Google Might be Getting into the Game Streaming and Console Market

[DooKey]

Google may be getting into the game streaming market and to top that off there are rumors they may be developing a new console as well. The new game streaming service is codenamed "Yeti" and it will work just like others out there and run in the cloud and stream to your desktop/device. In addition to the steaming service it looks like they may also build a new console since they recently hired an executive that worked in the Sony Playstation division as well as the Xbox division. This stuff might bear watching over the next year or so.

This new service has reportedly been in development for two years, and it's so far along that Google reportedly considered launching it for the Holiday 2017 season. For an unknown reason, the project was delayed. Google has started and cancelled gaming projects in the past, and right now there's no telling if this ever sees a release.

 

[Term-X]

It's hard to say. They have the resources but if their past is any indication, it seems like sometimes they just half-ass things and don't take it too seriously (whatever X software/hardware product they were devising).

 

[Maxx]

Translation: they're going to buy Rainway/Parsec and (attempt to) compete with NVIDIA but half-ass it and close the "beta" a year later

 

[Gasaraki_]

They should fix all their crap first before dipping their toes in one more project and then letting it sit around.

 

[DukenukemX]

These services never worked in 2014 and will continue to never work into the future. They are still the most painfully retarded thing ever seen. Nobody asked for this, at least not enough people to warrant making a service out of it. This is going to be like the kinect where lots of money and time will be spent for something that doesn't work... ever. Then suddenly Google, Nvidia, and Sony are stuck wondering why nobody wanted to pay a monthly fee to play games with streaming image quality and noticeable delays in their actions.

This is nearly on the same level of stupidity as T-Mobile starting a TV service in 2018.

 

[Spaceninja]

Maybe that is Nvidia, Google and AMD's game.... run up the price of cryptocurrencies, shortage of cards so no one can buy a gaming card, then sell you a subscription gaming service using all the hardware you can't buy!!! It is genius I tell you. Or it is just a stupid idea that won't work.

 

[WhoMe]

What kind of ping rate do you have to have to stream a game? Well unless they are talking about turn based games or online poker I guess. And some people I know with pretty good internet ocassionally get brief pauses while steaming movies, if that happened in a game I'm pretty sure that would be a rage quit for me .

 

[raz-0]

Maybe that is Nvidia, Google and AMD's game.... run up the price of cryptocurrencies, shortage of cards so no one can buy a gaming card, then sell you a subscription gaming service using all the hardware you can't buy!!! It is genius I tell you. Or it is just a stupid idea that won't work.

You left off that if they aren't selling gaming time, their giant cluster cna be mining or doing AI stuff. It may very well be that game streaming is getting a round two because nobody setting it up really cares if it works as it is just infrastructure that can be kept very busy while generating value. Just a thought.

 

[Comixbooks]

Google Home did pretty well I heard it's better than Amazon Echo. They really need to make a cool looking console and they might even need a game studio but that is a far reach. Maybe if they bought out Nintendo or something that would work out.

 

[oldmanbal]

please don't make another console

 

[DoubleTap]

I thought the Nvidia service worked pretty well - the only pain was having to connect the tablet to the TV and the game selection wasn't the best, but it has potential.

 

[TheBuzzer]

nvidia service does work well try it out yourself:
https://download.nvidia.com/gfnpc/GeForceNOW-release.exe - PC
https://download.nvidia.com/gfnpc/GeForceNOW-release.dmg - MAC

 

[ChadD]

There where people that said blockbuster was going no where as well.

Streaming is the future of everything like it or not... that includes gaming. imo

I look forward to watching ads during what use to be load screens... and are now the ad screens. lmao

 

[DukenukemX]

Maybe that is Nvidia, Google and AMD's game.... run up the price of cryptocurrencies, shortage of cards so no one can buy a gaming card, then sell you a subscription gaming service using all the hardware you can't buy!!! It is genius I tell you. Or it is just a stupid idea that won't work.

It's stupid because nobody will upgrade their hardware. Which basically means game developers will get stuck with 2015 level of graphics processing.

Of course this isn't a problem for consoles, at least not yet. Don't be surprised if someone finds a way to mine cryptocurrency on those things. Which I really want to see because suddenly this is a problem that effects Sony and Microsoft as well.

There where people that said blockbuster was going no where as well.

Streaming is the future of everything like it or not... that includes gaming. imo

I look forward to watching ads during what use to be load screens... and are now the ad screens. lmao

Streaming movies makes sense since that's exactly what DVD's and VHS tapes do, but right next to your TV. Latency isn't an issue cause they tend to buffer anyway. Streaming games is not the same thing. You can't buffer without latency. You'll get latency just due to distance. You're basically sending commands from your location to a server, and that server has to translate that information into a video stream that is sent back to you. No amount of technology is going to ever make this work. You are limited by the speed of light. You are limited by the law of physics, not technology.

This may work OK for games that aren't needing intense response times but those are the type of games you can typically run on a Raspberry Pi. Games like Dark Souls, Doom, and Street Fighter would never work on these services.

nvidia service does work well try it out yourself:
https://download.nvidia.com/gfnpc/GeForceNOW-release.exe - PC
https://download.nvidia.com/gfnpc/GeForceNOW-release.dmg - MAC

That's not cloud gaming. Grid is a comparable service and I can't even find a YouTube video of someone testing it. But we do know that Playstation Now doesn't work. You can see the image quality drops dramatically compared to the PS4. Streaming isn't without lost image quality.

 

[Spaceninja]

Of course this isn't a problem for consoles, at least not yet. Don't be surprised if someone finds a way to mine cryptocurrency on those things. Which I really want to see because suddenly this is a problem that effects Sony and Microsoft as well.

I'm sure it could be done on the 1st gen PS3's that would allow you to install Linux. No idea how efficient the cell CPU would be. Guess I need to do some searching now.

 

[Spidey329]

Translation: they're going to buy Rainway/Parsec and (attempt to) compete with NVIDIA but half-ass it and close the "beta" a year later

They're like a rich horder with the attention span of a goat and the follow-through of an amateur golfer. In that, they'll buy in, iterate quickly, and then get sidetracked for something else.

 

[next-Jin]

These services never worked in 2014 and will continue to never work into the future. They are still the most painfully retarded thing ever seen. Nobody asked for this, at least not enough people to warrant making a service out of it. This is going to be like the kinect where lots of money and time will be spent for something that doesn't work... ever. Then suddenly Google, Nvidia, and Sony are stuck wondering why nobody wanted to pay a monthly fee to play games with streaming image quality and noticeable delays in their actions.

This is nearly on the same level of stupidity as T-Mobile starting a TV service in 2018.

PS Now is not terrible if you have a great connection and don’t use WiFi.

It sucks with FPS and twitch games for sure but it’s still playable.

 

[DukenukemX]

PS Now is not terrible if you have a great connection and don’t use WiFi.

It sucks with FPS and twitch games for sure but it’s still playable.

Playable is a personal perspective. There are people who find a wireless mouse latency to be an issue. But keep in mind that in our modern age we sacrifice some latency for conveyance. That wireless mouse or gamepad is going to have some input lag, as well as a LCD or LED over that CRT. Now add a cloud gaming service over wifi and suddenly all these things will add up and you have an issue.

For PC users that might be less of an issue since we generally use wired keyboards and mice, as our monitors tend to have less latency than your typical home TV, but then again why is a PC user using a cloud gaming service? Our machines are so powerful that emulating a PS3 is not a problem today. Majority of PS4 games are already ported to PC. This service makes sense for someone who's playing these games on a TV, or on a laptop, but then you'll experience additional latency to your already existing latency. So the experience will be worse. Very few people will run a ethernet cable to their TV, so they'll likely use wifi.

There was a time when input latency was a big deal, and a great deal of effort was done to minimize it. Downloading the mousrate tool to measure your mouses latency, to installing Intel network adapters over something like Realtek, as they offered lower latency. Even Nvidia's network adapters for the Nofrce 1 & 2 used hypertransport to reduce network latency and to some degree so did Intel. Some people do stick with CRT monitors for latency reasons.

 

[Master_shake_]

Playable is a personal perspective. There are people who find a wireless mouse latency to be an issue. But keep in mind that in our modern age we sacrifice some latency for conveyance. That wireless mouse or gamepad is going to have some input lag, as well as a LCD or LED over that CRT. Now add a cloud gaming service over wifi and suddenly all these things will add up and you have an issue.

For PC users that might be less of an issue since we generally use wired keyboards and mice, as our monitors tend to have less latency than your typical home TV, but then again why is a PC user using a cloud gaming service? Our machines are so powerful that emulating a PS3 is not a problem today. Majority of PS4 games are already ported to PC. This service makes sense for someone who's playing these games on a TV, or on a laptop, but then you'll experience additional latency to your already existing latency. So the experience will be worse. Very few people will run a ethernet cable to their TV, so they'll likely use wifi.

There was a time when input latency was a big deal, and a great deal of effort was done to minimize it. Downloading the mousrate tool to measure your mouses latency, to installing Intel network adapters over something like Realtek, as they offered lower latency. Even Nvidia's network adapters for the Nofrce 1 & 2 used hypertransport to reduce network latency and to some degree so did Intel. Some people do stick with CRT monitors for latency reasons.

i bought an old CRT TV used just so i could play old PSx games.

it was literally impossible top make a good swing on hot shots golf on a HDTV.

 

[DukenukemX]

i bought an old CRT TV used just so i could play old PSx games.

it was literally impossible top make a good swing on hot shots golf on a HDTV.

And that's because HDTV's have to upscale older composite or S-video connections. And that's something that's literally in the TV, albeit done poorly. Imagine something that's sending a data packet to a server somewhere in the bum fuck of no where that is taking the image and then processing it to be transmitted over a possibly very congested internet connection, to be sent to your location so that a decoder chip can display the result. That's going to be a considerably larger input lag.

Companies who want to start a cloud gaming service are just hoping the input lag is acceptable for you. Everyone who's ever used one admits it's there, but just say they can learn to deal with it. Even if they were to install the server in your town, you're still going to have to deal with the delay caused by encoding and decoding the outputted image. Just like you have to deal with an HDTV upscaling an old S-Video or composite input. It's a big enough problem that there's a market for modding old consoles with native HDMI, or just whole new machines with HDMI connectors. Though personally I like emulation better.

BTW, Cool Spot on the Genesis Sound chip. Just felt like putting that out there.

 

[ChadD]

The argument about latency being a road block is silly. Connections only get better and frankly most people can't tell the difference between a LCD and CRT.

Netflix is lower resolution and in general inferior to blu ray... yet Netflix has 118 million subscribers. In the US disc (movie) revenue dropped 14% in 2017 and 10% in 2016 selling a total of 4.6 billion in the US.... compare that to 11.6 billion in revenue for Netflix. The market for higher quality content is just vastly smaller, the movie industry sold a grand total of 8.4 million 4k Blu Ray discs in 2017.

My point being simply that game streaming is already pretty darn good if you have a decent connection... and more and more people are on better then decent latency connections.

For people with a good connection... a streaming service serving up game video that has been rendered by a GPU farm is going to be 1000x better then what they where using with their 750 ti / 1050 level GPUs. (best case... lets be honest the majority of PC gamers are sadly using integrated junk more often then not) The masses are not running 1080ti sli setups... they are on mid range at best level machines.

I am not saying streaming is going to satisfy people that run out and build a new top of the line Gaming PC every year. The masses though gaming on mid range machines and consoles... ya game streaming will be as attractive as Netflix is. One of the reasons Nvidia has diversified as much as they have and focused on AI and other stuff... is I'm sure they know 10 years down the road very few people will be buying GPUs.

 

[Master_shake_]

The argument about latency being a road block is silly. Connections only get better and frankly most people can't tell the difference between a LCD and CRT.

Netflix is lower resolution and in general inferior to blu ray... yet Netflix has 118 million subscribers. In the US disc (movie) revenue dropped 14% in 2017 and 10% in 2016 selling a total of 4.6 billion in the US.... compare that to 11.6 billion in revenue for Netflix. The market for higher quality content is just vastly smaller, the movie industry sold a grand total of 8.4 million 4k Blu Ray discs in 2017.

My point being simply that game streaming is already pretty darn good if you have a decent connection... and more and more people are on better then decent latency connections.

For people with a good connection... a streaming service serving up game video that has been rendered by a GPU farm is going to be 1000x better then what they where using with their 750 ti / 1050 level GPUs. (best case... lets be honest the majority of PC gamers are sadly using integrated junk more often then not) The masses are not running 1080ti sli setups... they are on mid range at best level machines.

I am not saying streaming is going to satisfy people that run out and build a new top of the line Gaming PC every year. The masses though gaming on mid range machines and consoles... ya game streaming will be as attractive as Netflix is. One of the reasons Nvidia has diversified as much as they have and focused on AI and other stuff... is I'm sure they know 10 years down the road very few people will be buying GPUs.

Netflix is not interactive there is no input from you that requires any sort of timing.

 

[DukenukemX]

The argument about latency being a road block is silly. Connections only get better and frankly most people can't tell the difference between a LCD and CRT.

You also can't tell the difference between a wireless keyboard and mouse vs a wired one. But make no mistake, it's adding latency. Human beings are pretty good at compensating for this, and will just not notice it. At least those of us that aren't into competitive gaming. Add cloud gaming latency and suddenly you'll really notice it. And you are adding latency, not replacing it.

Netflix is lower resolution and in general inferior to blu ray... yet Netflix has 118 million subscribers. In the US disc (movie) revenue dropped 14% in 2017 and 10% in 2016 selling a total of 4.6 billion in the US.... compare that to 11.6 billion in revenue for Netflix. The market for higher quality content is just vastly smaller, the movie industry sold a grand total of 8.4 million 4k Blu Ray discs in 2017.

That's because nobody here wants to admit that there's diminishing returns when it comes to movie quality. There's a point where a Blu-Ray version of a movie isn't going to add much to the experience. Especially since the majority of the movies sold were for formats like VHS and DVD. The Blu-Ray version is just going to upscale it, which doesn't increase image quality. Add to it that Blu-Ray used to demand such a high price that the PS3 was the cheapest BR player on the market, and you can see why Netflix took off. And remember, the PS3 was more expensive than the Xbox 360, so imagine how expensive Blu-Ray players really were.

Pay less than $10 a month for nearly Blu-Ray quality vs $100 for a BR player plus $30 per movie. Back when the PS3 was released, the typical BR player was $1000 and each movie was like $50-$60. It doesn't take a genius to see why Netflix won. Most people only watch movies once and then that's it. Maybe twice if you really liked the movie.

On the other hand a Cloud gaming service requires you to buy each game and pay a monthly fee to play them. Not only that but this will create oligopolies as every game publisher will probably do what Disney is doing and go on their own. Blizzard will have a cloud service, as will EA, Uplay, and etc. Which means you'll have to play $10-$20 monthly fees for many services just to play your games. With the added bonus of latency and reduced image quality. Or you could just pick up a $500 PC and play all the games without a monthly fee or latency. We make fun of consoles for paying monthly fees to play their games online, and yet you're justifying cloud gaming?

BTW, not everyone is happy with Netflix. Nerds like us make our own media servers with black jack and hookers.

For people with a good connection... a streaming service serving up game video that has been rendered by a GPU farm is going to be 1000x better then what they where using with their 750 ti / 1050 level GPUs. (best case... lets be honest the majority of PC gamers are sadly using integrated junk more often then not) The masses are not running 1080ti sli setups... they are on mid range at best level machines.

Except it won't. How do I know that? Look at the digital foundry review of PS Now where even at the title screen there's a noticeable loss of imagine quality. A Title Fuck Screen. I think a 750 Ti can do better than that. Codec compression is not lossless. Just cause you have a server farm that's 1000x better at running a game, doesn't mean that's what you'll see on your end. How's Google's video compression doing to those Let's Play videos? Don't expect Cloud gaming to be any better.

I am not saying streaming is going to satisfy people that run out and build a new top of the line Gaming PC every year. The masses though gaming on mid range machines and consoles... ya game streaming will be as attractive as Netflix is. One of the reasons Nvidia has diversified as much as they have and focused on AI and other stuff... is I'm sure they know 10 years down the road very few people will be buying GPUs.

I guarantee you that cloud streaming will only take off if it somehow was cheaper, which we know that won't happen. Maybe if you wanted to play older PS3 games then that might make sense, but even then a cheap PS3 and used games will be 10x better than a cloud version. Remember that Netflix took off cause Blu-Rays were hella expensive for years. If the graphics card market wasn't fucked right now, a cheap $200 mid range graphics card would still be the best option to game on.

The main appeal to cloud gaming is portability. If you work at a job that requires you to travel, or you just do a lot of traveling then this makes sense over carrying around a PS4 or a cheap laptop. But if your doing a lot of traveling then good luck finding a good internet connection.

But there's the other problem with cloud gaming and that's VR gaming. If you know anything about VR is that it doesn't work well with any latency. You have to have zero latency with damn near perfect image quality. Two things cloud gaming can't do. Thanks to VRchat, VR gaming is now gaining momentum. So it won't be long before we start to see serious games make use of VR. Which basically means that cloud gaming is dead for like the 101th reason.

 

[ChadD]

Netflix is not interactive there is no input from you that requires any sort of timing.

I guess you have never played an online game right ?

Yes sending the extra video/audio data takes more pipe... but the input lag is no different then what many people have gotten used to anyway with online play.

I'm sorry the quality difference... the extra latency its just not going to matter.

The streaming services now are mostly as I see them proof of concept. Yes right now most people aren't paying a month sub to play games they have to buy anyway. Still its only a matter of time before someone builds the netflix of game streaming and it takes off.

Yes you can buy the game build a top end gaming PC and do better... that isn't the point. You can pickup a blu ray player and buy higher quality non streaming content, you can go to wal mart (for now at least) and buy audio CDs but I bet you'll just load the lower quality compressed stream on spotify or watch that episode of Dirk Gently on Netflix.... 99% of the content people consume is of the streamed variety.

I find it funny that some people think gaming is the one medium that is special somehow. The most technically demanding of the streaming services yes of course... as the interenet has grown first came audio streaming, then video, then higher quality video... gaming has already been proven to work. (yes I have seen geforcenow on a decent connection and clearly it was on par with any PC gaming I have done... I didn't notice any real lag, yes I was on a very good connection perhaps you can find some artifacts if your connection sucks but I didn't see any) Its only a matter of time before enough people have that level of connection and a company makes a big streaming push. I highly doubt the next round of consoles will have 50TB drives to store 200gb game downloads.... streaming is the future, perhaps not next month, but at some point in the next 4-5 years I have no doubt. My bet would be PS5 turns out to be nothing more then a streaming box.

 

[DukenukemX]

I guess you have never played an online game right ?

Yes sending the extra video/audio data takes more pipe... but the input lag is no different then what many people have gotten used to anyway with online play.

Online games play a trick with you on latency. It's there but what you see on screen you think is happening in real time when in reality it isn't. That's why there's certain situations where you think you got the kill when you didn't.

I'm sorry the quality difference... the extra latency its just not going to matter.

That's why so many people are using it right? I could barely find reviews for the PS Now and none for Nvidia's Grid. There's a reason for that.

I find it funny that some people think gaming is the one medium that is special somehow. The most technically demanding of the streaming services yes of course... as the interenet has grown first came audio streaming, then video, then higher quality video... gaming has already been proven to work. (yes I have seen geforcenow on a decent connection and clearly it was on par with any PC gaming I have done... I didn't notice any real lag, yes I was on a very good connection perhaps you can find some artifacts if your connection sucks but I didn't see any) Its only a matter of time before enough people have that level of connection and a company makes a big streaming push. I highly doubt the next round of consoles will have 50TB drives to store 200gb game downloads.... streaming is the future, perhaps not next month, but at some point in the next 4-5 years I have no doubt. My bet would be PS5 turns out to be nothing more then a streaming box.

All a better connection will do is increase the stream quality, but it won't fix the latency. Latency can only be fixed by physically moving the server closer to you which is something that PS Now and Nvidia's Grid probably do. But as you can imagine making sure every inch of the World, let alone America, being covered with gaming servers is difficult and expensive. Technically Netflix does this but this is to reduce bandwidth problems and not latency.

In the next 4-5 years I'll be surprised there's even a PS5 or Xbox Two X. Console gaming would be dead but not because of Cloud gaming. PC gaming though I would certainly see it live on and take over the industry. Think Steam Boxes but done better. We just need to fix video card prices which I think sometime in 2018 we'll see ASIC's take over GPU's for cryptomining. So expect the market to flood with super cheap GPU's again. BTW, maybe PowerVR could be a 3rd competitor in the GPU market? Anyone remember those guys? They were bought by some Chinese company.

 

[rudy]

I guess you have never played an online game right ?

Yes sending the extra video/audio data takes more pipe... but the input lag is no different then what many people have gotten used to anyway with online play.

I'm sorry the quality difference... the extra latency its just not going to matter.

The streaming services now are mostly as I see them proof of concept. Yes right now most people aren't paying a month sub to play games they have to buy anyway. Still its only a matter of time before someone builds the netflix of game streaming and it takes off.

Yes you can buy the game build a top end gaming PC and do better... that isn't the point. You can pickup a blu ray player and buy higher quality non streaming content, you can go to wal mart (for now at least) and buy audio CDs but I bet you'll just load the lower quality compressed stream on spotify or watch that episode of Dirk Gently on Netflix.... 99% of the content people consume is of the streamed variety.

I find it funny that some people think gaming is the one medium that is special somehow. The most technically demanding of the streaming services yes of course... as the interenet has grown first came audio streaming, then video, then higher quality video... gaming has already been proven to work. (yes I have seen geforcenow on a decent connection and clearly it was on par with any PC gaming I have done... I didn't notice any real lag, yes I was on a very good connection perhaps you can find some artifacts if your connection sucks but I didn't see any) Its only a matter of time before enough people have that level of connection and a company makes a big streaming push. I highly doubt the next round of consoles will have 50TB drives to store 200gb game downloads.... streaming is the future, perhaps not next month, but at some point in the next 4-5 years I have no doubt. My bet would be PS5 turns out to be nothing more then a streaming box.

In the early 2000s companies including valve experimented heavily with their engines and introduced several important enhancements to video games in the FPS genre. One such technology was client side prediction. This is what the poster above me is explaining. Essentially you are free to move around the map, shoot and interact with all the static items and even some dynamic items in the map as though you are playing single player on your own PC near zero latency. And while most people do not really get this, this was the start of a massive revolution in online game play that changed everything about how we play and experience games. Basically it makes your experience feel 1000 times smoother and more responsive.

The other major change that was made was latency compensation. The server takes into account when you initiated a task, such as firing your gun, then back tracks to credit you for the lag you were experiencing, it calculates this for all the players. This made it so that you as a person no longer had to do your own split second calculations to aim at a player or complete other tasks. This was also a needed part of the revolution in online gaming to allow players to really unleash the power of client side prediction. When you play a modern game with a decent system everything you do and feel is almost instant even when you have 200 ping.

These 2 technologies as well as ones related to them like interpolation changed the very essence of how we play games. Now days having small ping difference and even some pretty big ones has far less of an effect on players as the old days where ping was EVERYTHING. Second now days the aim, of players is just off the charts insane compared to anyone who wasn't playing on a LAN as compared to pre turn of the century gaming. You can go out and play any game of CSGO at any level even silver and see how quickly and accurately players hit and take down other players. And you might think that is trivial but it wasn't pre netcode. It is so powerful it has forced companies to change how games are designed because players are so easily able to hit other players. It is so popular and important that almost every game made now supports both of these features. And if anyone was ever to release a game without them people would complain that it is slow and unresponsive.

And yes they are exactly why gaming is special and different, because you aren't watching a movie locally, gaming is not a passive activity, it is active. You have to feel your environment and see it as fast as you can move and you don't want to wait for the server to send that info to you. This is fundamentally different than doing something like streaming music or watching a movie, if its off by a whole second you don't even know or feel it as long as the next frame comes in and they are smooth. But when you are playing an interactive video game you can absolutely feel it.

​

 

[tetris42]

For everyone thinking latency will be a roadblock, you're looking at it the wrong way. Of course it will be worse than playing natively, that's not the point. The point is to stream this so they can make more money off it. The games industry has proven time and time again that it will take away features and most players will put up with it as long as the game is decent. Compare what a multiplayer PC game used to get you over a decade ago:

-Private server support
-a decent FOV out of the box
-lots of configuration options
-mod support + some sort of tools / SDK
-no auto-aiming

How many AAA titles give you that nowadays? Latency is no different. In the same way twitch shooters didn't translate well to consoles because a gamepad simply couldn't keep up with a mouse, the solution was to just slow the whole game down so it wasn't an issue. Compare Halo to Unreal Tournament or Quake and it's night and day in terms of speed. It will be the same thing with latency. As long as the streaming is a money maker, you'll see studios coming out with slower paced games where the latency isn't a huge issue, because there's money to be made.

 

[ChadD]

For everyone thinking latency will be a roadblock, you're looking at it the wrong way. Of course it will be worse than playing natively, that's not the point. The point is to stream this so they can make more money off it. The games industry has proven time and time again that it will take away features and most players will put up with it as long as the game is decent. Compare what a multiplayer PC game used to get you over a decade ago:

-Private server support
-a decent FOV out of the box
-lots of configuration options
-mod support + some sort of tools / SDK
-no auto-aiming

How many AAA titles give you that nowadays? Latency is no different. In the same way twitch shooters didn't translate well to consoles because a gamepad simply couldn't keep up with a mouse, the solution was to just slow the whole game down so it wasn't an issue. Compare Halo to Unreal Tournament or Quake and it's night and day in terms of speed. It will be the same thing with latency. As long as the streaming is a money maker, you'll see studios coming out with slower paced games where the latency isn't a huge issue, because there's money to be made.

Exactly I never claimed it would be superior or that dedicated "high end" PC gamers would be impressed or even happy. Just like any audiophile is going to have a conniption if you try and force them to listen to a 320kb spotify stream (never mind the 160kb free stream). No filmophile (or is that cinaphile lol ya that's something else I'm sure) is in love with Netflix either. However Joe and Sally average know almost any song they can think of is one click away... and they can watch more tv movies and crime docs then they can find in the local wal mart cheapy bin with a Netflix sub.

The game stream services on offer right now are nothing but proof of concept. At some point one of the bigs is going to take what they have learned so far and PUSH it mainstream. Its not IF its when. My bet is google or even Sony with a PS5 that looks like a better NV shield release in 2020ish... and they (or both) will offer a Netflix like Game sub that will have more games then the average Jane and Joe could ever play, with the big developers selling their games on the service as well. The average folks aren't going to care that a $4000+ PC can do it better... their frame of reference is PS4/Xbone/Mid range at best PCs... all they will notice is they can now buy the latest greatest game and just play it the second the store says unlocked. (instead of waiting over night for the game to download 100 gb of updates before they even see a title screen). They will notice the 100s of free with the service games that also just play when you select them.

Better then current high end PCs no (better then a laptop damn ya it is)... no matter the future of course it is. Yes there are a ton of draw backs but that isn't going to stop it happening. At least on the + side if such a service comes a long you will never again have to fight with Cryptominers over GPU stock. lmao

 

[DukenukemX]

For everyone thinking latency will be a roadblock, you're looking at it the wrong way. Of course it will be worse than playing natively, that's not the point. The point is to stream this so they can make more money off it. The games industry has proven time and time again that it will take away features and most players will put up with it as long as the game is decent. Compare what a multiplayer PC game used to get you over a decade ago:

The thing is most of the practices done that gamers hate are done to the point where you most likely won't notice it. Most people don't know about Day1DLC and most people don't think about loot boxes. Latency though, that's something you're reminded of constantly. To the point that every time you die you'll blame it on the lag and rage quit.

-Private server support
-a decent FOV out of the box
-lots of configuration options
-mod support + some sort of tools / SDK
-no auto-aiming

Private servers isn't something that is entirely up to the company. Take World of Warcraft for example where there's a lot of illegal private servers. If people want it, they'll create it. Mods is another thing that isn't decided by companies. We're going to mod it, no questions asked. We'll make girls naked with large tits.

How many AAA titles give you that nowadays? Latency is no different. In the same way twitch shooters didn't translate well to consoles because a gamepad simply couldn't keep up with a mouse, the solution was to just slow the whole game down so it wasn't an issue. Compare Halo to Unreal Tournament or Quake and it's night and day in terms of speed. It will be the same thing with latency. As long as the streaming is a money maker, you'll see studios coming out with slower paced games where the latency isn't a huge issue, because there's money to be made.

I guarantee that nobody will buy into streaming. For one, it isn't cost effective. Consumers like to pay less, not more. Take PS Now for example where you pay $10 per month to play any PS3 game, but a used PS3 is $50 and each game is $5. A years worth of PS Now is going to be $120. You could instead buy a PS3 and get like over 10 games. Each additional year with PS Now is another $120. The Geforce Now service is said to be $25 dollars for 20 hours and you have to have the games in Steam. In 160 hours you could have bought a mid range graphics card.

LiquidSky which is a cloud gaming service charges $20 per month or $10 for every 25 hours. Going the cheapest route of $20 per month, that's $240 per year. I'm pretty sure I haven't spent half that much in playing games in 2017. I bought my RX 480 in 2016 for $240 and it's still fast for gaming.

 

[DukenukemX]

Exactly I never claimed it would be superior or that dedicated "high end" PC gamers would be impressed or even happy. Just like any audiophile is going to have a conniption if you try and force them to listen to a 320kb spotify stream (never mind the 160kb free stream). No filmophile (or is that cinaphile lol ya that's something else I'm sure) is in love with Netflix either. However Joe and Sally average know almost any song they can think of is one click away... and they can watch more tv movies and crime docs then they can find in the local wal mart cheapy bin with a Netflix sub.

You keep thinking this is equivalent to high end gaming PC when it really isn't. Video compression loses a lot of image quality especially in fast moving scenes. Also consider that movies are 24 fps where PC games are 60 fps. You're not getting the equivalent to a high end gaming PC. It just isn't good even compared to a 750 Ti.

The game stream services on offer right now are nothing but proof of concept. At some point one of the bigs is going to take what they have learned so far and PUSH it mainstream. Its not IF its when. My bet is google or even Sony with a PS5 that looks like a better NV shield release in 2020ish... and they (or both) will offer a Netflix like Game sub that will have more games then the average Jane and Joe could ever play, with the big developers selling their games on the service as well. The average folks aren't going to care that a $4000+ PC can do it better... their frame of reference is PS4/Xbone/Mid range at best PCs... all they will notice is they can now buy the latest greatest game and just play it the second the store says unlocked. (instead of waiting over night for the game to download 100 gb of updates before they even see a title screen). They will notice the 100s of free with the service games that also just play when you select them.

Better then current high end PCs no (better then a laptop damn ya it is)... no matter the future of course it is. Yes there are a ton of draw backs but that isn't going to stop it happening. At least on the + side if such a service comes a long you will never again have to fight with Cryptominers over GPU stock. lmao

The only way they can push cloud gaming is if they make exclusive games for it, which won't happen. Nobody is going to make an exclusive AAA game for a service that nobody is going to want. Introduce multiplayer competitive games and it'll really not take off.

 

[tetris42]

The thing is most of the practices done that gamers hate are done to the point where you most likely won't notice it. Most people don't know about Day1DLC and most people don't think about loot boxes. Latency though, that's something you're reminded of constantly. To the point that every time you die you'll blame it on the lag and rage quit.

It's all done gradually. Making the game, then selling the ending as DLC used to be a joke, then Alan Wake and Dead Space 3 happened. A lack of private servers is something that Modern Warfare 2 players DEFINITELY noticed and boycotted the game on...

Only to reinforce my point that gamers will accept ANYTHING if the game is decent. Again, you're saying gamers will be reminded of latency all the time. Sure, on TODAY's games. If there's enough incentive behind it by publishers, they'll simply push more games where a slight delay doesn't matter. I used to think people would never want to seriously play a FPS on a gamepad because it was inferior in every way to a mouse and you would simply be at a pure disadvantage and reminded of it every time you tried to play. Look at how that turned out. In the same way almost all console FPSs have aiming assist, we'll probably see latency assists in the future also.

Private servers isn't something that is entirely up to the company. Take World of Warcraft for example where there's a lot of illegal private servers. If people want it, they'll create it.

That's a very cherry picked example, considering how the code for the WoW server was stolen to begin with in order to create the server emulator. Where are the private servers for The Division, Destiny 1 + 2, Diablo 3, Path of Exile, etc.? I would think people would certainly like them for those games, yet here we are with them not created. You're trying to compare something like Quake, where a private server is easy as clicking on "host game" to a server emulator that requires reverse engineering game probably with a small team of people for years, assuming it ever even happens. These are not the same things at all.

Mods is another thing that isn't decided by companies. We're going to mod it, no questions asked. We'll make girls naked with large tits.

If a company wants their files locked down and unmodified, you won't be able to mod shit. As long as the game checks in with a server and a modification is seen as a cheat and you're promptly banned, the modding stops there. Overwatch is a very popular game, where are all the custom maps for that? Oh right, there aren't any because there's no support for that.

I guarantee that nobody will buy into streaming. For one, it isn't cost effective. Consumers like to pay less, not more. Take PS Now for example where you pay $10 per month to play any PS3 game, but a used PS3 is $50 and each game is $5. A years worth of PS Now is going to be $120. You could instead buy a PS3 and get like over 10 games. Each additional year with PS Now is another $120. The Geforce Now service is said to be $25 dollars for 20 hours and you have to have the games in Steam. In 160 hours you could have bought a mid range graphics card.

All it takes is a few solid exclusives and players will start moving onboard. Imagine for a second The Last of Us 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Death Stranding, and a new Zelda game all came out as stream-exclusives with latency assist mechanics to minimize the impact. You think no players would hop over? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I WANT streaming or think it's something desirable in the slightest, I just think you're severely underestimating the amount of bullshit gamers will put up with so long as there's a good game behind it.

 

[ChadD]

You keep thinking this is equivalent to high end gaming PC when it really isn't. Video compression loses a lot of image quality especially in fast moving scenes. Also consider that movies are 24 fps where PC games are 60 fps. You're not getting the equivalent to a high end gaming PC. It just isn't good even compared to a 750 Ti.

The only way they can push cloud gaming is if they make exclusive games for it, which won't happen. Nobody is going to make an exclusive AAA game for a service that nobody is going to want. Introduce multiplayer competitive games and it'll really not take off.

I have seen it for myself... and yes streaming on the shield is comparable to a 1080ti with everything jacked to ultra. (perhaps the playstation service is less then beats me have no experience with it) People claiming otherwise are purposely messing with their connections or something. I never saw the fuzzy gaussian blur type effect they are claiming. Either they doing something really really wrong or trying to use the service on the worst internet they could buy for 10 bucks a month.

 

[DukenukemX]

It's all done gradually. Making the game, then selling the ending as DLC used to be a joke, then Alan Wake and Dead Space 3 happened. A lack of private servers is something that Modern Warfare 2 players DEFINITELY noticed and boycotted the game on...

Only to reinforce my point that gamers will accept ANYTHING if the game is decent. Again, you're saying gamers will be reminded of latency all the time. Sure, on TODAY's games. If there's enough incentive behind it by publishers, they'll simply push more games where a slight delay doesn't matter. I used to think people would never want to seriously play a FPS on a gamepad because it was inferior in every way to a mouse and you would simply be at a pure disadvantage and reminded of it every time you tried to play. Look at how that turned out. In the same way almost all console FPSs have aiming assist, we'll probably see latency assists in the future also.

I never played Modern Warfare type games cause they're beneath me, but a quick Google shows that there's private servers for that game. Also private servers for MW3. Unless they're illegal private servers?

That's a very cherry picked example, considering how the code for the WoW server was stolen to begin with in order to create the server emulator. Where are the private servers for The Division, Destiny 1 + 2, Diablo 3, Path of Exile, etc.? I would think people would certainly like them for those games, yet here we are with them not created. You're trying to compare something like Quake, where a private server is easy as clicking on "host game" to a server emulator that requires reverse engineering game probably with a small team of people for years, assuming it ever even happens. These are not the same things at all.

No it's not stolen code. WoW servers run off an open source project called MaNGOS. Light's Hope Github was taken down due to using the same in game text for quests and dialog. But that may fall under fair use.

https://github.com/mangos/MaNGOS

https://forum.lightshope.org/viewtopic.php?t=10232

If a company wants their files locked down and unmodified, you won't be able to mod shit. As long as the game checks in with a server and a modification is seen as a cheat and you're promptly banned, the modding stops there. Overwatch is a very popular game, where are all the custom maps for that? Oh right, there aren't any because there's no support for that.

We're talking about the same companies who put denuvo in their games and is cracked in like a day? GTA has OpenIV stopped to prevent modding but that didn't exactly do anything to the modders. As for OverWatch, there just isn't a server emulator yet. Anything you do to the game will get you banned, so any proper mods will need a server emulator. Just a matter of time, especially if OverWatch has no plans to allow mods, maps, and etc. The game won't last without these.

Plus people do play TF2 and we know how many active players are. Blizzard won't tell us how many play OverWatch. I played OverWatch for three months and hit platinum and then stopped. How many active OverWatch players you think still play?

PUBG - 2,367,018 peak today
Counter Strike - 639,968 peak today
Team Fortress 2 - 97,248 peak today

All it takes is a few solid exclusives and players will start moving onboard. Imagine for a second The Last of Us 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Death Stranding, and a new Zelda game all came out as stream-exclusives with latency assist mechanics to minimize the impact. You think no players would hop over? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I WANT streaming or think it's something desirable in the slightest, I just think you're severely underestimating the amount of bullshit gamers will put up with so long as there's a good game behind it.

Like I said, cloud gamings disadvantages are too apparent compared to microtransactions, DLC, and loot boxes. You will know right away the faults of cloud gaming, where as the other things I've mentioned take time. It'll take you a while to realize that Shadow of War has microtransactions in a single player game. The issues with cloud gaming are apparent as soon as you press a button.

Also keep in mind that if there was a really good game that was exclusive to the cloud, what do you think a small but vocal angry bunch of gamers would do? It's someone else's computer sitting some place on the internet. Think about that for a sec. What could a bunch of angry nerds do? Oh that's right, DDOS the shit out of it. How would you like to be playing your single player game only to disconnect due to a DDOS? Unlike Sony a few years ago that got DDOS up their ass, the community would totally back them up. They'd be forced to release a local copy of the game cause they couldn't make their money back either way.

Even Nintendo who refuses to port their games to other platforms has to deal with consequences. Look at Zelda Breath of the Wild that was running on PC a week after it's release. Now there's a Switch emulator for PC too. There are consequences for making games exclusive to a platform.

 

[DukenukemX]

I have seen it for myself... and yes streaming on the shield is comparable to a 1080ti with everything jacked to ultra. (perhaps the playstation service is less then beats me have no experience with it) People claiming otherwise are purposely messing with their connections or something. I never saw the fuzzy gaussian blur type effect they are claiming. Either they doing something really really wrong or trying to use the service on the worst internet they could buy for 10 bucks a month.

A shield doesn't have a very large screen. Unless you have a shield hooked up to a TV? I'd really like to see people use these services to play games like Dark Souls. I would find it entertaining just to see how things will go.

 

[tetris42]

I never played Modern Warfare type games cause they're beneath me, but a quick Google shows that there's private servers for that game. Also private servers for MW3. Unless they're illegal private servers?

I haven't played it either, but MW2 made a big splash when it came out because the developers purposefully removed private servers and there was one of the first gaming boycotts because of it. The point was that even though there was a "boycott", most of them were hypocrites and bought the game anyway, in other words, they accepted the loss of features and bought the game anyway. Modern Warfare 2 did not fail because they removed features. As for private servers now, I'm not sure when those emerged, and yes, they are all illegal ones.

No it's not stolen code. WoW servers run off an open source project called MaNGOS. Light's Hope Github was taken down due to using the same in game text for quests and dialog. But that may fall under fair use.

The new one may not, but years earlier the original emulated WoW servers (WoWemu I think it was called) DID use stolen code, which I believe was later modified to not infringe upon Blizzard's code. In other words, modern WoW emulator code to the best of my knowledge only exists because developers were able to get a peek of the source code illegally and work from that. My point in all this is that this is hardly a typical situation. In addition to having leaked code, it was one of the most popular games in the world. That's why I named other popular games that have no private server functionality.

We're talking about the same companies who put denuvo in their games and is cracked in like a day?

You don't get it, if a company doesn't want it modded or cracked, it doesn't get cracked. Did Destiny, Diablo 3, The Division, Steep, Need For Speed 2015, The Crew, For Honor, Overwatch etc. get cracked? Those all have a 0% piracy rate and no mods and have been major games. Mods are for games where the developer doesn't actively block them.

GTA has OpenIV stopped to prevent modding but that didn't exactly do anything to the modders.

Yes it did. It threatened to shut down the vast majority of mods for the game. It only wasn't a huge issue because Rockstar agreed to bring it back for single player. They only survived because the company allowed it. Even now, I believe mods for GTA V are banned for multiplayer.

As for OverWatch, there just isn't a server emulator yet. Anything you do to the game will get you banned, so any proper mods will need a server emulator. Just a matter of time, especially if OverWatch has no plans to allow mods, maps, and etc. The game won't last without these.

Whether it lasts or not is irrelevant. The point is that's a game that had massive publicity and at least 35 million in sales. That says to me there was a rampant demand for more content, like custom maps, mods, etc. The fact that none exist says it's up to the developer whether mods can exist or not. You're talking like they can't be stopped, whereas a game like Overwatch couldn't make it more obvious that mods can be stopped completely in their tracks.

Like I said, cloud gamings disadvantages are too apparent compared to microtransactions, DLC, and loot boxes. You will know right away the faults of cloud gaming, where as the other things I've mentioned take time. It'll take you a while to realize that Shadow of War has microtransactions in a single player game. The issues with cloud gaming are apparent as soon as you press a button.

And I know right away when I'm aiming with a gamepad instead of a mouse and what a massive handicap it is. That did exactly jack shit to stop it from becoming an industry standard or Halo from becoming a best seller. Same goes for having an FOV so zoomed in I want to throw up. Dead Space had an FOV of what felt like 40 degrees and that had great sales.

Also keep in mind that if there was a really good game that was exclusive to the cloud, what do you think a small but vocal angry bunch of gamers would do?

Complain and buy the game anyway. See MW2.

It's someone else's computer sitting some place on the internet. Think about that for a sec. What could a bunch of angry nerds do? Oh that's right, DDOS the shit out of it. How would you like to be playing your single player game only to disconnect due to a DDOS? Unlike Sony a few years ago that got DDOS up their ass, the community would totally back them up.

Yeah geez, that ended up being so damaging to them in the long term they ended up being on top this console generation AND decided to charge money for their previously free online service, which gamers accepted gladly as another shit sandwich. They could DDOS it for sure, but it would be temporary and not matter in the long run. Sony would get the sales and keep pushing forward. Hell, Diablo 3 couldn't even run on launch because it had so much traffic and that went on to be a best seller.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Gamers will put up with ANYTHING if there's a good game behind it. None of your examples speak the contrary.

 

[ChadD]

A shield doesn't have a very large screen. Unless you have a shield hooked up to a TV? I'd really like to see people use these services to play games like Dark Souls. I would find it entertaining just to see how things will go.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/shield-tv/

Sort of how they work... I'm not talking about the 10 year old shield tablet. Yes someone in my family has a nice high end fiber connection and a shield box... looks fantastic, and if there was any lag in what I saw it was undetectable by me, I won't claim to be the most astute in that regard I get that some people claim to see the difference between 120hz and 240hz. I don't never have and to my eyes the shield box streaming games on a 60" TV put pretty much anything I had seen before to shame. Now I get not everyone today is on a nice fiber connection... but that will change.

 

[leezard]

That's not cloud gaming. Grid is a comparable service and I can't even find a YouTube video of someone testing it. But we do know that Playstation Now doesn't work. You can see the image quality drops dramatically compared to the PS4. Streaming isn't without lost image quality.

How is GeForce now not cloud gaming? Before i left for work i was playing Overwatch on max settings on my old ass Samsung laptop with an i7 2675QM CPU and an AMD 6400M GPU. The same game running locally on the same laptop barely runs on low settings. I played PUBG on my desktop, but streaming via GeForce now and could tell no difference between streaming it and running it locally.

Its not something I would pay for to use on my desktop, but it has turned my ancient laptop into a mobile gaming machine.

 

[DukenukemX]

You don't get it, if a company doesn't want it modded or cracked, it doesn't get cracked. Did Destiny, Diablo 3, The Division, Steep, Need For Speed 2015, The Crew, For Honor, Overwatch etc. get cracked? Those all have a 0% piracy rate and no mods and have been major games. Mods are for games where the developer doesn't actively block them.

Destiny was console only and as far as I know it was a controversial game too, which is why any interest to crack or hack it was low. Diablo 3 was cracked a long time ago, but only as a single player. D3 wasn't exactly well received among people with a user score of 4.0. The Division is also another failed multiplayer game. Need for Speed 2015 got a user rating of 5.1, so I wouldn't expect many people to car to pirate this game. The Crew was almost as bad. For Honor also got a 5.3. OverWatch is relatively new but quickly dying in popularity due to a lack of features that CS:GO has like custom maps and skins.
If you haven't noticed but for anything to be pirated it first must be worth doing the work. Bad games get ignored. This is why a Wii U emulator exists while a PS4 and Xbox One emulator doesn't exist. Or why a Xbox original emulator has no work done to it. World of Warcraft server emulator isn't easy to create, and requires a ton of work, but WoW is one of the larger MMO's in existence. Even pirates don't want bad games.

Yes it did. It threatened to shut down the vast majority of mods for the game. It only wasn't a huge issue because Rockstar agreed to bring it back for single player. They only survived because the company allowed it. Even now, I believe mods for GTA V are banned for multiplayer.

Generally modding is for single player games, cause it would obviously cause an imbalance in multiplayer. But either way mods would have been created. There's custom roms for old Genesis and SNES games without any support from Sega or Nintendo. In fact UnderTale started off as a custom rom before it became a stand alone game.

There are even mods for Zelda Breath of the Wild on the Cemu emulator. Now that's PC Mater Race as fuck.

Whether it lasts or not is irrelevant. The point is that's a game that had massive publicity and at least 35 million in sales. That says to me there was a rampant demand for more content, like custom maps, mods, etc. The fact that none exist says it's up to the developer whether mods can exist or not. You're talking like they can't be stopped, whereas a game like Overwatch couldn't make it more obvious that mods can be stopped completely in their tracks.

People are definitely working to make a server emulator for OverWatch, but it just hasn't gotten enough interest to do so. Either that or someone needs more time.

And I know right away when I'm aiming with a gamepad instead of a mouse and what a massive handicap it is. That did exactly jack shit to stop it from becoming an industry standard or Halo from becoming a best seller. Same goes for having an FOV so zoomed in I want to throw up. Dead Space had an FOV of what felt like 40 degrees and that had great sales.

When you play games on a console you don't have a choice but to use the gamepad. Just the nature of sitting on a couch. Cloud gaming is a choice.

Yeah geez, that ended up being so damaging to them in the long term they ended up being on top this console generation AND decided to charge money for their previously free online service, which gamers accepted gladly as another shit sandwich. They could DDOS it for sure, but it would be temporary and not matter in the long run. Sony would get the sales and keep pushing forward. Hell, Diablo 3 couldn't even run on launch because it had so much traffic and that went on to be a best seller.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Gamers will put up with ANYTHING if there's a good game behind it. None of your examples speak the contrary.

I don't know but losing 170 million is pretty damaging. The PS4's success has to do with Microsoft pushing players to not be able to play used games. Microsoft was so certain of this that the Launch Xbox One's still had the firmware that prevented used games and these machines needed to be patched. To this day Microsoft is suffering cause they tried to push their consumers into a practice they didn't want, and they're still paying for it to this day. Kinda sounds like what would happen if anyone tried to push consumers into the cloud.

This video pretty much fucked Microsoft over for all of the Xbox One's life. And that's used games. Cloud gaming would be far worse.

 

[tetris42]

Destiny was console only and as far as I know it was a controversial game too, which is why any interest to crack or hack it was low. Diablo 3 was cracked a long time ago, but only as a single player. D3 wasn't exactly well received among people with a user score of 4.0. The Division is also another failed multiplayer game. Need for Speed 2015 got a user rating of 5.1, so I wouldn't expect many people to car to pirate this game. The Crew was almost as bad. For Honor also got a 5.3. OverWatch is relatively new but quickly dying in popularity due to a lack of features that CS:GO has like custom maps and skins.
If you haven't noticed but for anything to be pirated it first must be worth doing the work. Bad games get ignored. This is why a Wii U emulator exists while a PS4 and Xbox One emulator doesn't exist. Or why a Xbox original emulator has no work done to it. World of Warcraft server emulator isn't easy to create, and requires a ton of work, but WoW is one of the larger MMO's in existence. Even pirates don't want bad games.

You're grasping at straws here. Even the shittiest of games get pirated if they use traditional protection, they don't get ignored. I bet you can find cracked copies of Aliens: Colonial Marines, Ride to Hell Retribution, and No Man's Sky no problem. You're telling me those are all better than the games I mentioned? Meanwhile, Path of Exile gets an 8.1 on metacritic, The Division gets a 7.1, broke Ubisoft records for sales, neither of those games are cracked or modded. That's because they lock down the files so that you would have to make a server emulator to make them. As for Diablo 3, that got review bombed because of the auction house. Wouldn't that make people want to mod it MORE? It got 30 million in sales. That's about as high profile as you get, yet no mods.

You're mentioning Overwatch is dying in popularity again. So what? At one point it was extremely popular with 35 million in sales and we get no mods. Whether we get mods or nots DEPENDS ON THE DEVS. I don't understand how you don't get this. Here, it's easy:
-Mod tools provided = mods made
-Accessible files + popular game = mods made
-Locked down game structure= NO MODS except under very rare circumstances (like WoW being the most popular game in the world at one point + leaked server code)

People are definitely working to make a server emulator for OverWatch, but it just hasn't gotten enough interest to do so. Either that or someone needs more time.

Well if 35 million in sales + almost 2 years of being out isn't enough interest to have any mods, then uh, sure. That's all it is, lack of interest.

When you play games on a console you don't have a choice but to use the gamepad. Just the nature of sitting on a couch. Cloud gaming is a choice.

And console gaming isn't? Again, if one good exclusive came to the cloud, that's all it would take for a shift. It's happened time and time again. We're still struggling to get higher than 30fps on many console games today. That's not an immediately noticeable downgrade? Or maybe enough people don't care because the game is good, so they get away with a framerate that would be unplayable for some PC players? Latency is going to be the same thing.

This video pretty much fucked Microsoft over for all of the Xbox One's life. And that's used games. Cloud gaming would be far worse.

The Xbox One presentation was a complete dumpster fire by every metric. They offered nothing but restrictions, no benefit, and cryptic messaging. If they had a brain and downplayed the restrictions and launched with half a dozen must-have titles, they might have gotten away with it. They shot themselves in the foot so spectacularly it's one of the only times I've actually seen a pushback that they caved into. Christ, just look at what they got away with for Windows 10.

 

[DukenukemX]

You're grasping at straws here. Even the shittiest of games get pirated if they use traditional protection, they don't get ignored. I bet you can find cracked copies of Aliens: Colonial Marines, Ride to Hell Retribution, and No Man's Sky no problem. You're telling me those are all better than the games I mentioned? Meanwhile, Path of Exile gets an 8.1 on metacritic, The Division gets a 7.1, broke Ubisoft records for sales, neither of those games are cracked or modded. That's because they lock down the files so that you would have to make a server emulator to make them. As for Diablo 3, that got review bombed because of the auction house. Wouldn't that make people want to mod it MORE? It got 30 million in sales. That's about as high profile as you get, yet no mods.

Shit games get pirated if it's easy enough. Shit game that need a lot of work won't be cracked and pirated. Like I said, there's no Xbox original emulator in existence that's anywhere near the level of the CEMU emulator of the Wii U. Nintendo consoles have traditionally been emulated long before any Playstation or other consoles. Simply because Nintendo has more exclusive games that are worth it.

As for Diablo 3, the auction house was removed years ago, but that did nothing to help it's rating. The game is a farm-o-thon and people don't like that. Destiny 2 is a repetitive farming piece of shit but that game made them serious money. Just cause it made money doesn't mean the game was good. More than likely Diablo 3 owes its sales to Diablo 2, as does Destiny 2 owe its success to Destiny 1. Consumers have a hard time catching on to bad games, but it does catch up to these bad practices.

You're mentioning Overwatch is dying in popularity again. So what? At one point it was extremely popular with 35 million in sales and we get no mods. Whether we get mods or nots DEPENDS ON THE DEVS. I don't understand how you don't get this. Here, it's easy:
-Mod tools provided = mods made
-Accessible files + popular game = mods made
-Locked down game structure= NO MODS except under very rare circumstances (like WoW being the most popular game in the world at one point + leaked server code)

Because if Blizzard wants to continue Overwatch's success then they need to open up and allow for custom maps, skins, and mods. There are sighs of people moving away from OverWatch so a mod is less likely to happen. Popularity determines if a game is modded, not the devs.

Skyrim never had mod support initially, but due to popularity it was remastered with mod support. Though most people who play Skyrim play the original and not the mod friendly remastered version. PUBG currently has no mod support but it certainly has mods. They will add mod support but that didn't stop people from creating them.

Overwatch is just not popular anymore. Not popular enough to warrant someone to make a server emulator and create mods.

Well if 35 million in sales + almost 2 years of being out isn't enough interest to have any mods, then uh, sure. That's all it is, lack of interest.

Pokemon go was 35 million in active users and now it's 5 million. Still a lot but without anything fresh to add then the game it drops rapidly in population. TF2 has been around since like what, 2008? A game that still gets meme'd to this day. Overwatch has limited maps with skins you have to either get lucky to acquire or loot box your way. Not that TF2 isn't a dead game itself but it certainly held up better than OverWatch will. Blizzard had the right idea in that they released characters with lots of sex appeal and now everything is SJW friendly. But even that has its limits.

And console gaming isn't? Again, if one good exclusive came to the cloud, that's all it would take for a shift. It's happened time and time again. We're still struggling to get higher than 30fps on many console games today. That's not an immediately noticeable downgrade? Or maybe enough people don't care because the game is good, so they get away with a framerate that would be unplayable for some PC players? Latency is going to be the same thing.

If you haven't noticed the Xbox One has half the sales of the PS4 while PC gaming has grown tremendously this generation. Nearly every PC game has nearly equal sales to the PS4. That would have been unheard of back when the 360 and PS3 were killing PC gaming.

As for 30fps, it's not like there was ever a time period that console games did 60fps. I can still remember playing MegaManX2 on the Super Nintendo where some parts of the game would slow down severely. Star Fox got 19 fps. Ocarina of Time got 20 fps, and 17 in PAL version. Today's 30 fps seems to be an upgrade over games of the past.

Basically 60fps is a PC exclusive feature in most cases. Very few console games of the past and present achieved this. BTW pay attention to Linus here with his SNES hooked up to a LCD TV blaming his bad performance on input lag. Not exactly something people will shrug off.