Amazon planning its own Cloud Gaming Service dubbed "Project Tempo"

[Space Lynx]

Cloud gaming is, sadly, the future.

It sucks big time, because even if all is full fiber, severs are ultra-fast, etc. you can't beat the laws of physics. I live in southern Portugal and most of the datacenters are in central and northern Europe. So the distance is at least 2000 km (to Paris - best case scenario). Travelling at the speed of light gives you 6 ms of delay (even if i had direct cable from my house to server farm). Multiply by 2 for round-trip and you have 12 ms of unavoidable latency. Add network adapter latency + 5-6 routers latency + load balancing at the server farm + processing time. Let's be optimistic and say the total latency added is around 50 ms (on top of what you would have playing locally). Oh wait, there's the streaming video latency that can't be less than 10-20 ms (and I'm being very optimistic here). So more or less 80 ms.
80 ms of added latency will get you killed in any marginally competitive type of game, be it shooter, MOBA or MMO.

I'm glad I will be too old or dead when cloud becomes the platform of choice of gamers around the world.

yep this is why I intend to buy a ps5 and xbox series x, I have a strong feeling they will be the last traditional consoles ever made. might as well get it on launch day with a long extended warranty.

 

[holyprof]

I really, really, really doubt that is that case. I can get up to 10ms connecting to servers within my city with a fiber connection. Unless of course Japan has some magical infrastructure that one else has and were doing pretty damn good in my country.

And as pointed out above, no matter how low the latency of the network is there are still things like encoding/decoding which are network agnostic but still add to the latency experienced by the user.

You're absolutely right.
Then there's the laws of physics, fiber optics use light (duh) which travels at the speed of ... light (approx 300 000 km/s), adding 1ms latency for every 300 km. 1 ms latency is only possible if pinging you own PC, maybe a fast router connected to the same physical network.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Cloud gaming is, sadly, the future.

It sucks big time, because even if all is full fiber, severs are ultra-fast, etc. you can't beat the laws of physics. I live in southern Portugal and most of the datacenters are in central and northern Europe. So the distance is at least 2000 km (to Paris - best case scenario). Travelling at the speed of light gives you 6 ms of delay (even if i had direct cable from my house to server farm). Multiply by 2 for round-trip and you have 12 ms of unavoidable latency. Add network adapter latency + 5-6 routers latency + load balancing at the server farm + processing time. Let's be optimistic and say the total latency added is around 50 ms (on top of what you would have playing locally). Oh wait, there's the streaming video latency that can't be less than 10-20 ms (and I'm being very optimistic here). So more or less 80 ms.
80 ms of added latency will get you killed in any marginally competitive type of game, be it shooter, MOBA or MMO.

I'm glad I will be too old or dead when cloud becomes the platform of choice of gamers around the world.

I think we lived through the golden age of gaming, what follows is episodic samey shit anyway by and large.

 

[Ashtr1x]

No Ownership
No Mods
Yes to GaaS
Yes to MTX

More restrictions and rules that make people bend over, on top these Google, Amazon are nonsensical corporations when it comes to Media and Entertainment production, with all the PC drivel going on in every single piece of entertainment. All the fun has been sucked out. These people do not know what is gaming and how it explores the out of reality experience with the beautiful and immersive universes the talented and gamers developed rather than mint money. With the EA killing tons of IPs and Bethesda pandering to the stupid GaaS models and Activision-Blizzard deploying always OL DRM systems and all the games losing their charm and appeal to appease normies and yesman koolaid kids, the gaming is dead.

I'm happy at-least I got to experience the best of gaming as a whole. I hope the new 9th gen Console era has good games instead of political subversive garbage and hollow BR fad or other toned down garbage.

Say no to this, Vote with wallets. PC will remain the best platform for gaming forever.

 

[Vya Domus]

Then there's the laws of physics, fiber optics use light (duh) which travels at the speed of ... light (approx 300 000 km/s), adding 1ms latency for every 300 km. 1 ms latency is only possible if pinging you own PC, maybe a fast router connected to the same physical network.

It's way worse than that, light travels that distance in a vacuum, the fiber optic medium isn't a vacuum so the actual latency is higher.

 

[Nioktefe]

I dont think local play is behind us, for anything competitive local play will always be a must, 10ms of input lag is noticeable (don't compare it to multiplayer lag which is hidden via computing + it does not affect your own input)

On top of competitive, vr/ar is straight up impossible to play this way, they already have motion sickness in local, so it must be absolute trash on the internet even with the best case scenario (even in the future)

 

[Flanker]

Nothing can take away the pride of ownership of computer hardware

 

[Vayra86]

I'm not sure the "streaming will never work" is accurate. Most games the days are online titles that lag anyway, that's not a show stopper.
But without some killer (or at least useful) feature, how many services like these are we going to see? I mean, "pay for your game, then pay us some more to run it on our server" only makes sense if you're a frequent traveler or fi you buy games but are too cheap to build/buy a gaming rig. What's the projected TAM for these services?

Its the very same as Uber, Spotify, Amazon and many other large tech based market shifts. All these streaming services aim to do that for gaming. They incur loss at the beginning to take over the market or a dominant share of it, and when the market share is sufficient and people are tied to services (Many ways to do this with games... doesn't even need to be legally binding, just create new carrots!), the prices are jacked up and the creators themselves are just one of many, effectively having become employees with no rights to fall back on. That's how Uber's taxi drivers basically work.

Meanwhile, because the services grow, the amount of time per play / per game goes down per customer and so the end result is that devs lose a share of their cut to yet another distributor (on top of the physical or regular sale %, if they are unlucky, Stadia is perfectly set up for this, for example). Now, it suddenly became even easier to buy those devs out, and capture even more studios under your wing as a publisher.

Amazon is also making games. What happened to them just delivering packages and being good at it? Hmmmmm... and what about EA, Ubisoft? This model applies to them already, and anyone invited to their platforms is ready for the slaughterhouse.

The writing is on the wall and we should not partake in this shitshow. Its a steady race to the bottom, and for physical retail that has already happened due to Amazon et al. Yes, its a market shift because of demand (we do more online), but its also a market shift we never really asked for, at least, not for its end game.

Some examples, from locally. We have a food delivery service called 'Thuisbezorgd.nl'. It started with free delivery and very low entry fees for businesses to use it. Today, people across the country are used to the service, and suddenly the businesses are met with more than doubled fees, sometimes even radical changes of contracts clearly in their disadvantage, saying as much as 'take it or leave it'. Thuisbezorgd.nl KNOWS they have the market locked now and they know the businesses can't take the damage of losing customers. Uber is not much different. The prices per fare always are structurally too low, up to the point that they barely cover running costs of a regular employee. So yay, you have work... but you also have zero rights, its the modern day mob and it is considered completely normal. We should fight this, as customers, and civilians, even if it does give us some minor advantages sometimes.

PS. One might think 'but hey, Epic is also buying studios and taking market share for distribution, dafuq is that then?'... but Epic is precisely all about giving devs their own rights and capabilities, and make them more self sufficient in terms of funding. They're also staying far away from subscriptions for streamed content, as far as I know. At the same time, when they do move to cloud at the expense of the core service, they're instantly on my shit list...

And all of this is possible because of billions of risk capital, its a direct result of too much money flowing to too few people and entities at large. We're pretty far down the rabbit hole already.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Ho hum.... Amazon trying to do what everyone else has tried and failed at... No one wants game streaming. Sheer stupidity on Amazons part.

 

[trparky]

Fiber is like 1ms for a short in country hop like Japan...

Yes, but you're forgetting that latency is added as your packet passes not through one or two but as many as 10 to 15 routers which each and every one of them take time to route your packet which adds latency. So yes, fiber is really fast, but routing is still slow.

Then let's not forget that not everyone in America has nice fancy fiber connections. Most of us have Cable Internet which depending upon how loaded your neighborhood is, your cable modem could be waiting its turn to send data on the upstream data channel. Others, like me (for instance), have AT&T uVerse that uses VDSL2 with a line profile that automatically adds 10 to 15 ms to your latency right out of the gate before you even hit your first hop/router. I have 100/20 Internet here, but it requires two VDSL2 lines (or loops in telco parlance) in a bonded line config which I'm sure adds additional latency (oh joy!).

So no, unless we all get a major last mile infrastructure upgrade to deliver not only fast speeds but ultra-low latency even to your home, I just don't see cloud gaming taking off especially for first person shooters which are famously known to be effected badly by high latency.

 

[Dave65]

I think people use way to much of Amazon, I hate using it and making that prick richer.
One service I will skip!

 

[sepheronx]

That's what we all just have to do - not buy into it.

Guarantee streaming will take over but that doesn't mean that the physical market will up and vanish. It will operate side by side and I think it will flourish on its own. There will be developers for it and the demand will be there. Quality will also exist under this while streaming will still be limited in its quality. I'm lucky to have experienced the NES, Sega Master and Atari 7800. I got to at least see and enjoy the changes that came with it - in society and in gaming as a whole. But this streaming service does scare me quite a bit. It takes away any control we may have in the product we purchased, and forces us under terms and conditions set by the big company. And if they can nickel and dime you, they will. And will do so once they have control.

 

[Vya Domus]

That's what we all just have to do - not buy into it.

Every time one of these services comes out inevitably you'll have some people buying into it. Of course over time the sales will plummet but that initial surge will fuel interest into companies indefinitely as they will see it as proof that there is a market.

The thing is whether or not you bought anything customers of these companies will still pay for the millions that were sank into the development of these things one way or another trough other products. You think that for example Nvidia will just take the hit of the failure that Geforce Now is ? Nah, they'll get their money back through the next cards that they'll release and sell (if they haven't already done so).

 

[medi01]

Google: I have no clue about gaming, but decides to fool around with it, cause cloud is cool, right?
Amazon: #metoo

 

[bug]

Its the very same as Uber, Spotify, Amazon and many other large tech based market shifts. All these streaming services aim to do that for gaming. They incur loss at the beginning to take over the market or a dominant share of it, and when the market share is sufficient and people are tied to services (Many ways to do this with games... doesn't even need to be legally binding, just create new carrots!), the prices are jacked up and the creators themselves are just one of many, effectively having become employees with no rights to fall back on. That's how Uber's taxi drivers basically work.

Meanwhile, because the services grow, the amount of time per play / per game goes down per customer and so the end result is that devs lose a share of their cut to yet another distributor (on top of the physical or regular sale %, if they are unlucky, Stadia is perfectly set up for this, for example). Now, it suddenly became even easier to buy those devs out, and capture even more studios under your wing as a publisher.

Amazon is also making games. What happened to them just delivering packages and being good at it? Hmmmmm... and what about EA, Ubisoft? This model applies to them already, and anyone invited to their platforms is ready for the slaughterhouse.

The writing is on the wall and we should not partake in this shitshow. Its a steady race to the bottom, and for physical retail that has already happened due to Amazon et al. Yes, its a market shift because of demand (we do more online), but its also a market shift we never really asked for, at least, not for its end game.

Some examples, from locally. We have a food delivery service called 'Thuisbezorgd.nl'. It started with free delivery and very low entry fees for businesses to use it. Today, people across the country are used to the service, and suddenly the businesses are met with more than doubled fees, sometimes even radical changes of contracts clearly in their disadvantage, saying as much as 'take it or leave it'. Thuisbezorgd.nl KNOWS they have the market locked now and they know the businesses can't take the damage of losing customers. Uber is not much different. The prices per fare always are structurally too low, up to the point that they barely cover running costs of a regular employee. So yay, you have work... but you also have zero rights, its the modern day mob and it is considered completely normal. We should fight this, as customers, and civilians, even if it does give us some minor advantages sometimes.

PS. One might think 'but hey, Epic is also buying studios and taking market share for distribution, dafuq is that then?'... but Epic is precisely all about giving devs their own rights and capabilities, and make them more self sufficient in terms of funding. They're also staying far away from subscriptions for streamed content, as far as I know. At the same time, when they do move to cloud at the expense of the core service, they're instantly on my shit list...

And all of this is possible because of billions of risk capital, its a direct result of too much money flowing to too few people and entities at large. We're pretty far down the rabbit hole already.

Well, that's probably all true, but it's not what I was asking.
I'm just confused why we get so many services with basically zero innovation. Everybody just expects you to pay for the game and then pay some more to play on their servers. And while I understand it's hard to offer anything else (because of licensing and whatnot), I am thoroughly confused about why should I pick any service over another at this point.

 

[remixedcat]

Watch blizzard pull their games like they did to nvidia

 

[Vayra86]

Well, that's probably all true, but it's not what I was asking.
I'm just confused why we get so many services with basically zero innovation. Everybody just expects you to pay for the game and then pay some more to play on their servers. And while I understand it's hard to offer anything else (because of licensing and whatnot), I am thoroughly confused about why should I pick any service over another at this point.

Sorry for rant.

Yes, that makes two. I suppose that is a good thing

 

[bug]

Watch blizzard pull their games like they did to nvidia

Honestly, you're now seeing the truth about the "omg piracy is killing gaming, we need to DRM-up" campaign from a few years ago. The gaming industry just went Hollywood and decided to tighten their grip on distribution. You're now witnessing the effects.

 

[sepheronx]

Honestly, you're now seeing the truth about the "omg piracy is killing gaming, we need to DRM-up" campaign from a few years ago. The gaming industry just went Hollywood and decided to tighten their grip on distribution. You're now witnessing the effects.

Is it? To be honest I have seen some claims about piracy being a problem but the issue is that PC gaming, where Piracy is obviously the worst, is also doing the best it has ever done in over a decade (game sales to be exact). So I think it may have more to do with corporations wanting to have control and find a way to make gaming a service to nickel and dime people.

Maybe I got your post wrong but I dont think that is what it is. If it is, its just an excuse and a poor one in my opinion.

 

[bug]

Is it? To be honest I have seen some claims about piracy being a problem but the issue is that PC gaming, where Piracy is obviously the worst, is also doing the best it has ever done in over a decade (game sales to be exact). So I think it may have more to do with corporations wanting to have control and find a way to make gaming a service to nickel and dime people.

Maybe I got your post wrong but I dont think that is what it is. If it is, its just an excuse and a poor one in my opinion.

Well, you seem to have come to the same conclusion I did, but somehow did not get that from my previous post. It's ok, the Internet does that.

What I meant is the gaming industry saw this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/01/8616/
and decided to do the same. Now with DRM virtually everywhere, they are in a position to tell you where you can and cannot play your games. (It's not technically your games, but let's not open that can of worms now.)

 

[sepheronx]

Well, you seem to have come to the same conclusion I did, but somehow did not get that from my previous post. It's ok, the Internet does that.

What I meant is the gaming industry saw this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/01/8616/
and decided to do the same. Now with DRM virtually everywhere, they are in a position to tell you where you can and cannot play your games. (It's not technically your games, but let's not open that can of worms now.)

I see. Thank you for your clarification. To be frank, I didn't see your previous post as I just jump to newest post based upon my ticker on the alarm bell icon above.

 

[R-T-B]

I really, really, really doubt that is that case. I can get up to 10ms connecting to servers within my city with a fiber connection.

You are dropping to copper at some point.

That's what is "magical" about Japan: it doesn't.

 

[trparky]

You are dropping to copper at some point.

That's what is "magical" about Japan: it doesn't.

Don't remind me, I'm pedaling along at a measly 100 Mbps on two bonded VDSL2 lines. AT&T refuses to deliver some fiber to my diet. The only other option that I have is Spectrum and they suck.

 

[holyprof]

Watch blizzard pull their games like they did to nvidia

I'm finished with them. Stopped playing StarCraft2 and World of Warcraft.
They wrecked the classic Warcraft loved by many, it was the first game I ever bought on CD. Now I can't play it!
Other "new" releases are StarCraft "Remastered", future Diablo "reforged".
No thanks. In 15 years turned from the most talented and customer-oriented game company to another money-grab scumbags.

 

[lexluthermiester]

You're now witnessing the effects.

Yes, here's one effect and it goes like this: Who's games am I NOT playing?...