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Cloud Google Games

Google Reveals 'First Laptops Built For Cloud Gaming' Just After Killing Stadia (forbes.com) 46

Posted by BeauHD from the this-is-awkward dept.
Google has announced what it's calling "the world's first laptops built for cloud gaming," less than two weeks after announcing plans to shut down Stadia. Forbes reports: Google says the Acer Chromebook 516 GE, ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip and Lenovo Ideapad Gaming Chromebook all have refresh rates of at least 120Hz, displays with up to 1600p resolution, immersive audio and, critically for cloud gaming, WiFi 6 or 6E connectivity. Some models have RGB keyboards too. Subject to availability, you may get a SteelSeries Rival 3 gaming mouse at no extra cost if you pick up one of these Chromebooks. All three laptops were benchmarked by GameBench to ensure that they're capable of running games at 120 frames per second at 1080p resolution. You should get input latency of under 85 ms as well. Google notes that's "console-class" input latency.

[...] Google is bringing some neat cloud gaming features to these Chromebooks. For one thing, the devices will support Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna and NVIDIA GeForce Now. In the latter case, Google worked with NVIDIA to ensure these Chromebooks support GeForce Now's highest RTX 3080 tier. That enables cloud gaming at 120 fps at a resolution of 1600p on these systems, which come with the GeForce Now app preinstalled. You'll also be able to install Xbox Cloud Gaming as a web app on your Chromebook. Additionally, these Chromebooks will come with three-month trials for both the GeForce Now RTX 3080 tier and Amazon Luna. Meanwhile, it could be pretty easy for you to find and start playing games on these services through ChromeOS. If you search for a game in the launcher (i.e. through the Everything Button), you'll see where it is available. You'll then be able to load up the game with a single click. To begin with, this feature will be compatible with GeForce Now and the Play Store. "It's good to see that Google hasn't entirely given up on cloud gaming," adds Forbes. "Still, the timing of this announcement comes at a very odd time."
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Google Reveals 'First Laptops Built For Cloud Gaming' Just After Killing Stadia More

Google Reveals 'First Laptops Built For Cloud Gaming' Just After Killing Stadia

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  • Now they are just mocking us... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @06:29AM (#62959169)

    "Be evil" was their motto yesterday. Today it is "Be evil and mock your victims".

    • Can you say that in a Buzz Lightyear voice?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I think we have to be fair to Google. They did refund everyone for both the games they bought and the hardware they bought. Many companies shutting down online services just screw the users and leave them with unplayable games and unusable hardware.

      The only slightly evil bit is not releasing an update for the Stadia controller, or publishing the specs so someone else can make one. You can use it with a USB cable on your PC, but can't wirelessly link it to anything now.

  • I realize that 120Hz displays are a bit of a niche item(not hard to find if you care; especially on the desktop; but more the preserve of 'gamer' laptops); but is the situation for other aspect of 'cloud gaming' actually as bad on random PCs as the amount of optimization and google-worked-with-nvidia and so on described makes it sound?

    My(casually gaming but not terribly closely following the subject anymore) understanding was that the 'cloud' services basically just needed solid video decode, which is no

    • From a hardware standpoint, the low-latency networking requirements for gaming are well above what most laptops can handle, as are the full-layout, fast response keyboards. Of course, as you say, you can buy those things separately, but that kind of defeats the purpose.

      To me, at any rate, it's the automatic updates that are key. Here's how Lenovo pitches it:

      "As a cloud-powered device, the need for game installs, manual downloads, updates, and patches are a thing of the past. Automatic software updates occu

      • It's not really as much automatic updates as it someone else updating a file you dont actually have access to.

        • Just so. This isn't a feature for people who do their own maintenance. It's for end users.

          • I can see it subscriptions and streaming, for games. I had XBox GamePass for my PC for a year, it was sometimes fun, but all we wanted to do was play Forza and it actually worked maybe 2/3 of the time, at best, often after yet another 90 GB download. Ended up cancelling.

            Also, mixing up real money with game dynamics has killed the appeal of a lot of games for me.

      • no mods / there is an max lifetime for the game to be live / may have HD-4K fees / Max session times.
        And if you have some ISP's caps / slowdowns after XX data may make your gameing suck.

        Also Chrome OS does stop getting OS updates for your hardware a lot faster then Linux or windows does.

        • Not sure what you mean by "no mods" but if you mean tweaking your laptop yes, you can do that. They make it look scary, and in my case I had to flip a switch on the motherboard, but yes, there is a dev mode.

          That said, I haven't had to make changes to the OS as much as changes to the containers.

          • Not sure what you mean by "no mods" but if you mean tweaking your laptop

            No.
            Mods on "your" games.
            As in, there's no way to install stuff from https://nudepatch.net/ [nudepatch.net] on top of your game if it's not running on your computer.

            (Though cynical people will point that "your" hardly applies when your whole library of games is hosted on the cloud - aka "someone else's computer").

            Jokes aside, not all games allow user content: e.g. extra maps and if the game doesn't allow it, you need to patch it.
            Patches can also add bugfixes done by the users.
            There might be also accessibility patches (speci

    • and then all the rest was down to the quality of the network link.?

      this is the part google just hoped nobody would talk about. i mean, forgetting the random dropouts and periods of congestion most residential connections endure, the ping alone is enough to deter serious gamers. The point at which a gamer becomes savvy enough to want a high end PC, is probably around the time they become averse to input lag, so that essentially rules out the core target market, leaving paupers and casual gamers. no wonder theyre shuttering it. I could have told them that

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      To be fair, even mobile devices have started to release in mid range with 90Hz and in upper range with 120Hz screens. It's a generally useful feature for everything interactive that is making its way into mainstream. Granted you'll get more out of this feature on large screens, and you'll get more out of it when you're young, but even for older people on smartphones, 90Hz makes some sense over 60Hz.

      It takes a while, but once people see better refresh rate and what it looks like, they tend to get used to it

  • This all about dominating the cross-platform space (Score:4, Informative)

    by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @07:03AM (#62959195) Journal

    I'm a developer and I've been using a high-end Chromebook as my daily driver for nearly two years now. The one thing everyone misses about Chromebooks at the high end is that they are designed to be cross-platform killers. 90% of my work and play is on the web. But there are a few apps in Linux I need, and a few in Android. If I needed a Window app, I could get that, too. Chromebooks make it dirt-simple to combine all these apps together. Integration with the desktop is automatic. Integration with file services is automatic. Integration with onboard hardware for sound and video is automatic. It all "just works", just like the Apple slogan used to say.

    And best of all, software upgrades are automatic. For the purists who want to maintain their own systems (I'm one of those, too), ChromeOS isn't targeted towards you. It's targeted towards end users. But it's still darned impressive, even for a developer.

    And now this adoption of all three gaming platforms under one client device. A very smart move, I think. And very much in their wheelhouse.

    • How many people actually need Android apps on their laptop or desktop? In many if not most cases they provide an inferior experience to simply visiting the site with a non-mobile browser.

  • "Console class" my royal irish. If the Atari 2600 had even half of that kind of input latency, they'd never have sold any. To put it in context, if you put any more than 6ms of input latency across a decent drummer's monitor headphones, they'd likely come out the booth and try to eat you. Decent keyboard players are a little more forgiving - You could afflict them with up to 8ms before they become moved to do you any serious harm.

    • Yeah, that's what I wanted to say too. 85ms is basically forever. It might work for a non-combat flightsim, or a sailing simulator, but for just about anything else realtime it is frankly terrible.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Frankly 85ms is out for anything real time. Turn based stuff and such, it would probably work.

        For everything else, user experience would be awful. That's why google tried to make AI that would predict what you are going to input into the game, and actually input it for you in Stadia.

        Not terribly surprisingly, that didn't work out.

        • It might work for a non-combat flightsim, or a sailing simulator, but for just about anything else realtime it is frankly terrible.

          Frankly 85ms is out for anything real time. Turn based stuff and such, it would probably work.

          For everything else, user experience would be awful.

          It really depends on how animations are done in the game.
          If actions have setups spanning sufficiently many frames, it's possible to mask some of the latency.

          e.g.: if before jumping your avatar crouches for 5 60Hz frames (== 83ms), there are techniques to leverage that.

          When playing on cloud, the crouch animation will look glitchy, but the character will jump exactly on the right time, as when the player is on their own local desktop/gaming PC.

          i.e.: The time lost in the round trip of input-to-cloud-to-screen

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            Yes, that is the same argument we've been hearing for remotely streamed games since at least 2010s. "But the multiplayer will probably be better because [half of the reasoning you provide]. And we can probably make it work for single player too [the other half of the reasoning you provide]".

            What is Einstein's definition of insanity?

            • Damn, lost my draft of a post.
              Starting again

              My key point was that it's not the technical limitations which are holding cloud gaming back. Lag compensation is a solved problem if you design your game around.
              It's the lack of a market. There aren't that many people interested in a Netflix-for-games.

              Cloud gaming doesn't have any killer feature.

              Despite the console itself being cheaper and smaller, it comes with lots of external costs: you need a top notch connection, some FTTH with extremely low ping round trip

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                I will this time starting by reminding you of Einstein's definition of insanity.

                Then I'll simply point out that there are many killer features in cloud gaming, which is why various companies have been trying to make it work for well over a decade at this point. To publishers, just the anti-piracy and anti-cheat solutions alone are supreme killer features. To end users, needing only a cheap device and game working the same from multiple devices is a killer feature.

                But for all the rhetorical wank about "lag c

    • I love that you are on about input latency as if that the big contributor here.

      • Re:85ms of input latency (Score:5, Informative)

        by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @09:44AM (#62959549) Homepage
        Most multiplayer games mask the latency between you and the server by making real time movements client side before sending them to the server for verification. Cloud gaming can't do that as the input is sent direct to the server so the input latency includes your connection round trip latency.

        For single player games that are action oriented this is a big deal. Even multiplayer will be bad as the game can't 'pre render' moves before sending them to the server.

        It is essentially disconnecting your eyes from your input. Who is going to tolerate that?

        • Even multiplayer will be bad as the game can't 'pre render' moves before sending them to the server.

          Though if it's not an "AAA" game it's actually possible that the datacenter DOES start rendering several possible alternative responses, send them in parallel heavily compressed, and the client eventually switch to the alternate video.
          (Might even be client-side with extremely simple scripts: "Switch to video stream #3 if A is pressed", where A is the "Sword slash" button in this game and #3 is the stream where the datacenter has started pre-rendering a video of a slash being performed).

          In manner a bit remi

        • It is essentially disconnecting your eyes from your input. Who is going to tolerate that?

          Lots of people. The over whelming majority of people playing games are not elite pro gamers who need 144Hz monitors and input optimised devices. They are people with cheap arse wireless gamepads playing crappy poorly optimised titles on Xboxes and PS4s often running games at 30fps. They can't tell whether or not their input lag is a frame behind or not. Google's datacentres are usually closely located to population centres. If you're in Bumshart, Nowhere you may have a problem. My nearest datacentre is 2 co

      • Guess the idea is that it's absurd to be worrying about the quality of the snake oil when I should be more concerned about the moral depravity of the snake oil merchant, the plight of all the poor people he's left with sore tummies and empty pocketbooks. If I went along with that, I guess I'd have to unsubscribe ReportOfTheWeek and re-subscribe TheRightOpinion. And that would definitely suck.

  • Yay! Eternal beta of every Google project ever!

  • On how long before Google kills this?

  • low input latency & high FPS for full remote feeds?
    seems like the wrong place and why Chrome OS on hardware better off running an full FAT OS?

  • what, why? (Score:3)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @09:23AM (#62959469) Homepage Journal

    "It's good to see that Google hasn't entirely given up on cloud gaming," adds Forbes. "Still, the timing of this announcement comes at a very odd time."

    Nice sentence there, I hope this is one of the blogs that Forbes publishes as an editorial and not something they actually paid for.

  • Chromebooks have a bad reputation for having a short lifespan. Is it still possible to re-flash the bios like I did on an old HP Chromebox G1?

    • I don't know about genuine Chromebooks, but I had an Acer netbook that I beat the hell out of for years, gave away used, and as far as I know kept working. That same base unit was basically converted into one of the first Chromebooks when Microsoft declared No More Netbooks! and the manufactures all said "Yes my lord."

      I have a Lenovo one that's more of a tablet with a keyboard case, it seems to have held up to a good beating.

      I don't know about overall Chromebooks, but the old-school Acer and the modern eve

    • I bought a Lenovo Chromebook for 140$ CAN brand new at Staples a few months ago. Super happy with it, it's a nice tablet with a detachable keyboard. Great form factor. If you look around, you can get good quality Chromebooks cheap, there's a glut of them thanks to three years of Covid.

  • Things are really, really, really bad.
    Any sort of streaming service that have it's own games and you have to buy em is horrible because you will be basically renting the games for a limited duration either of the service itself or more likely from some retarded copyright wonkery or just the publisher going bankrupt or pulling it out from it by sheer evilness.

    • I'd be right with you if Google didn't offer complete refunds like they are actually doing. Normally when you rent something you actually pay rather than getting your money back.

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