The issue is not internet speed, its the latency, and latency will always be an issue as it gets worse the further you are away from the servers. If the servers are just in major cities, anyone further away will be at a disadvantage compared to those in those cities. 5G will still have a higher latency than wired internet, it's not going to be the solution if you want to be competitive. Input latency from the choice of controllers (wired vs wireless) adds another factor. And people playing on a device with a smaller resolution and screen size will have a disadvantage from that as well when they play those with large screens with a much higher resolution.
It's for casual gamers that are not even serious about gaming right now.
People playing on different devices with different screen sizes is something that will be their choice, no-one will force them to play on this or that device. If they don't want to play on their phones, they don't have to. They can use a tablet or play at home on their TV exclusively. Simple as that.
It can also be that there will be optimization, so when you play multiplayer, primarily you'll be put together with people who use similar devices, so they have the same advantages or disadvantages. We don't know this yet.
The cross-platform ability is somehow a disadvantage in your reading, when in fact it opens up a whole new market, a large one. Not just for Google, but for game developers, video game companies too. It's not too irresponsible for me to say, that there's a big interest to make this new version of cloud gaming work.
Casual vs. competitive players. Which market is bigger?
Latency differences are there in casual and competitive online playing now, it is not cloud gaming specific. Latency is not picky like that.
And right back at ya when worrying about available titles. It didn't occur to me at first and i'm not sure, how i missed it, but in their GDC demo they use the latest Assassin's Creed for demonstration, which is a Ubisoft game, so more than likely Ubisoft is already on board. id Software is already on board with Doom Eternal as the first game ever releases on the platform and:
"Google says more than 100 studios already have dev kits for Stadia, and more than 1,000 creatives and engineers are already working on titles that will work on the service."
Google built their own gaming studio and they brought several talented person on board: Jack Buser
(former senior director at Sony’s game streaming unit and leader of the social efforts of the PlayStation platform), Richard Marks
(former senior research engineer at Sony, who participated in the development of the PlayStation VR headset and Move controller), Jade
Raymond (founder of Ubisoft Toronto, former executive producer at Ubisoft, co-creator of Assassin's Creed, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Watchdogs, founder of EA Motive Studios) and last but not least Phil Harrison
(former corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios known as Xbox Game Studios now, former British corporate executive and representative director of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., former executive vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, former president and chief operating officer at Infogrames, former non-executive director of Atari, former advisory at Gaikai, one of the first game streaming/cloud gaming company).
Reading this list, i think it's clear that Google is not joking or bluffing.
In competitive games, anyone closer to the servers will have lower input lag than those far away from the servers. This is already an issue with some games, streaming the inputs directly will only amplify the issue.
It doesn't matter if every device has terabit internet and every ISP node had theoretically perfect routers, the major limitations are within the laws of physics itself.
If you're driving a car in an area where the maximum speed limit is 60 miles per hour. If you go down a two lane road, it will take about one minute to travel one mile. If you go down an eight-lane highway, it will still take about one minute to go one mile. The number of lanes (bandwidth) does not increase the overall speed, it only allows more traffic to pass through the route at the same time.
Right now, that proverbial speed limit is the speed of light, and current technology is fairly close to that limitation. Breaking that barrier isn't going to happen with some new compression algorithm by a game developer, it's going to require a theoretically impossible technology that completely replaces the physical cables currently used to send the data.
As you said, latency is different for online gamers, it's not something, which is cloud gaming specific.
In ideal situation the latency can even be better with Stadia than the latency now with traditional online gaming. Why? Because with the Stadia controller you are directly connected to the game session on the server, all of the players are, there are no clients between the controller and the server. That's a lot of back and forth the signal doesn't have to travel. This is entirely different from how controllers work today. Obviously your distance from the server will still matter, because it's just one thing to send instructions via your controller directly to the server, you'll need the video stream too lol, so the distance will still matter, but not more than now. It's just that you'll be connected to a Stadia server and not a Steam server, in which case you will either get lucky and there will be a server closer to you than now or not.
The main issue with latency regarding cloud gaming is not that it's different for players, the issue is that it's too high for now. If they decrease it with whatever solution they come up with (e.g. more optimized video encoding and decoding, how the Stadia controller work, infrastructure developments), the differences will also be smaller. Smaller latency maximum, smaller possible latency differences. It would be nice, but we don't have to beat the speed of light, at least not for this purpose.
"...the fact that we have a very highly distributed architecture around the world. We talked about 7,500 edge node locations and they’re all connected by Google’s proprietary backbone. Think of it as a piece of fiber optic cable that’s spinning around the world carrying that data and only that data. That allows us to deliver an incredible experience and performance that hitherto no other company has been able to deliver. No, we can’t beat the speed of light, but we can cheat it enough that we can deliver a very, very high performance experience." - Phil Harrison, source:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/21/...rview-cloud-gaming-streaming-service-gdc-2019
Stadia is just rushing something to market first before some other company releases a better version of it.
It's nothing revolutionary. It's a natural evolution that we are not yet ready for.
?
Microsoft introduced their own version before Google. Yes, cloud gaming is not new, it exists as Playstation Now, Steam Link, just to mention better and operating services. There are several services, operating, discontinued or still in beta, but none of those have/had what it takes to change a whole industry, either because they lack the resources, they lack the reach or they simply aren't revolutionary enough, aren't a big change compared to gaming as we know it now.
Google's version is different in major points. I don't see anywhere else full cross-platform support and that you don't need a gaming hardware, it's not something, which is too widespread as of now, is it? That's already two very strong points. Google has Android, they power 3/4th of smart devices. Google has Youtube, which equals to reach, the biggest at that. You can start playing a game by hitting a button on Youtube, while watching a gameplay and you can start playing from the point where the gameplay is at. You can also stream your gameplay with a click of a button on your controller back to Youtube. The controller has a Google Assistant button too, so if you get stuck anywhere in a game, the help is a click away. I personally never liked voice assistants and it's cheating practically, but the possibility will be there. The controller is directly linked to the game session in the cloud, which decreases latency. State Share, Crowd Play. It's already a long ass post, so i don't expand on those, look them up, if you want.
All of these bring new things to the table and when you look at all this as a package, it's a whole new experience.
If this doesn't sound revolutionary enough to you, what does?! I wouldn't like to be the person, who needs to be in the position to impress you. lol
No-one rushes anything, the new services by the internet giants are not even in public beta stage yet.
Maybe it won't be Google who brings the change, maybe it will be Amazon or someone else, but this new version of cloud gaming will change gaming how we know it now, only the when is a question.
The infrastructure and some other details might not be fully ready just yet, people are very much ready.
Inb4 anyone accusing me of working for Google or getting paid by them. I simply see their offering as the strongest out of those we know about now. We know that Microsoft doesn't want to replace the Xbox, so their service will co-exist with it, which is already not that enticing. Amazon is a big question, their version is still in the making, but they have Twitch, Alexa and vast resources similarly to Google, so they can come up with an up to par service, both in features and scale.
