Google Stadia General Discussion - Like any other gaming platform, but worse.

[️ronic]

Update 7/27/2019: Since this thread is gaining some traction, I've decided to update the OP.

Officially announced back in March, Google’s first game streaming service, Stadia, is slated to be released sometime this fall:

There is no console. All you need is a compatible phone, computer running Google Chrome, or a Chromecast Ultra. You’ll also need a $60 stadia controller with a built-in microphone so Google can spy on you some more (or you could just bring your own controller and not waste your money, because we all know this’ll eventually crash and burn).

The entire service is $9.99/mo … plus the cost of any games that you want to buy, Goym.
And don’t worry about what will happen to those games you paid for if the service ever shuts down (which it eventually will), because they're guaranteed to disapear too!

Spoiler: Original OP

PlayStation, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch big Google game console rival coming this week!

GOOGLE's big new announcement is coming, and we're expecting the announcement to make executives at the Big Three - Son, Microsoft and Sony - a little nervous.

www.dailystar.co.uk

Google Gaming Console Controller Surfaces in Newly Discovered Patent | Digital Trends

A newly discovered patent may have revealed the design and features of the controller for the rumored Google gaming console. The patent itself is a for a notification system, but it comes with technical sketches of a controller that resembles the DualShock controller for the PlayStation 4.

www.digitaltrends.com

Appearantly, Google is planning on announcing it's latest tech venture - a game streaming console/service - on March 19 at GDC.

Here's an artist's rendering of the rumered controller design (based on a patent):

I can't say that I would buy this, but I'm definately interested to see what the final product looks like.

edit: I'm a noob. Article texts:

We're getting very close to the announcement of whatever Google has been cooking up in the game's side of things for the last few years.

As Microsoft gears up to show us what it's got in store for us in the next generation with the evolution of its xCloud services and the multiple versions of the rumoured Xbox Scarlett, and Sony slowly puts together its PlayStation 5 plans, Google looks like it's about to throw its hat into the ring, too.

The mega-company has announced it is set to host a keynote presentation on March 19th at 10AM PT in San Francisco for the annual Game Developer’s Conference - and the rumours are worth sitting up and listening for.


As per BusinessInsider, Google itself has sent out an invite to press with the simple-yet-effective tagline "Gather Around" with some ominous imagery attached.


But what could this incoming announcement be? Well, according to a recent report from The Information, Google has recently stepped up its work on “a subscription-based game streaming service that could work either on Google’s Chromecast or possibly a Google-made console."

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about this console. Codenamed ‘Yeti’, the service is rumoured to not only be a video games machine but a Netflix-style game streaming platform too.

Alongside that the firm is trying to bring game developers under the Google umbrella "whether through aggressive recruiting or even major acquisitions".


Industry insiders are at fever pitch as the company throws hundreds of millions at a potential new gaming arm that will aim to break up the status quo in console gaming.

Last year, Jason Schreier of Kotaku, said:

"We haven’t heard many specifics about Google’s video game plans, but what we have heard is that it’s a three-pronged approach: 1) Some sort of streaming platform, 2) some sort of hardware, and 3) an attempt to bring game developers under the Google umbrella, whether through aggressive recruiting or even major acquisitions.

"That’s the word from five people who have either been briefed on Google’s plans or heard about them secondhand."

The timing makes sense - towards the latter end of last year (and at the start of this year), Google has been testing Project Stream by allowing users to run a pretty demanding title, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, via a browser in their internet browser.

The success of this period has proved, without doubt, that Google is capable of streaming top-tier, triple-A games over the internet - something that many competitors (OnLive, Ouya and more) have spectacularly failed at previously.

So what can we likely expect from the company as we head towards the announcement? It’s not unreasonable to assume a cheap-but-effective bit of tech will be announced: think Chromecast for games, something that will plug and play into your TV, that you can pair a bluetooth device with to play.

Considering Ubisoft’s existing relationship with Google - and the success of the Assassin’s Creed test - we’d expect to maybe see more Ubi games announced for a launch period on Project Stream (or whatever it ends up being called).

We’ll have more information for you as the news breaks on March 19.

A newly discovered patent may have shown the design and features of the controller for Google’s rumored gaming console, which will reportedly be revealed this month.

The patent is not for the controller itself, but rather for a notification system. It will enable the controller to let the player know if a game becomes available, if the player has received an invitation, if there are changes on a leaderboard, and if a chat request was received.


The document, filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, comes with images that reveal the design of the controller, which resembles the PlayStation 4 DualShock controller.


There are two joysticks, a directional pad, four gameplay buttons, and pairs of shoulder and trigger buttons. There also appear to be home and back buttons at the top part of the controller, a circular button that Google referred to in the patent as an action button, and microphone button in between the joysticks that may hint at compatibility with Google Assistant.


The patent was filed in October last year, and is a continuation of a previous filing that was lodged in 2014. This means that there may have been changes to the controller’s design, if the patent is indeed for the rumored Google gaming console.

That did not stop people from creating unofficial renders based on the patent’s technical sketches though, with Twitter user Reps coming up with this:

The rumored Google gaming console is known as Project Yeti, which aims to run high-performance titles on Google’s machines and then stream them to devices owned by players. Part of Project Yeti is Project Stream, which ended a three-month demo in January that successfully streamed Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on Chrome browsers.

The hardware for Project Yeti reportedly started as a Chromecast dongle, but it has since evolved into a console and controller that were designed by Google, which is rumored to be revealed at the Game Developers Conference on March 19.


It remains unclear if the controller in the discovered patent will be what Google will unveil at GDC 2019, if the rumors are true. The event is just a week away though, so official confirmation may arrive soon.
https://twitter.com/RepsUp100/statu...ntroller-surfaces-in-newly-discovered-patent/

 

[Poiseon]

Official prediction. It'll be like if EA built it's own console. No disc drive, so all digital, likely a ,multitude of microtransations based games, and it will have a built in mic, data miner, and shitty customer support.

This console is probably going to be a big part of Project Dragonfly.

 

[Recoil]

No matter what Google appears to be doing at first look, their real game is always about creating & selling datasets somehow. They're not just providing search, they're tabulating what people search for & selling that. The next frontier for this is user gameplay data. It's already begun - that's why you sign privacy agreements in half the games you play nowadays. They're collecting data on how you you and a hundred thousand other folks play the game they made.
If Google is getting in on this trend, I bet they've probably got some novel new take on monetizing player data.

 

[Some JERK]

If it's anything like any other Google product they'll release it, it'll suck, then after a year they'll get it dialed in to a point where it works pretty good. Then one day out of nowhere they'll 'update' it to add features that nobody asked for and make it profoundly less usable.

 

[Turkey Twister]

Youtube will launch the proper Twitch-like update with this sucker for better streaming. It'll make it absolute cancer to use Youtube, not that it already isn't.

 

[Dick Pooman]

No matter what Google appears to be doing at first look, their real game is always about creating & selling datasets somehow. They're not just providing search, they're tabulating what people search for & selling that. The next frontier for this is user gameplay data. It's already begun - that's why you sign privacy agreements in half the games you play nowadays. They're collecting data on how you you and a hundred thousand other folks play the game they made.
If Google is getting in on this trend, I bet they've probably got some novel new take on monetizing player data.

You mean like the always on, always listening microphone that records everything you say, which won't be publicly acknowledged until people find out about it months after release and start calling them out?

 

[️ronic]

Youtube will launch the proper Twitch-like update with this sucker for better streaming. It'll make it absolute cancer to use Youtube, not that it already isn't.

I can see them paying some big name streamers to play some games just before/after the release of the console and that being promoted like crazy on YT.

 

[Recoil]

You mean like the always on, always listening microphone that records everything you say, which won't be publicly acknowledged until people find out about it months after release and start calling them out?

That, for sure, but there's something else. They can track large masses of player movement over time to create heat maps and then feed those stats to design teams or analysts.

 

[RJ MacReady]

Call me a pessimist but I think this will be a failure that costs Google hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

[Recoil]

Call me a pessimist but I think this will be a failure that costs Google hundreds of millions of dollars.

With enough bandwidth, Google could (theoretically, I guess) make their platform very low risk & cheap to produce by not even having any serious hardware inside. By offloading processing labor on a cloud of graphics cards somewhere and instantly streaming their output back to the customer, they could use middling hardware and crank out cheap terminals by the millions.

 

[RJ MacReady]

With enough bandwidth, Google could (theoretically, I guess) make their platform very low risk & cheap to produce by not even having any serious hardware inside. By offloading processing labor on a cloud of graphics cards somewhere and instantly streaming their output back to the customer, they could use middling hardware and crank out cheap terminals by the millions.

I feel infrastructure gets in the way of that. If every home on Earth had fibre optic it'd be a different story, but a cheaper streaming alternative to the pricier consoles is useless if you don't have a stable connection. And if you can access good internet, you can probably afford a PS4/Xbox.

Streaming games is a technological inevitability, though. It's a scaling problem (need massive but inexpensive computing power) which essentially makes it a matter of testing the limits of Moore's Law. Google of all companies is obviously the best positioned for this (as you say) but I doubt that inevitability has come here and now.

 

[️ronic]

I feel infrastructure gets in the way of that. If every home on Earth had fibre optic it'd be a different story, but a cheaper streaming alternative to the pricier consoles is useless if you don't have a stable connection. And if you can access good internet, you can probably afford a PS4/Xbox.

Streaming games is a technological inevitability, though. It's a scaling problem (need massive but inexpensive computing power) which essentially makes it a matter of testing the limits of Moore's Law. Google of all companies is obviously the best positioned for this (as you say) but I doubt that inevitability has come here and now.

As someone who has used Playstation's Playstation Now service, I can tell you that unless you have a solid internet connection, the game play is just choppy. Even then, things like controller input usually take like half a second to register, which can make a huge difference with some games. Modern internet speeds just aren't up to par with what a service like this needs.

 

[The Flawless Gazelles]

how can you get a patent for such a generic looking controller?

 

[Tootsie Bear]

how can you get a patent for such a generic looking controller?

The controller looks like it will hurt your hands after a few minutes of game play.

 

[Coolio55]

The controller looks like it will hurt your hands after a few minutes of game play.

my exact thoughts.

How can such a large company make something worse than the OUYA? (Not even just the controller lol)

 

[️ronic]

how can you get a patent for such a generic looking controller?

To be fair, the mockup isn't from Google itself. The final product will probably be more usable.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

No.
This will be terrible and nothing but DLC.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

I, for one, welcome the Google+ of gaming consoles. It will be shilled nearly as hard as it will suck.

 

[JuanButNotForgotten]

To be fair, the mockup isn't from Google itself.

Yeah, no way in hell Google console will have white controllers.

 

[ThatGayElfFromDragonAge]

Gross violation of privacy included in every unit! free of charge.