Epic Games' Tim Sweeney Rips Google and Apple In Defense of Nvidia's GeForce Now (hothardware.com) 71
bigwophh writes: As the number of publishers pulling out of Nvidia's GeForce Now cloud game streaming service continues to grow, the company has found an ally in Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, who vowed on Twitter to "wholeheartedly" support the company's efforts. He also took potshots at Apple and Google over the royalty rate each one charges on their respective app stores and expects them to go to battle as game streaming gains momentum. "Just waiting till later this year when Google is lobbying against Apple for blocking Stadia from iOS, while Google blocks GeForce Now, xCloud, and Fortnite from Google Play, and this whole rotten structure begins collapsing in on itself," Sweeney added. It remains to be seen how things will pan out with GeForce Now. Nvidia maintains that "game removals will be few and far between" and that it has 1,500 additional games queued up. However, Nvidia only has so much control over the developers willing to continue supporting the platform. "Epic is wholeheartedly supporting Nvidia's GeForce Now service with Fortnite and with Epic Games Store titles that choose to participate (including exclusives), and we'll be improving the integration over time," Sweeney wrote. He also called GeForce Now "the most developer-friendly and publisher-friendly of the major streaming services," which is based on Nvidia not charging any "tax" on game revenues.
"Game companies who want to move the game industry towards a healthier state for everyone should be supporting this kind of service!" Sweeney wrote.
"Game companies who want to move the game industry towards a healthier state for everyone should be supporting this kind of service!" Sweeney wrote.
Doesn't work (Score:1)
Game streaming doesn't work for many/most games due to latency. It is physics, folks. But let's cue all the Slashdotters who will claim it works great on their system as long as you have a fast connection, etc etc (even though it isn't possible).
Re:Doesn't work (Score:5, Informative)
Online games typically just send packets which determine player(s) position, hits, and scoring/misc data. The amount of data transfered is quite small, and the servers manage what data should be sent to which client. If you are playing an MMO with 10K+ players online at the same time, you won't get data of all 10K players jammed down your connection, it will only send what's needed. The server's logic handles all of this quite well.
Streaming games send the actual audio and video signal because the games themselves are running remotely, and recieving remote controller input from you. Far more data is being transfered than in the first example.
I've always wondered how Google will handle the logistics of running the games themselves on their servers if the service really becomes popular. The graphics cards alone would be a cooling nightmare, and the power draw will be extreme compared to their normal server farms.
I'm imagining plenty of 'busy signals' reminicent of the old AOL dialup days.
Re:Doesn't work (Score:5, Informative)
High bandwidth use may or may not cause problems of its own, but that's (mostly) orthogonal to the issue of latency.
A local game client goes to extraordinary lengths, collectively known as client-side prediction, to avoid the perception of latency/lag by ensuring there are instant client-side responses to things like weapons fire, movement, and so on. The client just "predicts" what (from its perception) will occur on the authoritative server simulation in the near future, and then gets responses as to whether what it predicted locally was validated or needs correction / resolution locally.
It's a huge different between streaming latency where no such prediction can realistically be done, at least beyond a few theoretical, handy-wavey claims I've heard from Google. As such, a weapon fired or a character jumping is going to feel the full effect of a round trip of network latency for streamed games, while on a local client, no matter how far away the server is, your local weapons fire and character jumps are going to feel instantaneous and snappy.
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Client side prediction has never worked well and always ended up amplifying latency issues by interfering with hit detection and causing rubber banding.
Yes, that's why every internet-enabled multiplayer action title for the past two decades uses it. I mean, what do those idiotic game developer know, amirite?
The simple fact is that there's no real solution to the latency problem. It doesn't amplify hit detection issues, as that's inherent in the time delay between client and server's simulations. Client-side prediction just does the best job it can of masking the issue.
Fun fact though: (Score:2)
A good modern network connection in the same city can have a lower round-trip time than your mouse/PC/display setup.
Of course what they don't tell you, is that that is added *on top*.
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Just run the game server on the satellite, then the whole geographical area gets a fair shake
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Sure, but games were also just sending that data 20 years ago, and we've had an order of magnitude increase in availability of bandwidth and reduction of latency.
In that time frame I've gone from 33.6kbps to 80mbps, and my average latency to game servers from 180ms to sub 18ms.
Hence, the idea that we can't now handle more data, and do so with lower latency, isn't really an argument for this not working, it's more than capable of working, the bigger question is whether we want it to work, because you will no
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People will go for it, because the total cost of ownership will be *much* lower. It's not just the cost of the game, you'll be time-sharing use on a bleeding edge PC.
Say you game 2.4 hours a day, that's 10% of each day you play. You get a bleeding edge PC, but you're only using its features 10% of the time. With streaming, that same PC is getting used 100% of the time, so your base "rental" over the year could cost as little as 10% of the cost of a top-end gaming PC, so you'd be paying $300 a year to play g
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... So sure, you don't own that $3000 PC by yourself anymore, but the costs are split between X number of people and the PC runs all the time. If that box gets upgraded after 1 year of use, then that's 34 cents per hour to cover the base hardware costs, so need to charge the end-user about $125 a year to game 1 hour a day on a current-year bleeding edge machine - not counting electricity costs. But you're saving most of that anyway.
This is why it's going to be a *very* attractive option and might well kill
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Serious gamers that currently care about graphics and frame rates are not going to embrace this, and most of the rest are already on consoles. The console market is already heading to pay-to-access over pay-to-own, so not much to gain for people looking to save money. You can already pay $10 a month and get access to a couple hundred games.
No matter how well game streaming works, it wont work all of the time for all of the people, especially for most of the US with our shit internet on average. There are da
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Downvote away, but game streaming is not going to put a dent in the video game market. It's not a viable replacement for most people. The percentage of people that it will run well for all of the time is going to be way less than the percentage of people that get good performance running locally, thus running locally is the rational choice for most people. That plus the game market's hard on for multiplayer gaming means there's additional resistance to switching platforms.
Re:Doesn't work (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Gaming PCs don't cost $3,000 anymore. I mean, yes, they exist, but it's possible to spend way less. My local Microcenter has a gaming PC with an i7 9700K, Nvidia RTX 2060, 16GB DDR4-3600 RAM, and 500GB SSD for $1,100. That's enough to play basically any PC game I can think of on at least "High" settings in 4K. So, using your own 10% math, this machine clocks in at $110/year, which is less than what Stadia charges for its standard service.
2. Proponents of Stadia always seem to believe that GPU upgrades are an annual thing. They aren't. Battlefield V's minimum GPU requirement is a GTX 660, released in 2012. Borderlands 3 wants a 680, released the same year. Now sure, those cards probably won't get a decent framerate unless you're playing at 720p, but new GTX 1650's are going for $150 - hardly a king's ransom for the higher framerates.
3. To an extent, the ability to timeshare a bleeding edge PC is mitigated by the need to compress the data enough to transmit over the internet - even the best residential internet connections don't have the throughput of HDMI. Stadia is going to require image compression that an individually owned PC will not. If the visual spectacle of 'ultra' quality 4K graphics is of sufficient value, streaming gaming won't be the answer for that. Moreover, even if it's "close enough", the display it's being shown on would have to take advantage of that - that eliminates a good number of phones, Chromebooks, laptops, and tablets.
4. The most compelling feature Stadia could implement is to allow every game in the library to be included with the subscription. EA's Origin Access basic, at $5/month, gives me the ability to play over 200 games (I stopped counting after that) as a part of the subscription. Stadia has 42 in total, many of which requiring their own purchase. Yes, plenty of the OA games have macrotransactions in them, and yes, EA has a bit of a home field advantage since they've been publishing games for quite a while...but it's still pretty sad when EA has a more compelling product than Google.
So, in summary, here's what I see the demographic of Stadia (and its ilk) to be: People who enjoy playing video games, but don't already own a current-gen Xbox, Playstation, Switch, or gaming PC, but does have some other Stadia-compatible device they want to play games on, are already spending $100/mo or more for 200u/50d internet connections for some other reason, and trust Google enough to spend money on games within Stadia despite the Google Graveyard, and Google having been very, very coy about answering the 'what happens to the games you bought if Stadia goes pear-shaped' for months now. THAT...seems like a small cross-section of people to me.
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> because the total cost of ownership will be *much* lower.
Will it though? Will it really be?
> so you'd be paying $300 a year to play games on it. But you only need a TV set and a controller. Then, new boxes get released so the $300/year option upgrades
You still don't own anything. And with my upgrade cycle over time I spend less than $300 USD per year on gaming hardware for my PC. More on the order of $100 a year - presuming we're not counting the base machine that I would be buying anyway for reg
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If you're worried about latency, just make them place the streaming server 1.8 metres from your monitor.
OK, CoD casual. (Score:3)
Now try a game not made for consoles.
If you really want to see the difference, try an oldie: Quake 3 ProMode. 150% speed, on top of it being much faster than any recent game. And instant weapon changes.
Nothing, and I mean *NOTHING* prepares you for a shooter match like 30 minutes of 1v1 to 4v4 in that!
Oh wait, they won't offer that game, let alone *ever* offering game modding! Or hosting your own.
Re: OK, CoD casual. (Score:2)
People notice things beyond 100mS input lag, most gamers would notice anything beyond 50mS although they wouldn't physically perceive it as lag, they would notice a ton of missed shots unless off course you're on a console game (auto-aim). Unless their service is 25-50mS away which is pretty much "collocates with your local ISP DSLAM" the service wouldn't be useful for fast games.
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FYI I consistently get sub 20ms ping to the GeForce Now servers, and when I was doing the Stadia Beta I would get 20-30ms.
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Even on competitive shooters, you wouldn't notice it.
You wouldn't notice it. But your scoreboard definitely would. If you were actually a competitive shooter then a difference in I wish Elon would get that LEO Starlink service off the ground. I think it's going to be my only option here in the mountains.
The saddest thing I have heard in a long time. Move to the country to appreciate nature and then pray someone screws up the night sky.
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I wish Elon would get that LEO Starlink service off the ground. I think it's going to be my only option here in the mountains.
Offtopic - but get involved in your local politics. We had enough citizens speak up that a local county commissioner looked into it - and realized the rural area was underserviced. The reason it was underserviced was the FTC broadband maps incorrectly claimed there was broadband available and there wasn't. Maps got updated / fixed - and a small local telco introduces themselves within 6 months interested in running fiber to our area. They weren't allowed to previously because coverage was already presen
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You've got to have a low ping and no dropped frames, but if you have decent internet, you'll be surprised at how good it is.
Sure, if you go in with the expectation that it can't work, you will be surprised at how well it works... however, when playing multiplayer games that require quick reaction times, even 10 milliseconds can be a lot.
With all of the content filters and other spying devices, the route each packet takes from the typical internet connection will be waylaid by at least 50 milliseconds. That is one way travel, so double that to capture the return trip. 100 milliseconds of latency is VERY noticeable. There are ways
What do you think ... (Score:3)
input encoding, modulation, transmit time, demodulation, decoding, (actual game would go here), video encoding, modulation, transmit time, demodulation, video decoding round-trip time is?
That is on top of the actual I/O and game delay, which is already very close below what the user might notice, to cram in as much quality as possible.
Re:Doesn't work (Score:4, Interesting)
And what's the latency on a cellular network when someone is using the GeForce Now mobile app on their Android device?
Or even the latency on a WiFi link (many people have computers and phones connected to the Internet via WiFi)
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All I can say to people screaming about latency is seeing is believing. I live out in the sticks where my only non-satellite option is Verizon cantenna solution. Its actually great service from a technical standpoint. 6mbps or so pretty much synchronous. As to latency ping time from my desktop so including all of my home network gear to 8.8.8.8 is around 62ms - plenty low for highly interactive stuff. The only problem is its very very expensive. You either pay for very high caps and then risk getting hit
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62ms is roughly 4 frames at 60fps. Add in modern displays that aren't geared toward low latency and you can easily add another 2-3 frames. Oh you are also using a wireless controller, that's another few frames. That could easily be 1/10th of a second.
Non twitchy games you won't probably notice it, but one thing I do notice even streaming over a wired connection in my home is that the codecs they use are crap. High amounts of motion will create a blurry image off a PS4 or PC with Nvidia graphics card.
Even if
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I am sure some of that is true; but we were using a phone so no HDMI interconnect to the display or anything to add latency. The control was wireless as to the clarity; again on a 5 1/2 inch display it was not really noticeable.
I am sure if you put it on 23" or bigger desktop monitory on the end of HDMI it matters.
Again though I think for the somewhat casual player - this things can be overlooked. If you are a competitive twitch player you are going want your own hot rig. I don't see that changing
Re: Doesn't work (Score:3)
Doesn't really matter when the shitty deep packet filtering ISP and cable modem add 100 times as much.
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Game streaming doesn't work for many/most games due to latency. It is physics, folks. But let's cue all the Slashdotters who will claim it works great on their system as long as you have a fast connection, etc etc (even though it isn't possible).
LOL, streaming works good enough, obviously. What isn't working, and isn't as obvious, is Skill Based Matchmaking, or SBMM. Tim's game Fortnite, for example, uses high latency / low skill players as entertainment (easy klls) for the amusement of low latency / high skill players. Free To Play has made Tim billions of dollars because proficient gamers flocked to a format that gave them intelligent, but still easy targets. Actual bots just aren't that "intelligent"; people are much better, more entertaining,
app stores lock in will kill apple and others if t (Score:2)
app stores lock in will kill apple and others if they push to far with % and lock ins.
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Copyright covers hardware now. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Because they sell this service based on access to a library of content. We have the choice whether to be in that library or not. Our distribution agreement is with Valve, not with NVIDIA, Leiro wrote in response to a question asking why the indie developer pulled The Long Dark from GeForce NOW.
These people were renting hardware to play these games. This is a distorted, greedy, and desperate view of what value these companies add to the gaming ecosystem. I foresee a market disruption.
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Hinterland creative director Raphael van Lierop
I wouldn't trust a thing that twerp has to say. He's noxiously anti-consumer.
Raphael van Lierop on GOG's consumer friendly refund policy:
This looks like a desperate way to try to differentiate your digital store at the expense of developers. A "2 play-hour/2 weeks of ownership refund window" is more than sufficient for customers to back out of a purchase for legitimate reasons.
Essentially he wants to trick consumers into buying his low quality, "in-dev" garbage on the promise of it becoming better only to get stuck with a crap game and empty promises after the return period has elapsed. On top of that, his game isn't even being sold on GOG any more (he had it removed long before this updated return policy was instituted for reasons unknown), so
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yeah, uh, it's not a library of content. it's that you sold a game and now want to limit what gpu/computer people can play it on because YOU TOOK MONEY FROM GOOGLE OR APPLE OR SONY for exclusive streaming rights. thats what it is in reality isn't it? isn't it quite obvious?
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Probably this. OR they think they can shake down Nvidia for an extra slice of this pie.
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BTW - also note that The Long Dark costs almost twice as much on XBox One as it does on Steam. Allowing it on the streaming service undercuts the premium pricing of the XBox version, and a possible Playstation version.
It's still cancer. (Score:3)
Trying to take control away from the end user.
It is even similar to what companies like Uber, or their equivalent for food delivery, scooters, etc.
Instead of an open market of many trading with many, they sit themselves down in the middle, and want to create a monopoly, by channeling everything through them. The service providers / manufacturers become their employees, and their clients become *their* clients.
And of course nobody owns anything anymore. As I said: (C)ontrol.
And here is why other people being stupid harms you and me, and should be legally prevented: Stupid people will fall for it, because they believe they get short-term convenience or savings. Until it will dominate, and the sane option becomes a niche. And then non-stupid people are practically forced to choose the same stupid option. Case in point: Touch screen keyboards VS real keyboards.
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That isn't to say that Nvidia can't/won't change their mind in the future. But, that definitely isn't what they're looking to do here. They're just trying to make money in an emerging consum
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Are you stupid? Food delivery services do not take away control from the END USER. From the store maybe but not from the customer.
There is nothing stopping me from going straight to the store and buying it directly from them or using anoter delivery service. The barrier of entry to new delivery services is very low too.
Unless food delivery services are paying millions to brick and mortar stores to go exclusive and only sell through that delivery service you might have a point but they are not. Theres no foo
Screw Sweeney (Score:5, Insightful)
while Google blocks GeForce Now, xCloud, and Fortnite from Google Play
He's having a cry that Google dare charge him money for the use for their distribution platform. Google never blocked Fortnite (and the other two are actually available on Google Play), Tim Sweeney just as usual didn't want to play by the rules. I can't wait until he runs out of money trying to buy his way into relevancy.
Sweeney is an idiot who thinks that Google Play, Steam, etc are all just dumb stores. He compares his own absolute garbage attempts at creating platforms to the established platforms and complains they charge too much while completely ignoring the features and benefits they bring. He produced a Fiat 500 and complained that other people buy high-spec'd BMWs with a comparison that it's "just another car".
His favourite quote: "Epic is just another icon". Ironically that's the only thing he's said that is correct. Epic is just another icon. It's the competition which are instead feature rich platforms developed over the past 20 years.
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EA got us Millennials
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Look who's talking (Score:3, Insightful)
Lying Tim Sweeney (Score:5, Informative)
It's only made worse by how the game store he created, "creatively" named the "Epic Game Store", to avoid paying Valve a cut of Fortnite sales is primarily selling itself trough exclusivity contracts with game developers and blocking those games from different stores, primarily Steam, for 6-12 months at a time.
Remote Desktop (Score:1)
Nope. Tim is a lier. (Score:2)
"Game companies who want to move the game industry towards a healthier state for everyone should be supporting this kind of service!" Sweeney wrote.
These services are not healthy for the industry as they are hostile to users. At least with current games you can apply a no cd patch to get them to work.
With a cloud service like this they control everything. More so than they do now.
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I was about to post something similar when I read that quote.
I mean, "...move the game industry towards a healthier state for everyone"? As a gamer, I see that as the worst possible thing that can happen to the game industry:
- I can't play a game if my ISP is having problems
- I can't play a game if my game provider is having problems
- I can't play a game if my data cap is blown
- I can't play a game if my download speed is too low
- I can't play a game if my ping is too high
- I need to pay to "buy" a game wit
I agree with Tim (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never much liked the idea of game streaming services, but Nvidia's made by far the best argument with their service.
Blizzard, 2K, etc ... Welcome to Nvidia s.t list (Score:1)
I'd like to welcome Blizzard, 2K games, and whoever else pulled out of GeForce now to Nvidia's Sh..t List. Good luck getting any driver support.
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Blizzard/etc: our new games run better on AMD GPUs!
He's onto something - check out Roblox (Score:2)
Roblox is the ultimate "I want to spend money on this" game.
Key is, it has thousands of games, which mostly all can accept money. And platform availability, almost all of them.
In my house, I've seen iPad, Fire tablet, PC, and XBox all going at once on the same game with 4 different kids in my house (two are mine). In the same game instance.
I was rather impressed (especially when they realized they could watch another's screen and apply the information the remote view provided).
Oh, Roblox latency: 400-600