Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech and you know, guys, I
Speaker 1: really I enjoy playing PC games a lot. But one
Speaker 1: thing I am not super crazy about is having to
Speaker 1: upgrade my system on the RAG in order to keep
Speaker 1: up with the latest advancements in gaming. This is something
Speaker 1: that first started happening to me back in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and I hated it then and I hate it now.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those folks who gets rubbed the wrong
Speaker 1: way when I have to turn down a graphics setting
Speaker 1: in a game just so that the game will run
Speaker 1: more smoothly. You know, in my head, I'm always thinking,
Speaker 1: this isn't how the game is supposed to be played.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be played at the top of those settings.
Speaker 1: That's what they made it for. But my machine just
Speaker 1: can't do that. Keeping up with the latest in graphics
Speaker 1: hardware is really expensive, and sometimes it's just plain impossible
Speaker 1: because of all of the gosh dang bitcoin miners who
Speaker 1: are scooping up all the ding dang during GPUs pardon
Speaker 1: my language. Well, consoles are an alternative to two PCs,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, but they come with their own drawbacks.
Speaker 1: For one thing, tracking down a PS five is a
Speaker 1: devilish lee hard thing to do right now as I
Speaker 1: record this episode. For another, the latest generation of consoles
Speaker 1: don't really have a robust library to draw from yet
Speaker 1: their their brand new. The pandemic really messed up video
Speaker 1: game development. Most games that are available right now are
Speaker 1: remasters or titles that span generations of consoles. So you
Speaker 1: could get the PS five version of a game, but
Speaker 1: you're also thinking, yeah, but this is also available on
Speaker 1: the PS four. I could just play this game on
Speaker 1: a cheaper console. Plus, you still have to upgrade every
Speaker 1: so often, right, I mean, if you want to keep up,
Speaker 1: you've got to buy another console when a new one
Speaker 1: comes out. Those some companies like Sony have a reputation
Speaker 1: of supporting older systems far beyond the launch of the
Speaker 1: subsequent PlayStation console. Uh. The PS four is not really
Speaker 1: one of those, actually, because in order to try and
Speaker 1: meet more demand for PS five, Sony recently announced that
Speaker 1: it was discontinuing nearly all PS four models in an
Speaker 1: effort to switch their manufacturing process over to making more
Speaker 1: PS five consoles. But what if you didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about any of that, right, what if you could
Speaker 1: just subscribe to a service where you never needed to
Speaker 1: worry about upgrading your system because the games you play
Speaker 1: wouldn't be running on your device. It would be running
Speaker 1: on someone else's computer and it would be a screaming
Speaker 1: fast computer with the capability to push out four K
Speaker 1: resolution video, and you could play these games pretty much
Speaker 1: on anything, on a computer or maybe on your TV,
Speaker 1: or even on your phone. That is the sales pitch
Speaker 1: for Google Stadium, a game streaming service, something that Google
Speaker 1: first unveiled in March nineteen during the Game Developers Conference. Now,
Speaker 1: let's be clear, Google Stadia is by far not the
Speaker 1: only cloud gaming service out there that does this. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can do this with PlayStation now, on Sony consoles
Speaker 1: or on a PC. Microsoft has x Cloud, which currently
Speaker 1: runs on Windows ten and Android and will later run
Speaker 1: on iOS devices. And sometimes we call these types of
Speaker 1: models gaming on demand or sometimes cloud gaming. And Google
Speaker 1: Stadia or these other services. None of these are the
Speaker 1: first ones either. So today we're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: history of cloud gaming and Google Stadia in particular. Now,
Speaker 1: I can't do just a full episode just on Google Stadia.
Speaker 1: There's not enough to talk about, and that's a big
Speaker 1: part of the problem with Google Stadia. But I can
Speaker 1: explain the process of where this came from. Now you
Speaker 1: could argue that we saw the groundwork laid for cloud
Speaker 1: based gaming systems with games like the old M M
Speaker 1: O RPGs of the late nineties and early two thousands.
Speaker 1: I'm talking Your Ultimate Onlines, Your Ever Quests, and later
Speaker 1: Your World of Warcrafts. These required players to install software
Speaker 1: to their home systems that contained many of the assets
Speaker 1: needed for the game. And then you have online servers
Speaker 1: often called shards in the early days thanks to Ultimate Online.
Speaker 1: And then you have those coordinating the actions of hundreds
Speaker 1: or potentially thousands of players so that you at playing
Speaker 1: locally on your machine see where everybody else happens to be.
Speaker 1: Because of this relationship between your computer and the server,
Speaker 1: these games typically took forms where problems like latency and
Speaker 1: data transfer speeds wouldn't be a huge issue, and the
Speaker 1: local machines did a lot of the heavy lifting. So
Speaker 1: in this case, you're talking about a computer that's still
Speaker 1: running some hefty software on its own and then is
Speaker 1: working in tandem with a game server. But even the
Speaker 1: history of cloud gaming proper dates back quite a ways,
Speaker 1: and it also includes one of the greatest examples of vaporware.
Speaker 1: And according to at least some accounts, it was a
Speaker 1: total scam. So let's take a very quick detour to
Speaker 1: talk about the Phantom. Now, way back in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: a company called Infinium Labs announced that it was working
Speaker 1: on a revolutionary gaming console it called the Phantom, and
Speaker 1: that name would out to be prophetic and the gold
Speaker 1: mine for snarky headlines, including some that I wrote. It
Speaker 1: was going to be an on demand video game service.
Speaker 1: It was essentially the basic concept for cloud based video
Speaker 1: game streaming stuff we actually have today. But back in
Speaker 1: two thousand three, this was an incredibly ambitious plan. Now
Speaker 1: I say that not because the technology needed to run
Speaker 1: such stuff is particularly advanced. A decently configured PC could
Speaker 1: run games pretty well. You would need to build out
Speaker 1: the framework for the service. On the user side, you'd
Speaker 1: have to have some sort of portal through which the
Speaker 1: user could remotely log into that PC that's running the game.
Speaker 1: So you would need to build some sort of software
Speaker 1: to allow for that, but it's essentially a remote log in.
Speaker 1: On a conceptual level, at least, it's not that complicated.
Speaker 1: But back in two thousand three, broadband was still just
Speaker 1: gradually rolling out to most of the people who would
Speaker 1: be viable customers for such a service. Heck, according to
Speaker 1: the site all Connect, back in two thousand four, some
Speaker 1: of Internet users were still relying on dial up modems,
Speaker 1: and since those top out at fifty six kilobits per second,
Speaker 1: there's no way you'd have any sort of satisfying game
Speaker 1: experience on that kind of connection. Even if we were
Speaker 1: to assume that the actual Phantom business model was that
Speaker 1: you were to download games but you would only be
Speaker 1: able to play them for as long as you had
Speaker 1: the permission from Infinium Labs. That would take ages over
Speaker 1: fifty six kilobits per second data line. That being said,
Speaker 1: the way the Phantom was marketed it sounded more like
Speaker 1: cloud gaming, less like you purchase a game and download
Speaker 1: it to your device. For modern cloud gaming services, you're
Speaker 1: generally looking at a recommended minimum bandwidth of around ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen megabits per second, and that's at the slowest level.
Speaker 1: But even at that slow quote unquote level. That's nearly
Speaker 1: times faster than the top speed you would get with
Speaker 1: a dial up modem. At that speed, you're probably looking
Speaker 1: at games running at just seven twenty P resolution, which
Speaker 1: isn't even HD quality. So if you did want four
Speaker 1: K gaming, you're gonna need some fatter pipes, as they say,
Speaker 1: to deliver information faster. And by faster, I really mean
Speaker 1: amount of data per second. The transmission speed of the
Speaker 1: signal is something else entirely, but that does raise another question. See,
Speaker 1: besides the barrier of how much data you can pull
Speaker 1: down per second, you also have latency issues. Latency is
Speaker 1: the lag you experienced between when you send a command
Speaker 1: and when you see that command carried out. So if
Speaker 1: you've ever been on a website and you clicked on
Speaker 1: a link and then you had to wait a bit
Speaker 1: before anything happened, that's latency. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that can cause cause latency, from the programming of
Speaker 1: a game to the distance that's between you and whatever
Speaker 1: machine that game is actually running on. Heck, if you're
Speaker 1: playing on a local machine, so it's a computer that's
Speaker 1: like right in front of you, and it's in your home,
Speaker 1: and you have a wired controller connected to your computer,
Speaker 1: but for some reason, that controller has an absurdly long chord,
Speaker 1: like in this case, something that's many, many, many miles long.
Speaker 1: And I get it, this is an absurd, unrealistic example,
Speaker 1: but I'm making a point here. Because that cable would
Speaker 1: be many miles long, you would experience latency as you
Speaker 1: push buttons and move the thumbsticks around because it does
Speaker 1: take time for the signal to pass through from the
Speaker 1: controller to your console. Now, we've got to keep in
Speaker 1: mind that the fastest speed anything can travel in our
Speaker 1: universe is the speed of light. However, signals moving through
Speaker 1: cable move a little slower than that. If we're talking
Speaker 1: about coaxial cable, the electrical signal travels about two thirds
Speaker 1: the speed of light, So the speed of transmission depends
Speaker 1: upon the medium through which the signal is traveling. Anyway,
Speaker 1: my point is that the further the signal needs to
Speaker 1: travel from the host computer that's running the game to
Speaker 1: whatever device you're using to play the game, the more
Speaker 1: latency you're going to encounter. Because physics, one way to
Speaker 1: cope with this is to have a lot of memory
Speaker 1: and the user's device and load as much of the
Speaker 1: game as possible onto the local machine, you know, the
Speaker 1: one connected to your television, for example, and it would
Speaker 1: be pulling data locally as much as it possibly could
Speaker 1: in order to cut down on things like latency as
Speaker 1: well as delivering higher resolution experience for you. But this
Speaker 1: would mean you would need to wait while your device
Speaker 1: pulled down data from the host. It would be buffering. Essentially.
Speaker 1: This has its own set of problems. It's not a
Speaker 1: very practical solution. Games frequently are not optimized for this
Speaker 1: sort of play. Most developers create games with the assumption
Speaker 1: that those games are just going to be played on
Speaker 1: a local device, So creating a game that can manage
Speaker 1: data this way requires a more specialized approach, and in fact,
Speaker 1: most of the time you're looking at a specific certification
Speaker 1: process for games to run on cloud gaming services in
Speaker 1: order to deliver the experience that the game developers intend
Speaker 1: the user to have. Then there's the way that information
Speaker 1: travels across the Internet. We're not gonna go all the
Speaker 1: way into packet switching and everything that would take forever,
Speaker 1: but just imagine an actual net criss cross of all
Speaker 1: these different lines. So this is the kind of net
Speaker 1: that you would catch fishing. That mesh is made up
Speaker 1: of these little lines that link with one another. So
Speaker 1: imagine that each of those links, each of those points
Speaker 1: where the the mesh is meeting, that represents a server
Speaker 1: or a router or a computer that's connected to the Internet,
Speaker 1: and you pick two links that are a good distance
Speaker 1: from each other. On the Internet, information can travel pretty
Speaker 1: much any available route between those two points, and it
Speaker 1: travels in packets, so not all the packets follow the
Speaker 1: same pathway. This is part of what makes the Internet
Speaker 1: so robust because there are multiple pathways from the source
Speaker 1: to the destination, so information can get to where it's
Speaker 1: going even if some servers or routers go offline in
Speaker 1: between the source and the destination. In other words, if
Speaker 1: I were sending you a file from my computer to
Speaker 1: your computer, the file would get divided up into packets
Speaker 1: of data, and those packets would travel across the Internet,
Speaker 1: going through various pathways, and then arrive at your computer
Speaker 1: and get reassembled like a puzzle, and then you would
Speaker 1: get the file. That's the way the Internet works, but
Speaker 1: it does create some challenges when you're developing streaming services. Now,
Speaker 1: clearly it is possible to build out low latency high
Speaker 1: band with connections. But back in the early two thousands
Speaker 1: when Infinium Labs launched, these were in really concentrated regions
Speaker 1: and major metropolitan areas, and they were largely restricted to
Speaker 1: enterprise level transactions, which means this infrastructure wasn't really robust
Speaker 1: yet and most end users wouldn't have access to the
Speaker 1: speeds needed to deliver a good experience. So all of
Speaker 1: this is to say that the technical requirements needed to
Speaker 1: make the phantom viable, we're not really what we had
Speaker 1: available to us back in the early two thousand's, at
Speaker 1: least not from an Internet infrastructure perspective. If you did
Speaker 1: have broadband, and if Infinium Labs had built out lots
Speaker 1: of servers near your neck of the woods so that
Speaker 1: you're not dialing halfway across the globe to play a game,
Speaker 1: then arguably it was possible, but not necessarily practical, and
Speaker 1: not at very high resolutions or frame rates. And just
Speaker 1: to answer that question, frame rate or first to the
Speaker 1: number of frames or images that appear in a second
Speaker 1: on your display. Higher frame rate generally means smoother animation,
Speaker 1: which is pretty easy to grasp. So imagine it's your
Speaker 1: job to draw a series of images that show a
Speaker 1: stick figure running, and you're going to flip through these
Speaker 1: images in a second. If you only have three sheets
Speaker 1: of paper, then you're only allowed to draw one image
Speaker 1: per sheet. You're really limited on the number of poses
Speaker 1: that you can draw. You can only draw three poses,
Speaker 1: so you're not gonna have a very smooth running animation.
Speaker 1: If you have thirty sheets of paper, you can create
Speaker 1: a lot more poses, and you have allowed for smoother
Speaker 1: animation when those thirty sheets are are flipped within one second.
Speaker 1: If you had sixty sheets of paper, you could create
Speaker 1: even more subtle transitions and the animation would look even
Speaker 1: more smooth, and you start hitting diminishing returns after a while,
Speaker 1: particularly if you're consistently animating the sheets by flipping them
Speaker 1: at that same speed or as in like all the
Speaker 1: sheets within a second. But generally speaking, the benchmark and
Speaker 1: gaming tends to be around sixty frames per second, with
Speaker 1: thirty frames being considered acceptable. Anything less than that is
Speaker 1: a problem. Anyway, that wasn't the end of the questions
Speaker 1: about the Phantom. People also wondered how this little startup
Speaker 1: would form the business relationships necessary to secure rights with
Speaker 1: all those video game companies in order to sell titles
Speaker 1: to customers. Back in the physical media days, it was
Speaker 1: easy to think, hey, I bought a copy of this game.
Speaker 1: This copy of the game is mine, after all, we
Speaker 1: had the physical copy. But as streaming services began to appear,
Speaker 1: that thinking transitioned into I have purchased a license to
Speaker 1: access this content. The same would be true for games,
Speaker 1: but established video game companies weren't likely to just allow
Speaker 1: us start up to purchase copies of games and then
Speaker 1: rent out time on fast machines so that other people
Speaker 1: could play those games without having to buy their own copy.
Speaker 1: There was going to be some sort of licensing fee
Speaker 1: and agreement that would need to be in place for
Speaker 1: that to happen, and that that's where things start to
Speaker 1: get really complicated. There was no guarantee that any two
Speaker 1: video game publishers would even behave in the same way,
Speaker 1: so you might have to have unique agreements for every
Speaker 1: single publisher, and then you'd have to figure out how
Speaker 1: those economics work, and that in itself is a huge challenge.
Speaker 1: It's not an insurmountable one, mind you, but definitely a
Speaker 1: tough one to solve. So this announced console, which Infinium
Speaker 1: Labs named the Phantom, and there were no end of
Speaker 1: articles online that pointed out how apt that name would
Speaker 1: turn out to be. It never materialized beyond some questionable
Speaker 1: prototypes that may or may not have had working components
Speaker 1: in them, and it's no big surprise as the idea,
Speaker 1: while intriguing, was way ahead of its time. The Phantom
Speaker 1: became the subject of a lot of skepticism and investigation.
Speaker 1: If you do a search for stories about the Phantom
Speaker 1: and Infinium Labs, you're likely to find posts about how
Speaker 1: the address listed for the company led to what appeared
Speaker 1: to be unoccupied office space. There are accusations that the
Speaker 1: founder and various executives at the company were running a scam,
Speaker 1: and that the prototype devices the company showed off were
Speaker 1: dummy devices or other computers disguised as a Phantom console.
Speaker 1: I don't know if the whole thing actually was a
Speaker 1: scam from the start, or if this was one of
Speaker 1: those situations where everyone started off with a sincere goal
Speaker 1: too really achieved this and it just proved to be unattainable.
Speaker 1: So the Phantom kind of falls in the same similar
Speaker 1: category as therein nos. Perhaps the worst part of what
Speaker 1: went on with the Phantom is that it led people
Speaker 1: to doubt the viability of a similar service later down
Speaker 1: the road, which would make it harder for companies to
Speaker 1: establish a user base and revenue model. Even as we
Speaker 1: saw high speed, low latency solutions rolling out to larger populations,
Speaker 1: the story of the Phantom haunted those who hoped to
Speaker 1: provide online game gaming services. When we come back, i'll
Speaker 1: talk about another attempt to make an online gaming company
Speaker 1: that fell through, and we'll look at what Google hopes
Speaker 1: to do differently. But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: A few years after the Phantom debacle, there was a
Speaker 1: service called on Live Gaming on Live as I'm sure
Speaker 1: you all know, as a portmanteau of online and live,
Speaker 1: something I only just realized as I started taking notes
Speaker 1: this time, not that I had never heard of it before.
Speaker 1: I had heard of it, I just didn't put it
Speaker 1: together because I'm dense and slow. But on Live, despite
Speaker 1: existing and technically working, would have its own share of
Speaker 1: controversy over the years. Now. The company was founded in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and it aimed to create a cloud
Speaker 1: gaming service in which people would rent access to game
Speaker 1: titles without having to download and installed them. So while
Speaker 1: the Phantom may or may not have been intended to
Speaker 1: do this, online definitely was. You played the games through
Speaker 1: a portal service on computers and mobile devices, or through
Speaker 1: a dedicated console system called the on Live game system.
Speaker 1: Unlike the Phantom, this was something that actually existed as
Speaker 1: a consumer product, and with broadband adoption being much further
Speaker 1: along in the old days of two thousand four, it
Speaker 1: actually had perhaps a fighting chance. The founder of on
Speaker 1: Live was Steve Perlman, who had been responsible for some
Speaker 1: pretty big products in the past, like web TV and
Speaker 1: quick Time. He introduced the service in two thousand nine
Speaker 1: at the Game Developers Conference. He explained that his system
Speaker 1: would allow gamers to play brand new titles at top
Speaker 1: settings without needing all the local hardware. One of the
Speaker 1: big elements that made it possible was a video compression strategy.
Speaker 1: On the server side, algorithms would compress outgoing video st
Speaker 1: teams to players. Software either on the player's computer or
Speaker 1: mobile device or on an online console, would decompress the
Speaker 1: video on the other end. There were some latency issues,
Speaker 1: but the thing that really killed on Live was that
Speaker 1: players just never really joined up. According to the Verge
Speaker 1: at its peak on Live only saw concurrent players, which
Speaker 1: meant all the money the company had spent on server
Speaker 1: farms was wasted, as most of its servers were dormant
Speaker 1: most of the time. The company was reportedly burning through
Speaker 1: five million dollars every month toward the end. The company's
Speaker 1: business model allowed users to demo games for free, so
Speaker 1: you could play like a demo level of a game,
Speaker 1: or you could purchase the rights to play a specific title,
Speaker 1: but very few people were doing more than just testing
Speaker 1: out games, and Online couldn't reach deals with several of
Speaker 1: the top tier video game publishers, so it's library was limited.
Speaker 1: On top of all that, game companies demanded that Online
Speaker 1: offer their titles at the same price you would find
Speaker 1: on other stores, including those that allow you to actually
Speaker 1: download a copy of the game to your own machine,
Speaker 1: and the quality of the experience largely depended upon the
Speaker 1: broadband connection of the user. So, in other words, if
Speaker 1: you're a gamer and you're told, well, you can buy
Speaker 1: a copy of this brand new game, it's gonna cost
Speaker 1: you sixty dollars if you want to download it to
Speaker 1: your computer where it will run on your hardware at
Speaker 1: the top level of your hardware's capabilities, or you could
Speaker 1: spend that same sixty dollars to run on this streaming
Speaker 1: service and potentially have a less satisfying experience. Well, that's
Speaker 1: not much of a sales pitch. Meanwhile, a competing service
Speaker 1: called guy Kai g a i k Ai was meeting
Speaker 1: with more success, in large part because Geikai only offered
Speaker 1: limited playable demos of games. It didn't represent a threat
Speaker 1: to the video game companies or retail businesses because they
Speaker 1: didn't sell games. And moreover, the founder of gei Kai
Speaker 1: was David Perry, who had a history in the video
Speaker 1: game industry, while Pearlman didn't, and Pearlman over it on
Speaker 1: Live really didn't like the guy Kai was making headway,
Speaker 1: and eventually he started to demand Onlve not support games
Speaker 1: that had found their way onto gei Kai, which further
Speaker 1: limited on Live's library. Ultimately, on Live just couldn't make
Speaker 1: the business work. The company burned through its investment money,
Speaker 1: and in twelve Pearlman gathered staff together, said the company
Speaker 1: was folding, laid off everyone without severance, and then formed
Speaker 1: a new company that bought the assets of the old
Speaker 1: company and hired on a skeleton crew to run things
Speaker 1: which that burned some bridges. Sony would ultimately come along
Speaker 1: and scoop up on Live's assets, shutting it down in Sony,
Speaker 1: by the way, also acquired guy Kai three years before that. Today,
Speaker 1: besides the Xbox and PlayStation streaming video game services that
Speaker 1: I've already you mentioned, there are a few more out there,
Speaker 1: like steamlink In, video Game stream and about a dozen
Speaker 1: other ones. So there's a big push still for making
Speaker 1: streaming video games a thing. And these are not all,
Speaker 1: you know, apples to apples. They have different features and
Speaker 1: different limitations. However, most of these services, not all, but
Speaker 1: most of them are connected to established gaming platforms. Steam
Speaker 1: is Valves online store and is a major part of
Speaker 1: the computer game market. Xbox and PlayStation are obviously well
Speaker 1: established consoles, and cloud gaming is an enhancing feature for
Speaker 1: those systems, but it's not the defining feature, at least
Speaker 1: not yet. So while there are a lot of cloud
Speaker 1: gaming services out there, many of them are extensions of
Speaker 1: already established brands in the gaming world. But let's get
Speaker 1: into Google's product stadia. Around Google team members began to
Speaker 1: explore the potential of developing their own cloud gaming and
Speaker 1: streaming service. Now the company had already launched a streaming
Speaker 1: product called chrome Cast. In chrome Cast is a device
Speaker 1: that connects to television's via an hd M I plug,
Speaker 1: and the device also connects to your WiFi network. You
Speaker 1: can cast content from other connected devices like computers or
Speaker 1: smartphones and send it to the chrome Cast to view
Speaker 1: on your television, So you can cast movies or a
Speaker 1: web page if you wanted to, to your computer and
Speaker 1: view it that way. The team working on cloud gaming
Speaker 1: over at Google Fiber would join up with the chrome
Speaker 1: Cast team to work on the project, which got the
Speaker 1: name Project Stream. The team sought out how to optimize
Speaker 1: data traffic to allow for high bandwidth, low latency video
Speaker 1: games streaming, and the whole project was kept under wraps
Speaker 1: for four years. In October, Google showed off a beta
Speaker 1: build of Project Beam. Beta testers had a chance to
Speaker 1: try out the service on devices like a Chrome Book
Speaker 1: playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey from Ubisoft. And that's pretty impressive,
Speaker 1: and then it shows off the advantages of this model
Speaker 1: of gaming. Stefan at the end of the Verge reported
Speaker 1: that he tried it out on a Chromebook Pixel, which
Speaker 1: is particularly impressive as Google had stopped supporting the Pixel
Speaker 1: line of Chrome Books a couple of months earlier in Augusten.
Speaker 1: Now it's possible that Etienne really meant that he played
Speaker 1: it on a pixel book. That was the line of
Speaker 1: laptops that had been introduced in twenty seventeen, the successor
Speaker 1: to the Chrome Book Pixel line. But either way, it's
Speaker 1: a really neat achievement. Now to understand why I call
Speaker 1: it impressive, it helps to take a look at the
Speaker 1: specs of a pixel book, and I'm going to use
Speaker 1: pixel books just in case that's what Etienne meant, rather
Speaker 1: than a Chromebook pixel. Just know that the Chromebook pixel
Speaker 1: is even less powerful than the pixel book was. So
Speaker 1: pixel books can have either a seventh generation Intel I
Speaker 1: five or I seven processor, which Google says allows for
Speaker 1: a quote seamless four K output to an external monitor
Speaker 1: end quote, So you can connect this laptop to an
Speaker 1: external display and stream out four K video. You can
Speaker 1: get them with either eight gigabytes or sixteen gigabytes of RAM.
Speaker 1: They come with a solid state storage drive with a
Speaker 1: capacity of either hud gigabytes, two hundred fifty six gigabytes,
Speaker 1: or five hundred twelve gigabytes, and it has the Chrome
Speaker 1: Operating System as its OS. That's about it for the
Speaker 1: technical specs, apart from the fact that it has two
Speaker 1: USBC ports, which that's important if you're going to connect
Speaker 1: it to uh display. Now, those are some pretty modest
Speaker 1: stats for a PC, and definitely humble when you compare
Speaker 1: it to a truly fast gaming rig. There's no fancy
Speaker 1: cooling system in the pixel Book. There's no souped up
Speaker 1: graphics processing units or any other bells and whistles that
Speaker 1: you'll find on a state of the art gaming PC.
Speaker 1: The pixel Book price is an arrange from about a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars up to sevent hundred for the top of
Speaker 1: the line model, and that still is pretty darn price.
Speaker 1: But there are less expensive Chromebook models, and of course
Speaker 1: the most recent iteration of this line is called the
Speaker 1: pixel Book Go and it has a less grandiose scale
Speaker 1: of prices. But let's compare that to one of the
Speaker 1: most expensive off the shelf gaming pieces of two thousand
Speaker 1: eighteen to see how it stacks up. You know, compare
Speaker 1: this against a state of the art gaming rig. So
Speaker 1: Stefan at the end, that same guy who who reviewed
Speaker 1: his experience on the Project Stream Beta also had a
Speaker 1: chance to try out a true monster of a gaming
Speaker 1: rig earlier in eighteen. This was not connected to the
Speaker 1: pixel book stuff at all. The device he used was
Speaker 1: called the main Gear F one three one, and you
Speaker 1: can configure the F one thirty one in numerous ways
Speaker 1: which would affect the price, right Like you can say,
Speaker 1: all right, I want this, but I don't need dad,
Speaker 1: and that will change the price. However, the version that
Speaker 1: e t N tested tipped the scales at eight thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a princely su Indeed, the F one thirty one
Speaker 1: at t N tested had a Core I seven processor
Speaker 1: as its CPU, with a clock speed of four point
Speaker 1: seven giga hurts but overclocked to five giga hurts, and
Speaker 1: it had two g t X ten a d t
Speaker 1: I g p U s add a custom liquid cooling
Speaker 1: system to keep everything nice and chilly, because electronics and
Speaker 1: heat don't mix very well and those kind of processors
Speaker 1: generate a lot of heat. It had thirty two gigabytes
Speaker 1: of RAM, a five twelve gigabytes solid state drive, a
Speaker 1: four terabytes standard hard drive, a twelve hundred WHAT power supply,
Speaker 1: and a Blu ray drive. And there were other cosmetic
Speaker 1: enhancements to the PC, including remote controlled led lighting in
Speaker 1: the case. So this was a mache being designed to
Speaker 1: run the latest games in ten at their top settings
Speaker 1: with no hiccups, and at the end proclaimed it was
Speaker 1: quote practically future proof for at least the next one
Speaker 1: to two years end quote, which tells you how quickly
Speaker 1: the hardware cycle really is. This is Moore's law in
Speaker 1: action that we're talking about. So let that sink in
Speaker 1: eight thousand dollars for a computer that could potentially need
Speaker 1: to be upgraded in if you're lucky, two years time
Speaker 1: to keep up to speed with the latest standards and
Speaker 1: games that Now you're starting to see where the value
Speaker 1: proposition is in the cloud gaming model, right. But this
Speaker 1: really nails down how that video game streaming model can
Speaker 1: be really attractive. The most valuable component on a top
Speaker 1: of the line pixel book is the capacity to connect
Speaker 1: to a four K display for ultra high definition video.
Speaker 1: The processor, while it's good, is not the best. There's
Speaker 1: no specialized graphics card in there. So with relatively simple components,
Speaker 1: you can still play the latest games incredible graphics. You
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about GPU shortages or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Because Google is worrying about that for you on their end,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't have to upgrade your machine like ever
Speaker 1: unless it broke down, and that's because the actual games
Speaker 1: are running on the cloud, not on your computer. It
Speaker 1: also would mean that Google might potentially allow players to
Speaker 1: stream top tier games to mobile devices, as long as
Speaker 1: those devices also have a good Internet connection, and the
Speaker 1: initial impressions among beta testers and cities with good broadband
Speaker 1: infrastructure was really positive. In twenty nineteen, during the Game
Speaker 1: Developer Conference of that year, Google revealed that Project Stream
Speaker 1: was now becoming an actual product called Google Stadia. At
Speaker 1: the time, a lot of people expected Google to unveil
Speaker 1: a full console, albeit one that facilitated streaming games. So
Speaker 1: they were thinking, oh, they're going to have a set
Speaker 1: top box that you plug into a router and then
Speaker 1: you plug the other end into the television and you're
Speaker 1: good to go. But instead they found out that Stadium
Speaker 1: is really more of a service and it's less about
Speaker 1: specific consoles and more about a family of technologies to
Speaker 1: have a lot of potential points of contact with the
Speaker 1: end user. Google did unveil one piece of proprietary hardware, however,
Speaker 1: it's a game controller, that looks pretty similar to an
Speaker 1: Xbox controller, complete with two thumbsticks, shoulder buttons, triggers, and
Speaker 1: a four button layout on the right side, and it
Speaker 1: also has a few systems specific buttons for navigating menus
Speaker 1: and activating various features. But what would this controller actually
Speaker 1: connect to. Well, it could wirelessly connect with a Chrome
Speaker 1: Cast Ultra, so if you happen to have one of
Speaker 1: those connected to your television and your WiFi network, you
Speaker 1: could wirelessly connect to your controller to that device and
Speaker 1: the network, and you could then navigate the service and
Speaker 1: play games on your television. If you were using a
Speaker 1: phone at launch, you needed a way to plug the
Speaker 1: controller into the phone using a USBC cable. Then you
Speaker 1: could buy a little clip on framelike device that would
Speaker 1: hold the phone and landscape orientation just above the controller,
Speaker 1: turning this into kind of an interesting little Jerry rigged
Speaker 1: handheld gaming system. Or you could connect to a PC
Speaker 1: running the Chrome browser, so you just initiate Stadia through
Speaker 1: the Chrome browser, and you could use any wired game
Speaker 1: pad or a mouse and keyboard, uh was, whatever your
Speaker 1: choice was, And all three of these methods would give
Speaker 1: users access to the Stadius service and moreover, at least.
Speaker 1: Google's pronouncement was you would be able to swap between
Speaker 1: them and pick up where you left off previously. More
Speaker 1: or less, it wasn't. It wasn't a completely seamless experience,
Speaker 1: especially early on. So how was this announcement received, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll find out after this quick break on launch day.
Speaker 1: There was still a great deal of skepticism regarding Google
Speaker 1: Stadia for multiple reasons, and allow me to list a
Speaker 1: few of them. At launch, Stadia costs for the controller
Speaker 1: and access to the service, which after three months would
Speaker 1: include a ten dollar per month subscription fee, on top
Speaker 1: of which you would need to pay more money to
Speaker 1: purchase a premium game on the service and add it
Speaker 1: to your library. Now, initially, even with all those fees,
Speaker 1: that's still cheaper than a console and much cheaper than
Speaker 1: a high end gaming rig, But over time those expenses
Speaker 1: start to add up. That being said, at launch, Google
Speaker 1: announced that the plan was to move to a free service,
Speaker 1: dropping the subscription fee. Still, if you wanted to be
Speaker 1: an early adopter, and meant you were paying three separate fees,
Speaker 1: the initial purchase price, the sub scription, and then the
Speaker 1: cost of any games you actually wanted to buy. Another
Speaker 1: big reason for skepticism was that Google has a pretty
Speaker 1: shaky reputation when it comes to services. The company does
Speaker 1: have quite a few solid products, of course, Google Chrome
Speaker 1: commands more than six of the browser market share according
Speaker 1: to stat Counter, and Safari takes a distant second place
Speaker 1: at around twenty. Tools like Gmail and Google Drive Suites
Speaker 1: have stuck around. Google Maps is very popular. But then
Speaker 1: there are the numerous Google products that debuted and then
Speaker 1: went away, sometimes with very little hulla balu, and sometimes
Speaker 1: the holo was all over that. Below there's an entire
Speaker 1: website called killed by Google dedicated to documenting these things.
Speaker 1: I'll give just a few examples. Google Hangouts is on
Speaker 1: the way out. It's still around right now, but it
Speaker 1: will be discontinued this year. Google play Music was recently unplugged.
Speaker 1: Google Fiber tv has gone off the air. The YouTube
Speaker 1: gaming app has a game oversign on it, which seems
Speaker 1: like a bad omen considering this topic. Google Goggles went dark,
Speaker 1: Google Wave waved by by Google buzz buzzed off, Google
Speaker 1: Plus is now a minus, Google Now is later, and
Speaker 1: then we've got Picasa and or cutting who I can't
Speaker 1: really do puns about, but the list goes on and on. Now,
Speaker 1: the point is that Google has a long history of
Speaker 1: coming up with interesting ideas, launching a product that may
Speaker 1: or may not be half baked, and then pulling support
Speaker 1: for that product at some later point. Some of the
Speaker 1: projects make a real go at it. They might stick
Speaker 1: around for a few or even several years. Some don't
Speaker 1: last very long at all, And many of the cases
Speaker 1: I've personally seen, I've noted that it felt often like
Speaker 1: the product was made almost exclusively by and four engineers. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't mean that as a knock on engineers, but
Speaker 1: what I do mean is that a lot of these
Speaker 1: products place a good deal of responsibility on the user
Speaker 1: to figure out how to get the most out of
Speaker 1: the product. They are not dumbed down or idiot proof,
Speaker 1: and that can be a bad thing. If you happen
Speaker 1: to think the way the engineers who made the product thought, Well,
Speaker 1: it may just work for you because you're thinking is
Speaker 1: in line with what they intended. But if you don't,
Speaker 1: you might find yourself really frustrated with the experience, and
Speaker 1: you'll give up on it because you're not using it
Speaker 1: the way they thought you would. That's not necessarily your
Speaker 1: fault and eventually Google might give up on it too. Again,
Speaker 1: that's not me saying that these products were bad. Some
Speaker 1: of the ones I've mentioned were products I loved and
Speaker 1: depended upon. I still miss Google Wave to this day,
Speaker 1: but I admit it was a tool that had a
Speaker 1: limited number of use cases. Now, losing Google Wave was
Speaker 1: a bummer, but that didn't cost me any money. Google
Speaker 1: Stadium is a different matter. So what happens if you
Speaker 1: join Google Stadium and you purchase games in Google Stadia,
Speaker 1: and then the company later decides that it's going to
Speaker 1: stop offering the service. The games you purchase don't live
Speaker 1: on any of your devices there in the cloud. Your
Speaker 1: purchase price is more about getting access to the experience
Speaker 1: of playing that. But if Google shuts down Stadia, then
Speaker 1: presumably you won't be able to access those games anymore.
Speaker 1: To compare this to traditional games, it would be like
Speaker 1: someone from e A comes to your home and demands
Speaker 1: you hand over all the copies of EA games you
Speaker 1: happen to have because e A is going to go
Speaker 1: out of business. That too, gamers doesn't make a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. They think I bought the game, I should
Speaker 1: still be able to play it even if you decide
Speaker 1: to shut down the service, but that's not how that
Speaker 1: would work. Another reason some analysts were eyeing the launch
Speaker 1: with pessimism is that, as we've covered in this episode,
Speaker 1: the history of standalone cloud gaming services is not filled
Speaker 1: with success. The sales pitch for cloud gaming can hit
Speaker 1: a pretty narrow band of people. Serious gamers are likely
Speaker 1: already invested in gaming rigs and consoles, so they don't
Speaker 1: have a big need for another service that delivers games online,
Speaker 1: particularly if it's an experience that doesn't quite measure up
Speaker 1: to the one they're used to. Moreover, if you're a
Speaker 1: serious gamer, you've likely spent the money on hardware to
Speaker 1: get the best experience you can, and chances are the
Speaker 1: experience you get over broadband just isn't going to measure up.
Speaker 1: Stadia also didn't have any exclusive games, really, so that
Speaker 1: meant that all the titles you could find on Google
Speaker 1: Stadia were also available on other services. And if you're
Speaker 1: able to buy the game and run it on a
Speaker 1: native device without worrying about latency or anything like that,
Speaker 1: it just seems like that would be the natural route
Speaker 1: you would choose. Then there are things well beyond Google's
Speaker 1: control that we're a factor. A big one of those
Speaker 1: are data caps. That's the limit that I s p's
Speaker 1: often put on user accounts per month. For example, Comcast
Speaker 1: has a one point to terabyte data cap per month
Speaker 1: for most accounts. If you want the ability to use
Speaker 1: more data than that, you have to pay for it,
Speaker 1: either by getting a limitless account or by paying overage
Speaker 1: fees when you go over the limit. If you listen
Speaker 1: to the news episode I did last week, you know
Speaker 1: that Massachusetts is currently pushing back on Comcast for doing
Speaker 1: that to customers in the state. It's something that the
Speaker 1: company has been doing for a while in other states,
Speaker 1: and it's not the only one now. As you might imagine,
Speaker 1: streaming four K video can eat up a lot of data,
Speaker 1: even though most of the time we're actually talking about
Speaker 1: ten eight resolution video that then gets upscaled once it
Speaker 1: hits its destination. If you are an avid gamer, you
Speaker 1: could chew through that data limit pretty quickly with some
Speaker 1: long gaming sessions. And so some critics pointed out that
Speaker 1: in a world with data caps, this business might not
Speaker 1: really have a place. And then there were the problems
Speaker 1: of some unfulfilled promises at launch. So when Google announced
Speaker 1: Stadia in March of twenty nineteen. The company made some
Speaker 1: pretty big claims. One was that you would be able
Speaker 1: to stream to YouTube in four K resolution right off
Speaker 1: the bat, and another was that you would use a
Speaker 1: button on the controller to activate Google Assistant when you
Speaker 1: could get real time and relevant tips as you play through.
Speaker 1: So imagine you're playing a game, and maybe it's a
Speaker 1: puzzle game, and you hit a particularly tough puzzle and
Speaker 1: you're just having real trouble getting through it. You could
Speaker 1: hit the Google Assist button, according to Google, and get
Speaker 1: tips on what you would need to do in order
Speaker 1: to make it through that part of the game. You
Speaker 1: just ask your assistant for help. You could, the company claimed,
Speaker 1: watch your favorite YouTube gamers and with a push of
Speaker 1: a button, leap right into the same part of the
Speaker 1: same game that the YouTuber was going through, so you
Speaker 1: can measure your own skill against the YouTuber. The system
Speaker 1: would offer a cross platform for play for titles as well,
Speaker 1: according to Google, and there was more. There was a
Speaker 1: comment that you could watch a video on YouTube and
Speaker 1: let's say you get an ad for a video game.
Speaker 1: With the push of a button, you could add that
Speaker 1: game to your library and purchase it right through Google Stadia,
Speaker 1: but a lot of these promises just weren't in place
Speaker 1: when the product finally launched later that year. For example,
Speaker 1: the flagship game on the Google Stadia system was Destiny To,
Speaker 1: a popular multiplayer shooter game, but Bungey, the studio behind
Speaker 1: Destiny To, revealed in June two nineteen that the Stadio
Speaker 1: version would not be cross platform, but rather a walled
Speaker 1: off ecosystem of its own, So if you were playing
Speaker 1: on Stadia, you wouldn't be able to play with your
Speaker 1: buddies who have to be playing them on PC. For example,
Speaker 1: As the project got closer to launch, other promises had
Speaker 1: to be tweaked. The Google Assistant feature was scaled way back.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't be able to stream to Chrome PCs in
Speaker 1: four K with HDR at lawn either, none of the
Speaker 1: games would have those YouTube features I mentioned at launch,
Speaker 1: and there were some other setbacks as well. These things
Speaker 1: do happen. Again. Google wasn't launching a standalone console, but
Speaker 1: rather a service that connects to various pieces of hardware,
Speaker 1: and that's a lot of figuratively moving pieces, and not
Speaker 1: all of them were in place by the time of launch.
Speaker 1: That being said, the Google Stadia team was hard at
Speaker 1: work on Stadia features. Google also established a new division
Speaker 1: called Stadia Games and Entertainment, and they hired Jade Raymond,
Speaker 1: a former would be Soft employee, to head up that division.
Speaker 1: Part of what this division will do will be to
Speaker 1: develop exclusive titles for the Stadia platform. Today, you can
Speaker 1: make a Stadia account for free, but to get access
Speaker 1: to features like four K resolution on TVs connected to
Speaker 1: Chrome Cast Ultra, or sixty frames per second at ten
Speaker 1: a D resolution, or a selection of free games, you
Speaker 1: have to subscribe to the Google Stadia Pro service, and
Speaker 1: the premium subscription service is as of this recording, ten
Speaker 1: dollars per month. The controller now will set you back
Speaker 1: sixty and beyond the free titles that Google offers, you
Speaker 1: can purchase other games and add them to your cloud library.
Speaker 1: You can stream to YouTube, though some of the other
Speaker 1: YouTube related features still aren't active as of this recording.
Speaker 1: Google launched an iOS compatible version of Stadia in December
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and the team continues to update users on
Speaker 1: what's new with a platform on the Google Stadium blog.
Speaker 1: I've tried this out myself a little bit with a
Speaker 1: Google Stadia Premier edition and full disclosure to you guys.
Speaker 1: This was something Google offered to me for some reason,
Speaker 1: not as a part of tech stuff, mind you. They
Speaker 1: didn't reach out to me as a host of a podcast,
Speaker 1: but I got the offer as a Google customer. It
Speaker 1: might be because I'm a Google THI customer. I'm also
Speaker 1: a Google Pixel user. I don't know, but I figure
Speaker 1: I should men shin that I got the controller for free,
Speaker 1: and I got a couple of three months on the
Speaker 1: premium service to try it out. And it's not a
Speaker 1: bad experience, but it doesn't really replace having a gaming
Speaker 1: PC or a current generation console, at least I didn't
Speaker 1: feel it did. I find that depending on what platform
Speaker 1: I'm playing, controls can feel a little floaty at times. However,
Speaker 1: that could also just be the games I've tried out,
Speaker 1: because I've been playing games that I don't own on
Speaker 1: other platforms, so it's not an apples to apples comparison.
Speaker 1: And I haven't spent as much time on Google STADIU
Speaker 1: as I would like, because um, I've been real busy, y'all.
Speaker 1: The platform does have some neat benefits. Stadia can frequently
Speaker 1: support larger multiplayer games than other platforms. So you can
Speaker 1: have much larger contests with certain titles, you know, if
Speaker 1: you have like, uh, you know, army type battles, you
Speaker 1: can have a lot more players involved at once, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. Uh. There's a picture and picture
Speaker 1: feature that you can apparently use with for ends, which
Speaker 1: would give you a view of your friends point of
Speaker 1: view in a in a smaller picture in a corner
Speaker 1: of your screen. So imagine that you're both playing like
Speaker 1: Rainbow six Seizure or something. Not that this game necessarily
Speaker 1: is on Stadia or is supported by this, but this
Speaker 1: is the example. You might have a buddy that you're
Speaker 1: playing with, and you would be able to see your
Speaker 1: buddy's point of view in your lower the lower corner
Speaker 1: of your screen, you know, so that way you can
Speaker 1: coordinate with them and better go through a level for example.
Speaker 1: Now I have not seen this. I haven't tried it
Speaker 1: out because I don't have any friends who are on Stadia.
Speaker 1: I do have friends, A promise they they just live
Speaker 1: in Canada. Yeah, that's it. All that being said, I
Speaker 1: see potential with Google Stadium. I think it's going to
Speaker 1: have a hard time to attract customers, just like on
Speaker 1: Live did because the platform is not well established in
Speaker 1: the minds of gamers already. It's going toe to toe
Speaker 1: with some really heavy hitters, but Google well itself, is
Speaker 1: no slouch. I'm not sure if it's really going to
Speaker 1: be here to stay, which makes me reluctant to suggest
Speaker 1: it to other people that they dive in. But if
Speaker 1: you do have a good Internet connection, then maybe you've
Speaker 1: got a four K TV and you want a chance
Speaker 1: to play some, but not all, of the top games
Speaker 1: out there without you know, having to build your own
Speaker 1: gaming rig, it might be worth a try. I realized
Speaker 1: that's not the most spectacular of endorsements, but it's my
Speaker 1: honest opinion. My hope is that Google will build out
Speaker 1: the service further and make it more attractive to users.
Speaker 1: But then I think back to Google Wave and I sigh, Well,
Speaker 1: that wraps up this episode of tech Stuff about Google Stadium.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any suggestions for things I should
Speaker 1: cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is over on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle is text stuff h s W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.