Wednesday, August 8th 2018
EA Representative: Game Streaming Is the Future and Simply a Matter of "When"
EA's Executive VP of Strategic Growth Matt Bilbey said in an interview to gamesindustry.biz that he expects game streaming to be an unavoidable fact of our lives, replacing traditional consoles and gaming-specific devices with smartphone-based solutions or Smart TV apps. Matt Bilbey spoke on how scaling bandwidth and latency is paramount to this streaming future, and likely one of the reasons streaming services up to now have struggled for acceptance - and even survival.
"(...) today, that [bandwidth and latency issues] is still a challenge. But I think over the next year to two years, that barrier will drop. Not for everyone, but for a lot of people. Bandwidth capabilities will go up so the business model around streaming a game becomes more viable. If you buy into a streaming solution and the experience is laggy half the time, you're going to stop and not do it again, which is the challenge some of the companies previously had. I think there's now a solution where we can deliver on the promise, and we're working with a lot of the companies who create the server infrastructure, and there are a lot of innovative solutions from a lot of big companies we're working with that will actually allow us to bring this to life."
It all goes back to telemetry, data, and exploration of users' interests and gaming profiles though, and Matt bilbey says that is an integral part of any new investment. trying to bring the investment/profit ratio as high as it can possibly go is the goal of many companies - and EA is certainly not the exception. Matt Bilbey said that being able to collect these telemetry tidbits is paramount to future experiences:
And your next-gen games might be made entirely by algorithm, much like Netflix's approach:
Source:
Gamesindustry.biz
"(...) today, that [bandwidth and latency issues] is still a challenge. But I think over the next year to two years, that barrier will drop. Not for everyone, but for a lot of people. Bandwidth capabilities will go up so the business model around streaming a game becomes more viable. If you buy into a streaming solution and the experience is laggy half the time, you're going to stop and not do it again, which is the challenge some of the companies previously had. I think there's now a solution where we can deliver on the promise, and we're working with a lot of the companies who create the server infrastructure, and there are a lot of innovative solutions from a lot of big companies we're working with that will actually allow us to bring this to life."
"By having this across our entire catalog, it allows us to curate their experience, to not start offering them trials when they're deep into a single-player mode on something else. So that's a big part of what we talk about internally as our 'player network.' It's the value proposition we can use to ensure they get the most value out of the game they're playing."
There's definitely an opportunity we have there that we don't talk about, about how we could create your entertainment experience. I'd like to think as well there's insight we will get out of how those people are playing games, when they're playing, how long they're playing for, who they're playing with, that will arguably write the concept for your next game.That last part brings back memories of this one little piece that used images of Bioware's upcoming Anthem video game...
79 Comments on EA Representative: Game Streaming Is the Future and Simply a Matter of "When"
What's funny is they started as anything but: The actual name gives it away. They wanted to represent a new brand of "electronic artists" back in the 80s. They even built game packages complete with photo inserts of dev teams, mimicking somewhat the tradition of music albums having pictures of band members. This is how EA once saw games.. they saw it as "art" waaaaayyy before the current indie trends. And now look at them.
No thanks.
Being a Prior ATT tech I am noticing a different cabinet being installed where existing street cabinets are.
If they eventually do this then everybody here in the land of Oz will ditch them due to latency = could you imagine the RTT from user in Oz to USA servers.
Our new NBN internet being rolled out in Oz is the BIGGEST load of crap (thanks to our Liberal Party idiots) = we've slid down the world ladder to about 54th.
I'm a network specialist by trade and I can say that the idiots at EA are looking at this model from one side of the fence = theirs.
Lets revisit this in about 5-10 years and see how it went - or how EA went bankrupt LOL
Streaming software just seems kinda pointless. Like, even if it works, what is the benefit to the user? It just doesn't make sense to me why anyone would want to stream games or any other software. To me it just reeks of weird bullshit. There's no way anybody asked for this. It's one of those things where I have a hard time figuring out why it needs to exist. It's just so backwards...
Streaming music and stuff makes sense, because your goal is to be able to quickly access an otherwise impossibly wide range of media. I think most people stream to save money. You get to listen to a lot of music, the price per item is absurdly low, and you can do it anywhere, on any device. With current tech, streaming these things in high quality is doable and widely accessible.
You cannot, however, just take a PC (or even a console) game and run it on your phone (because it's a fucking phone, not a console or PC - not even remotely the same experience or capability,) so that doesn't really make sense. And besides, how many new games is a person gonna pick up at any given time? Usually you devote some real time to each one, as opposed to however few minutes a song runs for. To actually buy all of the movies and music people tend to stream would be cost prohibitive because you can easily go through a lot if you're into that, and games are expensive, but there's a significant limit to how many games a person can play and appreciate in a time span. You can only try so many. The cost of a subscription could easily add up to more than what you'd pay for the handful of games that you would've otherwise bought and sunk some serious time into. Is it really worth it just to be able to try more games?
And then on top of paying the sub, you're still going to be buying games... ...there will always be ones that aren't available. Getting everyone to play ball and create this massive database of current games is not going to be easy. We all know how it goes here just looking at what's happened to the music scene. Game developers aren't gonna wanna give up all the money they make on downloads!
Not to mention, there's probably no way to have this actually work on a large scale, with lots of current titles without it being rediculously expensive. You'd hate yourself.
And then if you're playing the game regularly, any small benefit of being able to just stream it goes out the window. Installing it on your PC just takes up some disk space, but at least then you don't usually need your internet to be working to play, and it's always going to work without randomly lagging out. Whether you stream it or not, you still have to download it lol. Might as well own it and just pay once. For playing the games you really want to play, it's not even worth it. You're adding an extra layer of crap to do the same thing. So many more things can come along and totally ruin your experience.
And lets face it here, there is always gonna be latency. It can be reduced but its still the nature of the beast. It is NEVER gonna be possible to avoid. For these fuckers to try and suggest that it can ever be made a non-issue is disingenuous. You can't just buffer a game as you play it, you know? It's not the same.
If they thought they could get away with it, they'd suggest that we'd all be playing super massive, AAA action games over the internet, which from my admittedly uninformed point of view just seems... ambitious. The practical implications for pulling that off are hard to fathom. How do you swap around pieces of a running game in real time, anyway? I'm assuming that's the idea, because otherwise you're just downloading the whole thing every time. So how does it figure out what pieces it's gonna need as you go along? And assuming it even can do that, how do they get there in time? Again, it's different from a song or a movie. It's not linear. Streaming as it exists now is probably not adaptive enough to handle crap like this. What about online gaming? How does that not become a terrible mess immediately? Streaming online games is next-level lol.
And we all know that even if they could, people aren't going to ever be playing the latest and greatest on smartphones. How can you possibly think that people are going to give up their consoles and PCs to switch to phones and smart TV's? lol People pay big money to play these games on the newest, best stuff possible. And the games are often designed with this in mind.
How do they not get that ideally, you sit and you play a game free from distractions because you're not just staring at a screen... ...you're reacting to and interacting with the game. Besides, PC's and consoles are always gonna be miles ahead in terms of performance, meaning things like gameplay and appearance will always be far, far less on a smartphone. Nobody's going to go from gaming on 1080p @ high fps to... ...whatever CAN actually be done on a smartphone. The level of immersion attainable is just so, so much lower. Just by nature of all of those things and the way we consume them. I know people like to say a smartphone is like a pocket-sized PC, but it's not ACTUALLY that way. They almost kind of work like one, but under the hood... ...yeah. <_<
I just... ...that's the big one for me. To even suggest that gaming is gonna go that way is really something. I don't think they quite understand how this all works.
I can see it working for little junkfood games. This is great for smartphone games and possibly the handheld market. Might actually save people money and get engagement up in that department. And on the technical end it should be doable. Fine. But for the majority? Big gaming? People who actually enjoy gaming and spend good money on it? I'm not talking hardcores here. Just your average gamer. I really sincerely doubt it. Games and movies are just too different for you to just go all netflix on them. The experience is different, the way people engage with them is very different, the demands are vastly different, and people's habits with them are different.
I find it telling how they say that people want this, but they don't say why people would want this. Why, if streaming games is gonna be such a big thing, can they not name one benefit? Like, what is gonna be so awesome and revolutionary about it? Nobody seems to know. "It won't lag anymore!" doesn't count. They act like that's the only reason people didn't want this before. Just how out of touch can someone possibly be?
Several times I had to go back and make sure I was reading things right... ...still not sure I'm understanding what this is.
Bashing EA on this is just shortsighted.
And this is clearly not indended to be the solution for all, both due to latency problems as well as bad internet connections.Why, especially in the light of this opinion? Industry leadership has everything to do with infuence and results and nothing to do with how they are subjectively perceived (as long as that perception does not affect results, which in EAs case is minimal).Welcome to the gaming for the last 5-10 years. Game is largely a service already. So you mean screw Steam, screw Activision (especially screw Blizzard part of Activision) screw Take Two, screw Ubisoft... and that covers what, almost all of AAA gaming and a very large portion of the entire gaming industry :)Not textures, the entire video stream for game gets streamed. Runs an a server in a server farm (which is fairly close to you by the time adoption as wide as this guy thinks is done), video is (hardware) encoded with extremely low latency and then streamed to you over internet. Input goes back in the other direction.I am fairly sensitive to lag and I cannot notice the 20ms input lag (which is very low and even gaming monitors often enough have input lag in that range) except in competitive shooters. Also, like I said, console games have already been designed with 100-ish ms of input lag in mind, at least that was the case with Xbox360 and PS3.How about the other way around? Developers and publishers get an enourmous incentive to optimize the games to the extreme so they can run very efficiently on the inevitably limited server hardware in the farm. Bonus points for good scaling to better load balance? :)The way game streaming is intended to be done, you'll get a server farm somewhere close to home.The exact same argument can be and is being made about games. You can easily take a PC (and especially console) game and "run it on" (read: stream to) your phone, tablet, TV, laptop or whatever.Largely except for games, people are doing exactly that already. And have been for years.
Real-time game video is being streamed back to you.
It is gaming almost as normal, with crappier video quality and larger input lag.
From user's perspective, you run an app and start gaming. App can run on anything capable of video streaming like phone, tablet, TV or pretty much any PC. Being able to stream video from like Netflix or Amazon is probably a good baseline.
The two current game streaming services I can think of right now are Geforce Now and Playstation Now:
www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/
www.playstation.com/en-ie/explore/playstation-now/
Though if I may be so bold, EA might not be the company to pull it off. Or at least I don't think people want them to be :p
I dunno, we'll see. I think it's at the very least a lot further off than is implied. Even done the way you say seems difficult/costly to implement. It just seems like a lot of resources to gather/direct. And somehow people have to get on board with it. Not sure I see it as an inevitability. Risk, reward, practicality, and such all seem to be unknown right now. Too soon. We have the technology... ...but that can be said for a lot of ideas that sound good.
Either way, things will move forward. Should be interesting.
"Pop up Box from EA"
Your Game Killers against the world has been Updated to ver 3.0
Please be patient while content links on your pc is updated
and then it crashes because you changed some hardware ( EA will have to have full information on your unique hardware set up)
You are right, the problem is not really technological at this point. For the service to be successful, you need to:
1. Make it accessible and comfortable to use. Some of the services have had and do have awful usability. Geforce Now for example does a kind of virtual desktop with Steam client that you can log into and the way it all works is a bit weird.
2. Need to ensure it has content. Content is the bigger problem. You need to be big to hit the crucial agreements with big publishers. Sony buying Onlive tech and likely basing PS Now off of that makes perfect sense in this regard. Similarly, EA has the content part settled.
3. Find a proper way to monetize. For now, all the plans for it include some kind of combination of subscription plans and "buying" games. If you think about it, EA Access is already huge step towards the games as subscription.
Yes, I can totally see how that will work for Battlefield.
Am I/are we in the same dimension as these people?
Given the progress we have made with launch servers, streaming a newly released game, and handling all that bandwidth, wont be around within the next 100 years. And that doesnt touch on the issue of latency, or the issue of a large number of Americans not having fast enough internet, or relying on DSL, or having data caps. How long will your 250GB cap last streaming a game at 1080p?Your engrish is on point here.
Also, city internet is STILL a huge deal. "fast optic internet" is available in a handful of cities. Most places are still reliant on oversubscribed cable that, once everyone uses it at the same time, starts slowing down to the point streaming would be impossible.
If you live somewhere with google fiber or ATT fiber, great, but the vast majority of the USA doesnt have that, same with canada. Europe is a bit better, but still has the same oversubscribing problem. The rollout of new data lines to handle the traffic would cost in the billions.
lots and lots of white area ie no service
well except these places
I feel your pain on wifi. I have to use that myself, for the time being.