Google Reveals Intent to Support Live-Service Games With Future Partnerships

[T0@st]

Google is "positioning itself as a go-to tech partner for publishers of live-service video games" by offering its cloud gaming technology to outside companies. This is an interesting statement regarding the future trajectory of its cloud gaming infrastructure, given the scarcity of updates since the January 2023 shutdown of the Cloud giant's Stadia gaming platform.

Google Cloud's director of Game Industry solutions, Jack Buser, was interviewed by Axios in an article published earlier this week, he outlined the company's ambitions to move forward in a post-Stadia world. Google Cloud is seeking partnership with publishers, its technology is being offered to prospective clients as a support platform for live-service games. "Google is absolutely committed to games that are such a big part of our messaging," Buser said. "When we made the decision with Stadia, we were just like, look, we are committed to games as an industry."



He continued: "It was at that moment when we basically had to make decisions about Stadia that we realized that, at Google Cloud, we are at our best when we're helping other people build this stuff, not necessarily building it ourselves." Axios outlines in the article that servers, cloud storage data management, plus "searchable player and game analytics" (via BigQuery) are all components of the support package. Google Cloud foresees that these services will be effective in dealing with a wide range of technical issues. Player population spikes can occur during high activity periods, and the company is positioning its support services as particularly adept at dealing with these bursts in activity.

The cloud streaming component, also known as "Immersive Stream for Games," is not included in the package. It appears to be eternally locked in with the shuttered Stadia platform: "We are not offering that streaming option, because it was tied to Stadia itself. So, unfortunately, when we decided to not move forward with Stadia, that sort of [business-to-business] offering could no longer be offered as well."



Ubisoft, Niantic and Unity have been named as current clients. Google is seeking other big publishers to embrace its support services. Amazon and Microsoft are already well established with their own cloud services and server infrastucture. The 2023 Game Developers Conference is scheduled to happen at the end of March, it seems likely that the Cloud division is seeking to secure partnerships before that event, in anticipation of creating publicity.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[DrCR]

In thinking about it just now, it seems to me at this point over the last 20? years or so, Google has more than lost their way; they are closer to being irrelevant. I’m not saying people don’t still use them. It’s just that just about everything they offer seems readily replaceable if they somehow disappeared.

That said, having iOS devices as a sole alternative to Google’s spyware edition of Linux (Android) wouldn’t be ideal. Anything else come to mind?

 

[caroline!]

That said, having iOS devices as a sole alternative to Google’s spyware edition of Linux (Android) wouldn’t be ideal. Anything else come to mind?

Don't use those devices at all. That's my way, smart everything is one of the biggest money sinkholes in the world, phones, tablets, TV, speakers and other junk devices are made for people to constantly spend money on, made in a way you can't simply have "everything" in one device and you'll always need something else.

Spent $1000 on a new phone? that's cool but oh you're missing the charger, well that's another 100 bucks for you, oh but the charger doesn't comes with a cable it's just the plug side, well add $20 more and it's yours, but now you charge it and want to listen to some music oops there's no audio jack, buy a new pair of wireless earbuds for only $200 more.

With TVs is subscriptions, assuming you're legally watching movies that is, say you're paying for the totally not real Woktrix platform, it's all great but you want to watch a new series that just came out and they don't have it listed, instead, it's listed on Kongo but that costs an additional $19,99 /mo, welp guess it's time to pull out that credit card again.
And don't forget you'll have to replace that TV next year because of updates that will make it incompatible with future versions of the SAME services.

Then you have the shitware like smart doorbells, smart stoves, smart washing machines, even smart light bulbs. Whole thing is a biiiiig scam.

 

[Chrispy_]

At this point, live-service, cloud gaming is a sunk-cost fallacy, right?

The five biggest names in the industry sunk a lot of money and manpower into it and they all suffered for their venture. Four of them have run away licking their wounds. Microsoft are the only company that don't seem to be guaranteed to fail, and yet their cloud gaming feels like an afterthough that's given to top-tier gamepass susbcribers as a perk, not something they're selling as a viable self-sustaining product. Geforce Now might be gaining market share but only as a haemorrhaging loss-leader. There's no way Nvidia's making any money on that and at some point Jensen will just pull the plug.

 

[LabRat 891]

All remote gaming services are an implicit failed venture, until Quantum-entangled communications comes to the consumer-space. (think Ender's Game, the novel series)

The way they could implement 'apparent' remote gaming/gaming-as-a-service, would divest your ownership of your own equipment. (it'll have to 'run' [at least in large part] on your own computer, and 'sync' pre-rendered remote content).

Anything that takes away from your own ownership over real property, should be rallied against. We've already been on this slippery slide for awhile. No more, wherever possible.

In thinking about it just now, it seems to me at this point over the last 20? years or so, Google has more than lost their way; they are closer to being irrelevant. I’m not saying people don’t still use them. It’s just that just about everything they offer seems readily replaceable if they somehow disappeared.

That said, having iOS devices as a sole alternative to Google’s spyware edition of Linux (Android) wouldn’t be ideal. Anything else come to mind?

The alternatives are obscure, and until recently, quite under-developed to be a competitor. There's been at least 3 major attempts at offering marketable competition, but only the 'niche' community has really 'survived'. Fairphone, pinephone, and a couple others offer 'up-the-fork' mobile-centric versions of Linux.
A couple of distros seem reliable enough to commercialize, but the 'old back and forth' of the pros/cons of open vs. closed development, "complicate things".

Don't use those devices at all. That's my way, smart everything is one of the biggest money sinkholes in the world, phones, tablets, TV, speakers and other junk devices are made for people to constantly spend money on, made in a way you can't simply have "everything" in one device and you'll always need something else.

Spent $1000 on a new phone? that's cool but oh you're missing the charger, well that's another 100 bucks for you, oh but the charger doesn't comes with a cable it's just the plug side, well add $20 more and it's yours, but now you charge it and want to listen to some music oops there's no audio jack, buy a new pair of wireless earbuds for only $200 more.

With TVs is subscriptions, assuming you're legally watching movies that is, say you're paying for the totally not real Woktrix platform, it's all great but you want to watch a new series that just came out and they don't have it listed, instead, it's listed on Kongo but that costs an additional $19,99 /mo, welp guess it's time to pull out that credit card again.
And don't forget you'll have to replace that TV next year because of updates that will make it incompatible with future versions of the SAME services.

Then you have the shitware like smart doorbells, smart stoves, smart washing machines, even smart light bulbs. Whole thing is a biiiiig scam.

Not 100% the best examples; as a knowledgeable/crafty customer can 'abuse occluded standards' to work around some of that.
Overall, though: Spot frigging on!

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Oh shit... Here we go again.

If they were committed to the gaming industry. They wouldn't have shut down their studio that was making stadia exclusive games so quickly.

Probably would have been pretty easy to transition whatever they made into console or pc games. Hell. Maybe they could have mase games for android

 

[Chrispy_]

Erosion of ownership isn't something people have rebelled against yet, but something will be the tipping point in the next few years, I'm fairly sure of it.

If anything, the housing market increasingly moving to rentals is screwing over all the millennials for a majority percentage of all their earnings and soon there will be an entire global generation that is sick of renting shit when they can just buy it outright and not have to pay multiple times the original value over a prolonged period of time.