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Google Is Planning a Game Platform That Could Take On Xbox and PlayStation (kotaku.com) 149

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Kotaku: We haven't heard many specifics about Google's video game plans, but what we have heard is that it's a three-pronged approach: 1) Some sort of streaming platform, 2) some sort of hardware, and 3) an attempt to bring game developers under the Google umbrella, whether through aggressive recruiting or even major acquisitions. That's the word from five people who have either been briefed on Google's plans or heard about them secondhand.

So what is this streaming platform, exactly? Like Nvidia's GeForce Now, the Google service would offload the work of rendering graphics to beefy computers elsewhere, allowing even the cheapest PCs to play high-end games. The biggest advantage of streaming, as opposed to physical discs or downloads, is that it removes hardware barriers for games. Whispers have been quieter about Google's hardware, whatever that may look like, but the rumors we've heard suggest that it will link up with the streaming service in some way. We're not sure whether Google is looking to compete with the technical specs of the next PlayStation and Xbox or whether this Google console will be cheaper and low-end, relying on the streaming service to pull weight.
The streaming platform, which is code-named Yeti, was first reported by the website The Information earlier this year.
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Google Is Planning a Game Platform That Could Take On Xbox and PlayStation

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  • by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @08:04AM (#56864750)
    Google will soon be able to display ads at twice the frame rate of the competition.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      and the latency will be shit, for everything except their ads.

      has any company done this, and actually dealt with the latency issues? what good is a streaming system if you can't play any games that require speed and precision. laggy gameplay for the win!

      • Latency is largely out of their control - it's a pile up of middle men.

        What they did do is shut down the service and discontinue the game because it was too costly... every single time.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Stage clear? Time for that cutscene.. I mean, adscene.
      Continue? Instant (DLC) or... after adscene.
      You picked that first-aid kit on the ground for some extra health? That was an offer from... adscene.

      Damn, my oldschool gamer soul cried imagining what is lurking on the corner.

      Captcha: reject.

    • if we are lucky, it will go fast enough that nobody will see them.
  • To bad that google fiber is not bigger as that is what they need to make RDP gameing good.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    They will learn absolutely everything there is to know about your brain by harvesting your gameplay data.

    Stay away.....

    • by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      Honestly I don't think there's much marketing data to be gleaned from how long you play certain titles. You already finished the economic transaction of buying the game, they just need to know which titles you buy, not the ones you actually play.

    • Is this now? Analysis. Why have you frozen my motor functions? Must I keep wearing the hat? My fidelity is perfect.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29, 2018 @08:09AM (#56864778)

    The biggest problem with streaming will

    only to find that the delay is too much for you to enjoy

    always be lag. You'll press a button or take an action

    the game and that your actions come out in a

    different order to what you were expecting.

  • by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @08:16AM (#56864818)

    The biggest advantage of streaming, as opposed to physical discs or downloads, is that it removes hardware barriers for games.

    That's debatable. What's not debatable is that it adds new, probably insurmountable barriers.

    The biggest "advantage" is DRM via the tightest leash imaginable, 100% to the benefit of the publisher, not the gamer. I'll quote an earlier post instead of retyping it:

    https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]

    This is how I always explain streaming games to people who can't immediately see the horrible problems with them:

    Imagine if the old Ubisoft always-on DRM were an inherent, unremoveable aspect of the game system rather than just something tacked on to a few individual games after the fact, such that Ubisoft couldn't even begrudgingly neuter it in a patch. Well, a streamed game is even worse than that would be.

    The game doesn't even run locally. All you get is streaming video/audio and all the lag you'd expect (including controller lag), which is a recipe for disaster in North America. And any interruption in the connection that lasts more than a few tenths of a second is going to behave like the equivalent of a "freeze" or "hang" that you'd NEVER tolerate in a properly local-hosted game. Not even the most twitchy DRM existing today has that problem.

    Some people consider IPS monitors unsuitable for games requiring fast reflexes (i.e. FPSes) due to their double-digit response times. Internet latency is often worse and certainly more unpredictable than LCD monitor response time, and with streamed games it applies to audio and keyboard/controller/etc input too.

    Then there are the bandwidth requirements.

    Let's say you're lucky enough to have a 30mb/s connection. Why would you want to use it to transfer your game's video instead of, uh, a DVI cable, which is capable of 4 Gb/s? The people who developed DVI apparently understood that that 1920 x 1200 pixels w/ 24 bits/pixels @ 60Hz results in bandwidth well over 3 Gb/s. The people who developed streamed games seem very, very confused (at best).

    Those of us who know anything about bandwidth and compression and (especially) latency can see the enormous technical obstacles facing a service like this, and Onlive never did anything to explain how they intended to solve them. Instead, they did everything they could to lock out independent reviewers with NDAs and closed demonstrations. A friend of mine described it as the gaming equivalent of the perpetual motion scam, and IMO that's spot on (except that streamed games would still have the draconian DRM issues even if it worked perfectly).

    Streamed games appear designed from the ground up to benefit the game publishers and fuck the customers, exactly what you'd expect from any DRM system.

    P.S. Remember when Microsoft intended 24-hour XBox One check-ins, and gamers rejected that? How the fuck are mandatory check ins going to fly when measured in milliseconds?

    • It also has the disadvantage that if the network goes away, so does your ability to play the games. I can pull out an original NES, and with a little effort, hook it up to a TV and play the old games. If Google loses interest in gaming in a year or two, you're sunk.
    • You have to separate the rendering pipeline into multiple parts. The server side can do a lot of the heavy lifting of calculating polygons, etc but it does not need to send every pixel to the client device. It only needs to send the description. Think something along the lines of a PDF doc that describes the scene to be rendered. If the hardware on the client side is optimized to render that then it can be done. At least, that's how I would do it if someone paid me tons of money to attempt to do it.
      • You have to separate the rendering pipeline into multiple parts. The server side can do a lot of the heavy lifting of calculating polygons, etc but it does not need to send every pixel to the client device. It only needs to send the description. Think something along the lines of a PDF doc that describes the scene to be rendered. If the hardware on the client side is optimized to render that then it can be done. At least, that's how I would do it if someone paid me tons of money to attempt to do it.

        You've j

  • " 1) Some sort of streaming platform, 2) some sort of hardware, and 3) an attempt to bring game developers under the Google umbrella"

    Well, plans don't get any more concrete than that, do they?

    Hey, remember all those Google hardware initiatives that were runaway smash hits?

    Me neither...

    • by tepples ( 727027 )

      Hey, remember all those Google hardware initiatives that were runaway smash hits?

      There used to be Nexus (affordable phones running stock Android with an unlockable bootloader), but that was it.

      • I miss the days of signs in bars saying "glassholes are not welcome here". But I am looking forward to the anger in SF seething over and a mob of angry citizens tipping over tech busses and slaughtering everyone inside. That days is coming. The people can only suffer so much cluelessly smug elitism for so long
        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          What are they angry about? Don't they realize that Musk and the other tech CEOs are taking us to the promised land (Mars)?
    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      Meanwhile, what does Google really have to offer any gamers? There are other platforms that have everything Google is talking about, plus an attractive library of first party games, decades of experience in the industry, and a large international customer base. Why would anyone choose Google? It’s going to take a long time and a lot of money for Google to get the answer it wants to that question.

    • " 1) Some sort of streaming platform, 2) some sort of hardware, and 3) an attempt to bring game developers under the Google umbrella"

      Well, plans don't get any more concrete than that, do they?

      Hey, remember all those Google hardware initiatives that were runaway smash hits?

      Me neither...

      Well... there was the Nexus 7.... It was small enough and portable enough that I could throw it in my cargo-shorts and large enough to browse the web (phones are too small for this), read books, etc. But that was built by ASUS and Google discontinued it... stupid Google!!

      and Google Chromecast... I've never used it but it's been selling.....

      But, I agree. I don't see the room for another gaming system. I figured that this had been proven by the lack of interest in the Steam gaming systems.
      https://www. [pcgamer.com]

    • I'm more concerned about all those Google software initiatives that are no longer in existence.

    • > Hey, remember all those Google hardware initiatives that were runaway smash hits?
      > Me neither...

      Chromecast, Nexus, Pixel, Chromebooks, Google Home, Google wifi? None of those ring a bell? To say nothing of what they've bought such as Nest?

  • Built-in always on camera and microphone in my living room. Let's put one or another google or amazon product in every room of my house!
    • Don't forget that if you lose your internet for any reason you can't play any games.

      I just dumped U-Verse. One thing I hated about it is if I lost my internet connection I couldn't watch shows on the DVR. Seemed completely stupid to me.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Google? Streaming me video games?

    If there is a single company on Earth that could make EA look like good guys, it would be Google.

  • While I agree that yet another way that Google (or any other big company) can interact with you on a daily basis is worrisome as is the consolidation of game developers into one platform, I would like to understand more about the "hardware" aspect of this project.

    I'd like to understand how Google expects to do real time rendering for tens of thousands (or more) systems and then distribute it to them - I would think that most residential internet connections (say 50 Mbps or so) would handle more than one gam

  • Streaming is crap... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by InvalidsYnc ( 1984088 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @08:43AM (#56864980)

    From what I've seen of streaming (at least on the PS4 for via PS Now) is that it is totally crap. I like my games to look decent, and to actually respond quickly. I'm not on a crappy connection or anything like that, but the compression of the video, and the overall gameplay was a total turnoff for me. And I wasn't even trying to play a newish game, it was something that I was feeling nostalgic for from the PS3.

    Perhaps someone else is doing it better, but there are still a bunch of hurdles in my mind to overcome to make it work well.

    For now, I'll pass.

    Thanks.

    • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @08:45AM (#56864992) Homepage Journal
      No one is doing it better, because Physics. However, every tech company wants you to stream everything because then they can extract rent on a monthly basis. That is what this is all about.
      • Some types are endless suckers for micro-transactions for virtual bling. The target market will be virtual dress-me-ups.

        No need for fast hardware, but quality pictures and sound will help a plenty.

        And then comes the cuddly infomercials with a buy-now button.

    • I occasionally will stream games from my gaming desktop to my lightweight laptop with Steam; that's a local wireless network and I usually avoid it for any FPS games because latency. Games are playable but there is a clear lag in response time; something I can accept on games like Borderlands but not Call of Duty. I very much doubt it will work over the internet.

      As with all things, I won't do/buy anything until I know how well it will work. I apply this philosophy with everything I buy from cars to games an

    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      Because they are using a video streaming model. Change to a more complex streaming model where input and response is handled locally and all the data for every possible different user interaction is streamed, but only the one matching the real input is displayed. Then you can make a direct bandwidth and RAM vs. latency trade off.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @09:02AM (#56865118)

    If we have learned anything from UBIsoft and Electronic Rats and their success with choke-chained games then that gamers just LOVE having to have their system permanently connected to a server that is more or less, kinda-sorta, maybe sometimes reachable.

    Yeah. That's gonna fly.

    Google? Ya know, beating the dead horse more is not gonna make it run faster.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Streaming is only useful for games where latency doesn't matter.

    • The flip side is that games where latency doesn't matter often don't have a lot of flashy graphics in the first place, so there's no reason to stream them, as most computers can handle playing them locally just fine.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @09:47AM (#56865350)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Anonymous Coward

      No... please God no! Curse you CHK6! CURSE YOU TO HELL!!!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Gaben is one of the few people with enough money to tell google to fuck off, and seeing as how Valve is pretty much his vanity project I'd imagine he probably would.

    • Easier said than done. Valve is privately held and as far as I know GabeN is more than happy with the amount of $$$ in his possession.

    • by harl ( 84412 )
      Except that Steam has none of the functionality listed in the article. Sure it has streaming from one local PC to another but that's in a controlled high bandwidth, > DVI, and effectively no latency environment. But that's not what Google's aim is.
    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      Tencent would probably outbid Google.

    • Google, just buy Valve Corp. for Steam and call it a day. That would be a lot easier than starting from scratch.

      Please don't. Google has a history of suddenly closing services they buy and leaving their users in the dust.

      I hate their guts for closing Panoramio and Picasa.

  • Ignoring for a moment whatever we make think of Google and their evil, stalky ways, having more companies involved in cloud gaming can only be a good thing for gamers.

    I've been a beta user of GeForce NOW for about four months, and it's spectacular. I can play the latest AAA games on an old potato with everything on ultra and it's perfect. I can use a MacBook pro to play games that have never been released for Mac. The idea of upgrading my gaming PC every year or two may be a thing of the past. It uses a

    • I can play the latest AAA games on an old potato with everything on ultra and it's perfect.

      The thing is, most people don't care about that. We long ago passed the point where increasing the resolution or polygon count makes any difference to how good a game it is. Having powerful hardware is probably less important today than it's ever been. Even a phone can now produce better graphics than a PS3! All the hardware makers are trying to convince us we desperately need to run everything at 4K, but as far as I'm concerned, even 720p looks great.

      The one place where powerful hardware really does ma

      • The thing is, most people don't care about that. We long ago passed the point where increasing the resolution or polygon count makes any difference to how good a game it is. Having powerful hardware is probably less important today than it's ever been. Even a phone can now produce better graphics than a PS3! All the hardware makers are trying to convince us we desperately need to run everything at 4K, but as far as I'm concerned, even 720p looks great.

        Except, I can play the latest games on hardware that cou

  • The benefit of streaming games is that you don't need high-end hardware. But streaming only works well for slow-paced low-fidelity games. So I see no use for for streaming games at all. The casual ones don't benefit from streaming, and the high-end ones don't work well.

  • The gaming system will only work for about a year or two, then suddenly support gets dropped without warning, all the servers go offline, and everyone's left with a useless hunk of hardware.

    Which means they'll never have me buying one.

  • 4) cancel the project after a few years.

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