Stadia - now "free" for a month or two
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poprock wrote:It’ll usher in a whole new era for lag.
That's what I was thinking. MP shooters would be the worst fit for this caper wouldn't it? -
Probably, but then what would happen if you ran the game on a server and then streamed the output to all the participants’ computers? -
The UK infrastructure just isn’t ready for game streaming. But it’ll happen anyway and our infrastructure will catch up eventually.
I mean … I’m in a rented flat for a few months while I have renovations done at home. The rented flat comes with BT internet. It’s over the phone line. ADSL, if y’all remember that. Last night I couldn’t even watch an episode of True Detective on Sky Go without it dropping out, forcing me to restart the Xbox, reopen the app, rewatch all the adverts, and fast-forward back to the point I left off. Three times during an hour of streaming video.
And don’t get me started on YouTube. When your net connection can’t even run that consistently … -
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They’ve been rolling out across Glasgow slowly for years. Used to get very good broadband from them at my last place of work.
They’re a very long way away from making much difference in residential areas though.
Whereas Glasgow City Council are putting money into their own (inferior) version, CityFibre. That’s rolling out really quickly across the entire city. The downside? It’s only for Council-run organisations. So, for example, they’ve laid fibre up my street but only the school at the top are allowed to use it. Businesses can apply to maybe be allowed to use it in a few years time. Residents, not so much.
Wouldn’t it have made sense for the Council to collaborate with Hyperoptic and let them lay fibre at the same time, while the streets were dug up? Or, y’know, share ownership of the cables? -
They're a start up. Of course they're talking it up. I don't know what their coverage is now but their ambition when they started out was 500,000 homes by the end of 2018. That's out of 25 million homes in the UK. And that's mostly apartment buildings where the investment of laying out pipes to younger consumers in a denser space is more worthwhile. And I wouldn't be surprised if they're getting them in during the construction phase. Rolling it out street by terraced street is painfully slow. Virgin (and the company they swallowed up) have been at this for years and it's still woeful.
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Mobile broadband might end up being more viable than digging the roads up every time we run out of bandwidth.
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Says more about Glasgow City Council than the state of BB across the country.
Theres no reason anyone in a city shouldn't have at least 40mb by now. -
*cough*Come with g if you want to live... -
The point is that a decent net connection remains a privilege in the UK, not a right. It’s not something you can automatically expect to get access to. And it’ll still be a long time before it’s the norm.
It’s always gonna be a barrier to entry for streaming services or always-online services, which are always gonna be designed with America/Japan in mind before us and our comparatively shitty network.
Monkey’s right, we’ll probably see a shift to broadband over the air before ever see full, fast, fibre coverage. -
I suppose 5G could be a game changer, but only if the providers play nice with NATS in a way they haven't with 4G.Come with g if you want to live...
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AFAIK America doesn't have good network infrastructure, certainly not across the board. Rural areas are even worse served than UK rural areas due to the whole "free market" single-provider monopolies over there.
South Korea and the Nordics have the best by far. -
I'll just jump in as the Utah perspective having been over last year to catch up with friends. Salt lake, their main city stretches miles out, and anything beyond 22nd Street (it goes beyond 90th) has piss poor WiFi. Then you love out to areas like Provo or Orem or Santa Fe and they have nothing. I went to visit family friends in Santa Fe who had built their own house, as a smart house, but can barely access stuff due to WiFi issues. The US, outside of metropolis areas is woeful.
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Ah, okay. Last time I was there for any meaningful living time was long before Wi-Fi, or broadband. The Internet over the landlines in the US felt light years ahead of what we had here at the time.
So, basically … streaming services are being designed for a fantasy land of universal decent coverage? Okay.
In all seriousness, I expect them to arrive anyway. But I expect frustrations to be a big part of the early years. -
Well, they're being designed for maybe SK and HK/China metro. Still a huge market there I guess, but I'd presume already filled by an asian provider.
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The same conversations were had about Netflix and now look where we are at.
Netflix was founded over 20 years ago, took 15 years for them to kill Blockbuster.
Physical movies still exist of course but habits have shifted. The same will happen with gaming, there will be physical for a good while yet but it will stop being the norm, digital download is already taking over and bridges the gap to streaming.
At this stage it isn't about reaching 100% of the audience, it's about reaching enough to make it viable. -
Now we just need Segas (Phoenix) console to rise from the ashes and reignite the console wars.
Though I do remember back in the day of gamers grabbing pitchforks at the mere mention of a major software company announcing they to were entering the games market. -
LivDiv wrote:The same conversations were had about Netflix and now look where we are at. Netflix was founded over 20 years ago, took 15 years for them to kill Blockbuster. Physical movies still exist of course but habits have shifted. The same will happen with gaming, there will be physical for a good while yet but it will stop being the norm, digital download is already taking over and bridges the gap to streaming. At this stage it isn't about reaching 100% of the audience, it's about reaching enough to make it viable.
Yep. Agree with all of that. -
Phoenix isn't a planet, surely if we're looking for something that's been ridiculously destroyed but coming back for more, how about Uranus"I spent years thinking Yorke was legit Downs-ish disabled and could only achieve lucidity through song" - Mr B -
LivDiv wrote:digital download is already taking over and bridges the gap to streaming.
At this stage it isn't about reaching 100% of the audience, it's about reaching enough to make it viable.
Digital downloads account for around 80% of the UK market now. -
LivDiv wrote:Is that movies you mean or games?
No idea about movies but that was on a you tube vid I watched yesterday about anthems sales.
And around 80% of all game sales in UK are digital. -
Wow. Actually quite surprised by that.
I thought it would be closer to a 50/50 split. -
Okay, three different things being compared here when they’re actually apples and oranges.
Downloading a game (or movie, etc) in your own time.
Streaming a video (TV, movie, etc) as you watch it. Which can buffer to cover up connection fluctuations.
Game streaming – a two way, interactive, process which requires consistently low latency and quick reaction times. -
I'd like to see details of how that breaks down in reality. Game sales covers everything from mobile to PC to console, and they're all wildly different business models.digi wrote:LivDiv wrote:Is that movies you mean or games?
No idea about movies but that was on a you tube vid I watched yesterday about anthems sales.
And around 80% of all game sales in UK are digital.
Come with g if you want to live... -
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-01-03-uk-video-game-sales-now-80-percent-digital
The Entertainment Retailers Association said of the £3.86bn generated by the video game market in the UK in 2018, £3.09bn was from digital and £770m was from physical sales.
That digital revenue figure, which includes microtransactions, DLC, subscription services, pay-to-play as well as individual game sales, is up 12.5 per cent year-on-year, while the physical revenue figure is down 2.8 per cent. Overall, the total game sales revenue figure is up 9.1 per cent year on year.
The shift from physical to digital for the video game market has been a slow but inevitable one, but the split when it comes to unit sales varies depending on the video game. The biggest-selling console game of 2018, FIFA 19, sold 2.5m units, according to the ERA, with 75 per cent coming from physical formats.
So, for big mainstream triple-A video games such as FIFA, physical is still very much the driving force behind unit sales revenue. However, for pretty much everything else, digital dominates. -
That's a whole lot of stuff to wrap under the term 'digital sales'. How much is mobile IAP? how much is PS Plus? How much is hats from Fortnite?
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I don't know what Fornite sells to make its money but its probably hats.
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digi wrote:
No idea about movies but that was on a you tube vid I watched yesterday about anthems sales. And around 80% of all game sales in UK are digital.LivDiv wrote:Is that movies you mean or games?
I bet that counts mobile as well. I'm as sur[prised as Liv, but I might be even more out of the loop, but the only that makes sense (to my feeble mind) is if it counts anything on a mobile platform (Android, iOS) that counts itself as a game"I spent years thinking Yorke was legit Downs-ish disabled and could only achieve lucidity through song" - Mr B
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