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Google set to announce next-gen console. Rumored partnership with SEGA


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I did some back of the envelope math and it's hard to justify the cost.

They say 25 MPS download is enough but people weren't getting decent results without extremely good internet on project stream from what I've read.

 

So without knowing more I'll assume you need the best internet available for comparable results to a console or PC with the game installed.

My current internet plan is 50 Down/10 UP 300 GB CAP per month which runs $60 after tax.

In my area 1 GB down 50MB UP uncapped data plan runs $120.67 CAD after tax per month.

So it's $80.67 P/M more expensive than my current plan or approx. $970 per year more.

That's without the potential subscription cost of the service. So it's be generous and say Stadia will be $15 CAD/Month or $180 per year after tax.

So using Google Stadia would cost me $1150 per year.

$1150 is enough to buy an Xbox One X, 12 Months of Gamepass, 12 Months of Gold and a cheap 4k TV.

Mind you this is the first year cost equivalency.... which drops precipitously in year 2 when hardware is no longer needed to be purchased.

Plus you could always recoup some of the money by jettisoning the Xbox One X and 4K tv if you needed to.

I'm in a large city as well and not like i'm out in the boonies. Who is this service for?

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It's for people who already have sufficient bandwidth?

 

They haven't stated how much it will cost. I agree that a flat rate for all you can play is the most likely scenario, but it's not the only one.

I remember OnLive playing with different pricing and promotion all the time. You could "buy" a game (at near-retail prices) and play it as much as you wanted, or you could subscribe (I forget the cost, probably between $10 and $20 per month, like everything else) and play anything they had in the catalogue at that time. Every holiday they'd have a massive 80% off sale on most of the premium games, and I seem to recall lots of free passes for the subscription as well.

 

Knowing Google, they could link it to one of their rewards programs (for example, there's one where you can fill out surveys for coins to redeem on Google Play), or they could bundle it with YouTube Premium (no ads on YouTube and a few perks for the app like downloads and background play), which is currently bundled with Google Music (streaming music).

 

The smart thing to do would be to partner with a big game (Epic has lots of money, kids like Fortnite) and give away a large portion of their service for free, monetizing you as "the product," ideally in a less-than-evil way.

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It's for people who already have sufficient bandwidth?

 

They haven't stated how much it will cost. I agree that a flat rate for all you can play is the most likely scenario, but it's not the only one.

I remember OnLive playing with different pricing and promotion all the time. You could "buy" a game (at near-retail prices) and play it as much as you wanted, or you could subscribe (I forget the cost, probably between $10 and $20 per month, like everything else) and play anything they had in the catalogue at that time. Every holiday they'd have a massive 80% off sale on most of the premium games, and I seem to recall lots of free passes for the subscription as well.

 

It would depend I think. Publishers who are used to getting $60 + DLC/Microtransactions/Season Pass/Loot crates costs aren't going to like any model that lets you play their latest games for a flat monthly fee. Maybe they would be ok with that for older games (Like EA access charges $30 / year for access to their games that are a year or more old)

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Stadia is an intriguing idea, but I too have privacy concerns.

 

Privacy?! What's to worry about here with google involved?!

 

On a more serious note, I doubt this will go any further than most google projects - ie: they'll toy with it for a couple years then axe it when it doesn't become the defacto #1 gold standard in it's market.

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Privacy?! What's to worry about here with google involved?!

 

On a more serious note, I doubt this will go any further than most google projects - ie: they'll toy with it for a couple years then axe it when it doesn't become the defacto #1 gold standard in it's market.

 

I had a longer post pointing to privacy concerns with benign things like Netflix's Bandersnatch and Google's hidden-microphone Nest product. But then, I went the simple route because sometimes I just get tired of being called a Luddite or unibomber. .I don't even own a hoodie, for goodness sake.

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I had a longer post pointing to privacy concerns with benign things like Netflix's Bandersnatch and Google's hidden-microphone Nest product. But then, I went the simple route because sometimes I just get tired of being called a Luddite or unibomber. .I don't even own a hoodie, for goodness sake.

 

Just remember- If they start calling you names, it usually means they can't counter your argument.

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I was thinking more about this, and I think for a lot of people, the hardware itself is just as much fun as the gaming experience. I mean why else would we all come to a site like this and talk about the systems we used 20, 30, 40 years ago? Would you go to a site to talk about the TV or radio you owned in the 80s? I wouldn't. Those are commodity things, Computer/Video game hardware all had it's own personality.

 

It's also exciting to see your hardware do amazing things you didn't think possible- And the anticipation of upgrade time. If your on PC, getting the latest CPU/GPU and benchmarking it.

 

A streaming service commoditizes all that. For a lot of people that it would take half the fun out of gaming.

 

Maybe for younger people who grew up with the netflix/spotify model-- they won't have an issue with it. But for anyone who grew up as a hardware geek-- it would pretty much decimate your hobby.

https://antiqueradios.com/forums/index.php

 

There are groups who appreciate everything & anything, even old washing machines.

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Also, there's a controller that connects via WiFi... all I can say is "why?"

That's so you can play on Chromecast. Those devices have no input ports. They don't even have bluetooth. We have 3 Chromecasts in the house. Each one is its own wifi hotspot, contributing to wifi pollution.

Edited by DJ Clae
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Streaming media I suppose is ok. But I still don't prefer it. Streaming interactive games and simulations is an absolute no-no for me.

 

It's also exciting to see your hardware do amazing things you didn't think possible- And the anticipation of upgrade time. If your on PC, getting the latest CPU/GPU and benchmarking it.
In an off-topic note. Nvidia is enabling or rather supporting RealTime RayTracing on their GTX 1060 and later cards.
A demo was released showing it is more than possible, and nVidia is like uhhh??!?!?. Looks like they had to backtrack pretty fast. All thanks to the demo being hardware agnostic and being shown on AMD hardware.
That's the kind of new stuff I like to see.
Now we can get back to fretting about bandwidth and streaming gaming.
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No interest. It seems obvious to me that Google doesn't really get gaming. They announce a gaming platform with one game, which is a multiplatform game. Even the logo looks generic. Like 99% of their projects, they'll probably abandon it in a couple of years when they realize they're not making money on it and don't know how to do so, leaving everyone who bought into it twisting in the wind.

 

I'm not 100% anti-"cloud" or whatever, but you've gotta really show me you know what you're doing and are in it for the long haul for me to buy into a cloud service. It's a much higher standard than I have for physical games, because I don't want to lose my entire investment at some point. I do buy games on Steam, because Valve is an actual PC game developer and they get it. And I'm reasonably confident they're not going to just leave people in the lurch, no matter what happens. (In other words, even if they 100% go out of business, I feel like they'll work out deals at least with their biggest developers first to not totally nuke your library.) I have no such confidence about Google.

 

I also just kinda doubt the service itself is going to be very good for a lot of people.

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I agree it will probably be great for game dabblers -- but that those folks are probably the least likely to buy the dedicated controller or put any money into it. I want to know what their actual pricing and other partners will look like. Ubisoft and Ass Creed join everything at launch and we're big on Onlive.

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As this appears to be a service - versus an actual box you have to buy - I'll give it a whirl, just out of curiosity. Not expecting much, though. I have yet to see a WAN game streaming solution that wasn't riddled with lag and macroblocking.

Edited by Laner
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I agree it will probably be great for game dabblers -- but that those folks are probably the least likely to buy the dedicated controller or put any money into it. I want to know what their actual pricing and other partners will look like. Ubisoft and Ass Creed join everything at launch and we're big on Onlive.

Again, not advocating this at all, but I could see casuals putting crazy money into deluxe controllers, if that is the only purchase they need to make. The allure of "personalizing" your tech is very appealing to the mass market.

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No interest. It seems obvious to me that Google doesn't really get gaming. They announce a gaming platform with one game, which is a multiplatform game. Even the logo looks generic. Like 99% of their projects, they'll probably abandon it in a couple of years when they realize they're not making money on it and don't know how to do so, leaving everyone who bought into it twisting in the wind.

IMO, for Google, this idea is more to test the system in the hope that someone will partner with them to make it - Given how they make it, they probably hope to lock out some special features that will force others - Microsoft and Sony most likely - to buy their patents.

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They mentioned that as a benefit. It wouldn't make sense for it to connect through the chromecast. But you don't even need the controller if you connect with a device that has USB.

How is USB faster than WIFI? Anyway, I'm surprised that is all they did with the controller to try to reduce latency. It seems like it should be possible to send a button press before you pressed it. What I mean is something like as you begin to press a button it sends the signal of a press and then once the button is all the way down you feel the feedback of a press. It doesn't seem like a lot of time between beginning to press a button and then finishing the press but since we can see it without some extremely slow motion video then it must be enough to cover milliseconds of latency. It might even be enough time to create the illusion that there is even less latency than an actual console.

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