Game Streaming - Completely different from live streaming games

Do you think Game Streaming is the future?

  • Yes, but physical will still exist

  • Yes, and it will phase out physical games

  • Uncertain

  • No, but it will still be pushed

  • No, it will be canned before physical does

  • This is the first time I've heard of this term

Results are only viewable after voting.
Slamerella

Slamerella

And it's the best it's gonna get.
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May 31, 2017
Lately there has been a buzz about game streaming in the industry, where instead of buying a game, going home, and putting it in your console (or buying it online and waiting for it to download), you instead have a stream of said video game beamed right to your television, computer, etc., and are able to play it. There's a lot of skepticism about the idea, such as packet loss, input delay, lag, etc.

It's gotten a lot of attention for Japan, as Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda even says "Streaming is the future!" and Nintendo's own Reggie Fils-Aime even has Nintendo's eyes looking in closely at Google's streaming services and even investing in it

For those who've used it, what's it like compared to the real thing? PSNow is one of the most known game streaming services.
 
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  • Optimistic
Reactions: John Titor, A Cold Potato and Long time lurker
There's also the issue of total ownership. In other words, if I have an Atari 2600 and some games I can still hook it up and play it today, even though the incarnation of Atari Games responsible for supporting it has been defunct since 1984. Once whatever streaming service dies or gets absorbed and shelved, you're fucked. I don't think that's going to be a particularly strong selling point.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Mr. 0, A Cold Potato, Ol' Puss and 3 others
Some JERK said:
There's also the issue of total ownership. In other words, if I have an Atari 2600 and some games I can still hook it up and play it today, even though the incarnation of Atari Games responsible for supporting it has been defunct since 1984. Once whatever streaming service dies or gets absorbed and shelved, you're fucked. I don't think that's going to be a particularly strong selling point.
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I agree with you completely however, normies aren't going to care at all. With streaming games PCs may no longer have the advantage over consoles they currently have - modding.
 
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  • Disagree
Reactions: A Cold Potato, Orkeosaurus, Jaiman and 1 other person
one of my favorite discussions by steve jobs is when he gives an analogy between a normal PC interface (keyboard, mouse, screen, desktop, menu bar, etc) and having four wheels on a car. It's a quick moment but I think it speaks to a very deep point about innovation in tech. Innovation will absolutely happen, and it will be radical at times, but you probably won't see a radical rethinking of tried, tested, and true mediums like the PC. This is just to say that innovation is a powerful force in tech, but so is inertia.

I can imagine streaming games tracking other cloud data management options. On the one hand, if it was possible, I'm sure many people would be thrilled at the idea of some games performing excellently and not having to take up any of one's personal hard disk space---just have the data on the cloud and do the rest with RAM and high-speed internet. On the other hand, there is probably gonna be a huge portion of people who would rather have the data on their computer, mod-able, and immediately accessible in a way limited only by the speed of their hard drive. The former generation might replace the latter, but that would be the only way it would replace local-storage gaming.

 
Lots of questions. Will "streaming" require you to download an entire game every time you want to play it? Will this mean that consoles no longer have any sort of permanent installation of game files and re-request any necessary files from servers in order to work?

All in all this sounds retarded at the moment because we simply do not have the throughput to instantly download 50 gigs onto 64 gigs of RAM in our console to play the newest Call of Duty or whatever. At best this is basically "always on DRM", at worst it makes you entirely unable to play the games you paid for.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: c-no and Fagnacious D
They push it because it is good for them.
With streaming they get all the power, lower costs no rma etc. you get nothing but lag.
 
I don't see this ever catching on because of how poor internet is in a large parts of the world, America in particular. I don't have metrics but I would imagine that gaming is more popular per capita in more "rural" areas as there is less stuff to do in those areas. The most I think we'll ever see is more "always online" DRM type stuff.

I think there will be very specific use cases for it (Assassin's Creed on the Switch in Japan) but the most countries just don't have the infrastructure for it. It's hard enough for most people's home networks to utilize a steam link and that doesn't even leave your house.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: A Cold Potato and Orkeosaurus
The problem is that publishers and stores are greedy fucks. Downloading games was the big push a couple years ago, but they demanded the exact same price point, so there was no purpose. I could pay $60 for a game at launch and wait 4 hours for it to download, or pay the exact same price by going 10 minutes out of my way when I'm coming home from work and get a physical disc which plays instantly and I can resell for a few bucks to Gamestop if it is trash.

If Game Streaming gets big, Activision will charge $60 for the new Call of Duty to get a 'stream license' or whatever, and you'll end up playing an inferior version of the same game for the same price, and game streaming will flounder.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Mr. 0, A Cold Potato and Orkeosaurus
The only benefit game streaming has is for instance, playing games on a relatively low capability console like the Switch. On the other hand It's actually a bannable offense to stream WoW and (probably every other Blizzard game) but that doesn't stop streaming companies from advertising such games as playable on Facebook. There are huge legal and security issues with this new trend that impede it from being practical at the moment.
 
Twelve posts and not a single mention of OnLive or the Phantom? Y'all niggas slacking.

Realtalk, I never thought it could take off just like any of the other of draconian attempts to distance owners further from the concept of the ownership of their games, like always-on DRM, registration required to play, microtransactions, artificial scarcity commodity markets, and F2P. And yet here we are in 2019 where every one of those things is real and successful. It's a brave new world.
 
i remember participating in that project stream thing by google and despite my internet being shit and the lag causing me to die a few times, it worked surprisingly well and if in the future some company makes a streaming service like netflix or something but for games and the games are already downloaded onto their computers ready for playing(and i had less shit internet) i'd probably try it for at least a month

im still waiting on that free copy of odyssey you promised me google/uplay
 
I think the Idea is great, but it needs a lot more work to be something I regularly use. With companies like Google (Project Stream actually worked really well with AC: Odyssey) and Microsoft's Project X-Cloud it could be something I could see being useful for smaller games and playing games I own on the go.
 
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