Netflix's cloud gaming service begins tests in U.S. | Hacker News Reader

Netflix's cloud gaming service begins tests in U.S.

techcrunch.com

36 pointsandsoitis19 comments

No thanks. If I don’t control the hardware and the OS, that means I can’t use mods. But with the absolutely disastrous states games are released in nowadays, those are absolutely necessary.

The input latency is a secondary issue.

I don't see the issue? No one is asking you to replace your PC with this. Simply an alternative way to play. Input latency is not an issue as people seem to make it out. Yes it exists but the perception is so slight that you forget about it after 5 minutes as you get lost in the game you are playing.

Cloud gaming is super cool tech and convince wise, but not a replacement or a service needed if you already have a gaming setup you are comfortable with.

> Simply an alternative way to play.

for now, but companies are waiting for the future where you own nothing and are forced to pay more or lose access to everything

....why?

This horse has been beaten to a fine pulp, cloud gaming just isn't going to happen.

In Canada, so have had some games for awhile (I was like how is this news... We already got Netflix gaming, then realised US didn't have it).

The games are fairly simplistic, I dunno if it's limitation, initial scope, but Netflix version of "cloud gaming" so far is not trying to replace console/PC/handheld gaming at all.

Really it's just some minigames that don't require install for the most part.

I think this might be different. I've seen those mini games too and have been seeing those since after their interactive content started when Bandersnatch released.

I believe this is something different they're rolling out. I (American) have the minigames, too.

GeForce NOW is really good when paired with a solid internet connection. Playing Cyberpunk on a MacBook Pro is awesome.

It is costly - you need to host a NVidia GPU cluster close to the clients - for the games Netflix and it's target audience they are aiming at mobile like casual games like Angry Birds or Oxygen and definitely not Starfield or Cyberpunk 2077

I suspect they are trying to do for gaming what they did for videos. Saying it's not going to happen is like saying video streaming just isn't going to happen. The tech was far behind but it caught up.

There are physical limits in play here in terms of latency that video does not need to deal with.

Playing many video games requires very low latency, which will be impossible to guarantee everywhere.

A common problem in networked video games, doesn't mean it doesn't get sorted out eventually.

"1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond"

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/1500-archers-on-a-...

There are some games that will be fine, but you'd need a way around the speed of light to fully eliminate the latency issues.

Networked games can do client side prediction and make basic interactions such as panning camera and selecting menu feel interactive and nice, even under severe lag.

For cloud games by definition you can't do that, as soon as you try to do client side prediction might as well you run the whole game client side.

Does this matter? Depends on the game and the player

If you can stream video, you can stream game video. This has been possible for well over a decade.

Several of the most prominent tech companies in the world have already tried this business idea, and fallen on their faces.

Nope, video games are interactive, video is consumption only.

I know what a video game is, thanks.

It was possible to implement once streaming video was possible. I did not mean the video was the only component.

It already is. And it’s actually pretty good. It’s not there for multiplayer (least to me) but single player games are absolutely fine now. Xcloud is pretty good and people say GeForce now is even better.

It is doing alright on XBox.

Stadia would have worked out if it wasn't Google with their tradition to kill products, and thinking developers would trust such a company to rewrite their Windows/DirectX games into GNU/Linux / Vulkan.

One of the last actions to try to rescue Stadia was to finally accept game development starts on Windows.

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