Gaming’s biggest problem right now (next to that kid on the other side of the screen who shrieks about your mother yes I’m talking about you XxX_NoScope2005_XxX) is that the biggest barrier to entry is the hardware needed to play its best games. Want to hop into The Division 2 at its very best? You’re going to need either one of the mid-cycle consoles available now or a suitably beefy PC to get those delicious lighting effects while you’re pinned down behind cover
Here’s the thing though: Can’t we do better than this? We put a man on the moon fifty years ago, so surely our best and brightest minds can come together to solve humanity’s greatest problem next to the impending hellstorm the planet is about to become in a few years: Playing video games without needing to drop all the dimes on fancy console or PC hardware.
Google reckons that they’ve got the problem licked, and after last year’s showing of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey running in a Chrome tab, the results look promising. At this week’s Game Developer’s Conference, Google is expected to show off their streaming service that uses nothing but your PC, a decent online connection and their fancy controller to play games.
It’s unreal technology, meant to bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots with a system that is simple, easy and supported by some of the biggest brands in the industry. According to Kotaku, there could be even more to Google’s plans for their new stab at gaming, which sounds wild so far:
- Google wants its service to be playable on anything with a screen, ranging from PC, mobile phones and even stretching towards smart TVs
- While Google will have their own controller, you’ll be able to use an Xbox One controller on Chrome or Chromecast with the service
- One idea that Google has, is for viewers of a Twitch streamer to be able to purchase the game being broadcast and then grab a save file that allows them to hop into that exact same level if developers toggle the feature on
- This feature could also be extended to multiplayer, allowing you to join your streamer in their game
- YouTube integration appears to be a big part of the service, with an app that can even start up a walkthrough to help you out
Google is throwing big money at this venture, having recently nabbed PlayStation and Xbox veteran Phil Harrison to head up a unit and hiring Jade Raymond last week. It’s exciting stuff, that’ll be officially unveiled tonight during the Google GDC 2019 Keynote. And for once, it’ll be at a godly hour locally as well, at 7PM this side of the globe.
Last Updated: March 19, 2019
Dutch Matrix
March 19, 2019 at 08:10
Wait what? And what would one pay for said streaming service?
The D
March 19, 2019 at 08:51
I’ve got a feeling that we could be looking at something similar to Xbox Game Pass. Subscription service for exclusive games and other deals, with a few Google first-party titles costing a premium.
Skeletor
March 19, 2019 at 08:18
This sounds awesome and I will sign up in two minutes!
Quentin Huggett
March 19, 2019 at 08:18
Very much quite distant tech in the South African context, much like self driving cars. Tech may be there, but in SA there are far bigger factors that will stop it from working. Hosting, distance and connection to servers, cost of entry and so on.
Admiral Chief
March 19, 2019 at 09:42
Don’t forget that POWER is needed. That is the biggest factor in SA
Gr8_Balls_o_Fire
March 19, 2019 at 09:50
There’s enough power. Look at all the politicians fighting over it
Skeletor
March 19, 2019 at 08:24
Oh go ahead and spoil the fun for us all. Crush my dreams whilst your at it???
🙂
Quentin Huggett
March 19, 2019 at 08:24
i sowwy
Skeletor
March 19, 2019 at 08:30
We both know you are not really. Truth hurts like a dental extraction of an absessed tooth.
Jonah Cash
March 19, 2019 at 08:37
Self driving cars is my favourite new tech. When they try and launch this in South Africa I want to be invited. The first Taxi that comes by on the yellow lane at double the speed of the rest of the traffic will make that machine phone back to America to ask for a transfer back 🙂
Skeletor
March 19, 2019 at 08:38
Would it be the first case of AI trauma?
Jonah Cash
March 19, 2019 at 08:44
There would definitely be a case opened somewhere in the world! Self driving cars is a nice concept, I just don’t see it happening all over the world. And least of all in good old Africa!
Gavin Mannion
March 19, 2019 at 09:29
100% this, it’s got nothing against SA or it’s tech, it is just purely the fact that the South African market is too small to justify the local infrastructure and it won’t work over distance.
There is a possibility that Google will roll out it in SA though as they have local youtube servers already. But I don’t see it. I also don’t see this working outside of any major city. I think these Silicon Valley dwellers need to get out more and find out that most of America, Europe etc doesn’t have 1gb pipes into their houses.
Llama In The Rift
March 19, 2019 at 08:30
Finally getting Fiber next month with a soft cap of 1 TB, my body and mind’s prepared. On to the future!!
Admiral Chief
March 19, 2019 at 08:44
WHAT’S A CAP PRECIOUS LLAMA?
Llama In The Rift
March 19, 2019 at 08:59
*Fair Usage Policy
3rd World Problems…Out of my control unfortunately.
Oh and HEH…Funny you…XD
CodeDisQus
March 20, 2019 at 07:40
I actually wonder how these soft caps will affect us over here. I mean lets look at this https://mybroadband.co.za/news/technology/255147-how-much-data-watching-a-4k-netflix-series-uses.html
MyBB reckon that it takes about 6gb to stream 1hr of 4k content. SO on your 1Tb SoftCap, 1000/6 = 167hrs of gaming per month (before soft cap)
That’s before adding the family’s streaming, youtubing, instagramming etc.
Could not be enough, that being said, 40mbps fibre nets you 3.6tb softcap, which is a lot better.
Magoo
March 19, 2019 at 08:44
Thank you but no thank you.
Raptor Rants
March 19, 2019 at 09:58
The issue here is latency for anyone far from the service. If you are in ZA for argument sake and you have a fairly decent response from the Europe region (Let’s say 160ms), how is the game going to compensate for delayed input? Platforms would be unplayable. Any twitchy, niggly kind of game would be useless (Dark Souls Cough Cough Cough*)
Shooters I guess folk could be used to this as we often play on remote servers anyway.
That being said a response of 160ms is going to be compounded further by input lag.
So let’s say that a one way is 80ms to Europe. So 80ms for the far side to send the rendered image. Plus let’s say 20ms for the GPU on the far side to render that image (frame). So you have 100ms between the render time, and delivery to your screen on your machine of a single frame.
Now you input something. It sends that instruction across to the server at 80ms. The moment the instruction hits the remote server we have had the remote server that already sent the image which took 100ms to render, then it still rendered new items in real time without input from the player. So when your instructions reach the server it’s already rendered 180ms of of new frames (100 ms for the rendered frame to reach you and 80ms for you to respond)
That’s almost 9 frames of delay if you average the GPU render time at 20ms per frame, before the game responds to your input. That is mouse out window levels of input lag. It won’t be lag as you experience in online gaming. It will translate to the worst input lag you have ever felt. VSync input lag will have nothing on this.
I mean if you wanted to equate it to your own situation, most graphics cards have a render to screen delivery time of around 20 – 30ms. If you have ever experienced input lag from this just by putting on VSync (which is then like 40 – 50 ms) then you can only imagine what a 180ms response time on input would do to your game.
That all being said. If you are really nice and close to the server (Let’s say 5ms) then you won’t really notice much. It would probably be like playing with VSync on and your machine is capable of running at +60fps for the game in real life.
Great tech and it’s probably time to start introducing it, but it’s going to be useful only to those close enough to the servers in question.
Admiral Chief
March 19, 2019 at 10:05
Took me like 7 minutes to read this
Raptor Rants
March 19, 2019 at 12:13
/tableflip
Admiral Chief
March 19, 2019 at 15:23
Bonus points for 7 flips in a row
Magoo
March 19, 2019 at 11:04
Dude people spend premium to have 1ms response times on their monitors instead of 5ms. There is just no forseeable way for this to become mainstream unless a new kind of high-speed technology is introduced which eliminates latency almost entirely.
Admiral Chief
March 19, 2019 at 11:04
Quantum networks
Magoo
March 19, 2019 at 11:04
The information appears on both sides all at once. *mind explodes*
Admiral Chief
March 19, 2019 at 11:11
You both have latency and no latency and both care and not care about it
Magoo
March 19, 2019 at 11:11
Your game only exists if you are looking at it.
Raptor Rants
March 19, 2019 at 11:59
As Einstein would call it: Spooky action at a distance.
Quantum entanglement.
If you think you understand quantum mechanics… you don’t.
Magoo
March 19, 2019 at 12:13
Unless you’re looking at yourself thinking that you do.
Raptor Rants
March 19, 2019 at 12:49
But then you understand it even less because the one that understands is the one you are looking at and not you. Even though it’s you. But it’s not
Magoo
March 19, 2019 at 13:58
Hence you you don’t actually exist which means that you have full understanding of quantum mechanics which inadvertently means that you don’t understand it
Raptor Rants
March 19, 2019 at 16:49
Mind
Blown
Dutch Matrix
March 19, 2019 at 14:08
Remember we chatted about racing pigeons the other day? Well. Get a load of this. Wonder how many vats of rum was involved in this one:
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/lewis-pigeon-2019-3