As a consumer, PS Now is a complete non-starter to me until it stops listing games as “available until X/X/2020.”
If you want to get me to pay a monthly subscription to stream content, that content simply cannot go away for the foreseeable future. I don’t expect you to have PS4 games available in 2030, but having PS4 games they plan to take down in 2020 is just ridiculous.
All these sub services for media work like that. No one is going to pay for licenses in perpetuity. The only media they can offer forever is the stuff they own, which is why so many of these services are turning into their own production companies.
Yeah the rights are messy, but it does seem like they are incredibly short for some of these titles. I’m guess there is a minority of players that play their games for decades, but this is a sure way to kill off long loved titles if you just strip them off the service and then maybe won’t pay to get them back on.
I think the difference in this case is that PS Now shows that on Sony’s own games as well. They can’t even commit to keeping their own games available in the long run.
The fact that you don’t actually own anything, maybe? That they can take your stuff anytime they want, or they could shut down the service whenever they like? Maybe they decide to make you pay for stuff again when they stop supporting that game you bought a few years ago because you now have to get the “new HDier version!” in order to keep playing?
This is all outside of the discussion of whether it works or not, which people are naturally very skeptical of.
It’s a solution in search of an audience IMO. The only people that will happily accept this are people who never bought a game before in their life. Everyone else will be (and should be) skeptical of why this exists.
Ultimately, I think this is all about control. They want to control it on their end so you can’t own it on your end. No mods. No files or code you can touch or ever see. It’s supposed to be the Wizard of Oz.
Yeah, that sucks. If they truly own the rights and license to everything in those games, then I have no idea what that’s about.
You might be right, that games are totally different than movies/tv/music and people really want to own them, including the entirely new generation growing up right now that has been raised on free to play and Spotify.
I wouldn’t bet on it, though. If game streaming offers enough benefits, including instant start, never wait to update your game, play on any device, anywhere, not having to worry about upgrading your PC ever again, not having to buy a console ever again, etc., then I think there will be an audience.
PS - not to mention a bunch of features that cloud gaming brings that are totally new and unique, including the ability to assign multiple GPUs/CPUs on the fly, multiplayer simultaneous input, game sharing, etc.
…maybe for moviegames where you just push buttons to see the end, but not for actual gaming where you do something other than hit A for Action.
You may be surprised about the percentage of people around the world who live in urban areas. It is pretty high.
Even if fiber is not feasible in every neighborhood, 5G may be. In a lot of the world Internet access is largely cellular.
Just because you don’t want it to succeed doesn’t mean you can just make shit up. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence just in this thread that cloud gaming can and does work just fine. Maybe not for everyone, everywhere in the world, but it’s not some science fiction concept that only works in a lab.
Let’s move beyond the simple “you can’t beat physics!” argument. Especially if you haven’t even tried it.
It has only worked in a lab or a tightly packed big city so far as I’m aware.
It’s definitely true IMO that the games this is designed for are the type that I am least interested in playing, too, which are built exactly as described in my post.
And even if that were true (it isn’t), there are enough customers in “tightly packed big cities” to keep everyone afloat.
Let’s repeat: there’s no business that thinks its product is going to sell to 100% of the world’s population. No business decides to sit it out until that’s possible.
Good luck.
Also, as a reminder, the people in rural areas or without higher-speed internet connections, or the ones who are distrustful of Google or just love to play the way they’ve played for 30 years will continue to be able to buy PCs and consoles and play all the games they want to play. Cloud gaming does not represent a threat to your hobby or your lifestyle, and is not going to take anything away from you. You are safe.
FOR NOW. MUHAHAHAHAHA.
So does anyone know if Stadia can perform better than home PC’s on super heavy CPU based games? Another one that could benefit if Google dedicated the cpu power to it would be Kerbal Space Program.
Brought to you by the same industry that tried to introduce the 3 install limited, Project 10 and always on DRM (gasp, guess what this is), and weirdo hardware checks just to make sure you never changed that video card.
I think Gaming, as an industry, has earned the skepticism they receive. It’s not so outlandish as you are implying to take what is being sold with a grain of salt.
Skepticism is one thing. Outright dismissal based on outdated and incorrect assumptions and just plain hatred of Google is another.
Nobody is forcing you to sign up. And Cloud Gaming will only ever replace traditional gaming if it’s enormously successful. Just like with other media, it’s simply another option.
You can still buy physical CDs in a world of music streaming. You can still buy DVDs and Blu-Ray discs in a world of movie streaming.
I am skeptical, but I can’t speak for anyone else.
Also, no, no you don’t need success before gaming pitches yet another anti-consumer scheme and attempts to funnel everyone through it. They do it all the time. Heck, we’re due. It’s been like five minutes.
In theory, yes. Cloud-based platforms like Stadia will primarily be bandwidth / latency bound than CPU/GPU bound, so relatively low power devices should be able to handle it fine.
But how does cloud computing compensate for single threaded performance limited titles? My guess is the cloud cpu’s are running much lower clock speeds than our home PC’s (I’m running 5 GHz).