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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Why is Sony being left out of the Streaming Future Conversation? Why are we even having it?

There's more potential in that area coming from Google and Microsoft. Their cloud infrastructure and capital dwarfs Sony's.

Consoles will stick around for a while and Sony will likely remain on top, but the giant tech companies have a much better footing when it comes to developing technology for streaming games and it is hard for smaller players to compete. Even Amazon has a better claim in the streaming race.



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shikamaru317 said:

Mainly because there haven't been any rumors or announcements about Sony's plans for PS Now next gen. Comparing the current PS Now to Microsoft's XCloud and Google's Project Stream is like comparing PS1 to the original Xbox and Gamecube, it's like 2 different generations of technology.

XCloud will have lots of data centers because it shares MS's Azure Cloud network, meaning that the distance to the closest data center will be shorter for most people than PS Now in it's current state, resulting in less latency. They are working on predictive algorithms that help to minimize the additional input lag that streaming services have, and we've even heard rumors that MS is working on a streaming version of the next gen Xbox, which will cost less than the traditional next-gen Xbox and will run latency dependent tasks locally, while pulling the non-latency dependent data from the streaming service, resulting in even less input lag. They are also also rumored to be working on a unique foldable tablet codenamed Andromeda, which will basically act as a handheld version of the next Xbox, able to access the full Xbox library over XCloud (yes, the eventual plan is to make the full Xbox library, including OG Xbox, 360, XB1 games through backwards compatibility, and next-gen Xbox games, playable over XCloud).

Project Stream meanwhile will also have a ton of data centers, because it's Google, meaning that much like with XCloud, most people will be closer to the nearest data center than PS Now in it's current state. Early tests show that Project Stream will go up to 1080p on a strong internet connection, compared to 720p on PS Now, and that you get about 40 ms of additional lag, compared to 62-80 ms of additional lag on PS Now.

Now, that's not to say that Sony doesn't have plans to improve PS Now to bring it more in line with the "next gen" services from MS and Google, we just don't know about those plans if they do have them. 

If we are looking at a shootout in hardware, software and infrastructure, you would believe that MS, Google and even Amazon would have a leg up in this race.  All big 3 already have paid the money for they datacenters and their datacenters make them cash.  Sony on the other hand would have to rely on ramping up datacenters to co-exist with the big 3 and PS Now would basically have to be the bread winner.  This could be very pricey for Sony as their market cap just isn't in the same league as the big 3.  It would be interesting to see if Sony has a response to MS and Google entering into the market and if they have kept some hidden secrets on making PSNow a better offering before the big boys start to throw their weight around.  At least Sony still has the content, which is always king.



shikamaru317 said:
SvennoJ said:

The laws of physics add about 4.8 ms for every 1000 km of glass fibre (light travels about 31% slower through fibre optics) or adds 9.7 ms to ping time per 1000 km. Of course that's the maximum speed on the backbone. The number of hops the signal has to go through to get into your house adds a lot more.

You can test it yourself with Azure http://www.azurespeed.com/

I didn't know about that website. Looks like I have 32-40 ms ping to the nearest Azure data center, which is in my state. That's not bad at all, I could live with 32-40ms of additional input lag while streaming singleplayer games. I used to play CoD with 100ms ping back when I had crappy Verizon DSL, before I upgraded to Comcast Cable. 

Plus we've heard that MS has other plans for reducing input lag while streaming. They're working on predictive algorithms in a project called DeLorean, which guesses what you will do next in a game. We've also heard rumors that they are working on a streaming version of the next-gen Xbox, which will cost less and have weaker hardware, but will use it's local rendering power to run the latency dependent aspects of a game locally (controller input, collision detection, and image processing), while the less latency dependent aspects are pulled from the cloud. 

Streaming still needs to go for the most cost effective solution. You don't get 4K blu-ray quality with Dolby Atmos on Netflix.

The improvement in performance doesn't come for free; sending those extra predictive frames and information does add a bandwidth overhead of anywhere from 1.5 to four times that of a normal streaming game client, according to Microsoft Research (those numbers would be worse if not for compression owing to the similarity of most predicted frames). Getting the service to work also required special coding on top of the tested versions of Doom 3 and Fable 3, which were modified to support the new predictive streaming system.

It's a cool research project. However when the money men step in it's going to get axed quickly. Extra coding, extra data, extra hardware, not cost effective.

Plus we're still waiting for that cloud assisted game, Crackdown 3. I don't expect much from complex clients doing half the work. The point of streaming is to have a simplified solution that works on as many devices as possible. Not a complex client that has to download half a game first and do half the processing locally. That's the worst of both worlds.

Another question that comes up is, what will happen to controllers? Will every different streaming service require their own controllers like consoles do now? At some point people will wonder why all the different controllers as you don't need a different remote either for Netflix and Amazon Prime. However controllers etc is where console makers make the most money.



It is a little strange, I guess it's because PS Now has been focused on older titles and maybe because it has received mixed bad and positive press throughout it's life. But even PS Now (which is actually pretty good) is built upon older attempts from Gaikai (PS Now is Gaikai) and Onlive. Streaming games is not new, it's just looking like more competition is about to take it seriously.



I rarely ever use streaming services.



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Funny thing is Sony's in a better spot than anyone else for the streaming future.
This whole servers thing is a non-factor, they can always be rented or whatever, what'll matter in the end is again GAMES.
Rest assured that other big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, 2K, etc. will all have their own streaming services, they will be keeping their games exclusive to their own service.
Sony will have more active 10+ million selling franchises than any other publisher, with several of them being 15+, and even 20+ million sellers.

What will MS, Google, or Amazon have to attract people to their services? Servers? This is very much the argument of the most powerful console, we've seen time and time again that having the most powerful console means nothing if there's no games to take advantage of it. In that same way having a ton of servers and perhaps the better service won't mean anything if there's no games to back it up. Games will still be king as they've always been and Sony has the games.



SvennoJ said:
Pemalite said:

The laws of Physics literally comes into play.

Depends on the encoding algorithms in use and the hardware support to go with it.

The laws of physics add about 4.8 ms for every 1000 km of glass fibre (light travels about 31% slower through fibre optics) or adds 9.7 ms to ping time per 1000 km. Of course that's the maximum speed on the backbone. The number of hops the signal has to go through to get into your house adds a lot more.

You can test it yourself with Azure http://www.azurespeed.com/
While playing you will have a more stable connection of course, this is just a ping test.
Anyway far above the laws of physics as the nearest server is only 100 km away from me at 50 ms average.

Well. You aren't telling me anything I don't know. :P

The Azure test... The closest server is 110ms away from me, hardly ideal.

SvennoJ said:

The better the encoding the more expensive the hardware to encode and decode. Yet those will keep getting cheaper over time. When blu-ray came out you pretty much needed most of the ps3 capabilities to decode h.264. The main cost of early blu-ray players was the power needed for decoding. Nowadays h.265 is in newer phones so decoding should be fine. Efficient real time hardware encoding still asks quite a few resources though. And that while people are getting used to 4K60 on their new 65" HDR tvs. My laptop can't handle 4K60 you tube :/ It will be 1080p60 at most I guess. Aiming for 10mbps is decent quality 1080p60.

There is already a successor to h.265 in the works. Aka. FVC or H.266.
But you are entirely correct. Once the video decoder... Which is generally a fixed function block on the GPU has support for a video codec, hardware requirements will drop significantly.
Otherwise your option is the brute force method which can take up a ton of GPU/CPU cycles.

With that in mind... There are different variants/features included with the h.264 standard as well, every year when GPU's are released, they tend to update their video engines to support the various new features/variants.



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forevercloud3000 said:

Can someone explain this to me...


 

Because it's easier to blame Sony for copying what others done first.  ¯_(ツ)_/¯



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Game streaming is an awful idea, and whoever came up with it is probably watching too much Netflix.



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Shadow1980 said:
I've lost internet service several times in the past couple of weeks while playing on my Xbox, a couple of those times being when I was playing Halo. I couldn't play multiplayer, nor could I use Netflix or Crunchyroll. But I could still play single-player games and watch Blu-ray discs. These occurrences, which are all too regular for me, remind me of why I don't want everything to be dependent on an internet connection. Streaming games will likely continue to be a service, but I sure as hell don't want it to become the future of gaming, especially not in this post-Net Neutrality world.

so much this^

I abhor the idea of gaming being solely dependent on internet. No internet service is completely reliable. Cox is the only real option for high speed in my area. They go out right around midnight every few weeks, lasts for hours. Unfortunately I am a nocturnal gamer. You can never get in touch with Customer Service at that time, so you must submit to the idea that if it doesn't fix itself, it won't be fixed till the morning.

I remember being in between services as I was about to move, and had to run into the horrible realization that all of my digitally purchased games were inaccessible because my console was desync'd as my Primary during some update. 

This always connected revolution in games is just so depressing to me. What happens when you are nostalgically thinking about how well Destiny was oh so many years from now? You can never go back and reminisce (unless there is a modern port) because they can pull the plug on a game once it is no longer viable. I suspect Destiny 1's will be pulled in a few years, and at that point everything you have worked for in that game will go up in smoke.

This is why I buy almost all my games physical and am very hesitant on any "Online Connection Required" experience. If I cannot play it untethered then I really cannot be bothered to invest.



      

      

      

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