendly gaming industry trends that become the norm so "just don't use it" is NOT sufficient to keep these changes from occurring.

Next, since this is Amazon specifically they have been shown to have been stepping into the "get big, become evil" shoes like so many others so their presence simply because of the AWS market is significant. I have to worry of what they'll do with things like Lumberyard and all the games running upon it or using an integration to push streaming. Also, Amazons' gaming products are of concern given they're so haphazardly put together. For instance, Amazon itself sells both digital and physical game keys - that's fine. Some even activate on Steam and elsewhere etc. However, they also now own Twitch and thus the incompatible Twitch Launcher and its gamestore. Amazon Prime > Twitch Prime was a good idea, but why not have a single store that didn't require proprietary launcher garbage? Now consider them adding streaming to this whole mess in various states - where will they sell streaming titles, not to mention that they'll definitely use and integrate Twitch to push game streaming etc... and the whole thing seems to be a big payday for Amazon and some hangers-on, with costs to the rest of the industry itself.
 
On Comcast's one terabyte per month limit.

this will be a NO for me and MANY MANY others on a limited internet plan.
 
I am cautiously concerned about all these announced game streaming services.

I don't know quite how they will come to hurt the high end PC community, but I feel convinced they will, somehow.
 
At some point everyone is going to stream everything. We are all going to live in the cloud eventually. I bet at some point our own windows installations will be hosted at Microsoft themselves in their cloud. We will just boot into the cloud. That is the future. Subscriptions. Micro charges. Linux and BSD will be the only real alternative for local installations. I saw this video on youtube showing cloud gaming and I can say it's already at acceptable performance for a lot of games. Definitely living in interesting times.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
You need internet $ervice.

To access your game streaming $ervice.

To enjoy your game live $ervice.

Torrents are looking better and better.
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And all the while your ISP is harvesting and selling your data and habits, the streaming service platform is servicing ads along with harvesting and selling your data, and the game is probably going to serve up ads as well.
Fuck this shit.
 
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