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Cloud Sony

Sony Chief Warns Technical Problems Persist for Cloud Gaming (arstechnica.com) 29

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Sony's chief executive has warned that cloud gaming is still technically "very tricky," playing down the risk to the console maker of the industry quickly converting to a technology on which its rival Microsoft has bet heavily. From a report: In an interview with the Financial Times, Kenichiro Yoshida said the PlayStation creator would still study "various options" in the future for streaming games over the Internet itself, adding it could utilize GT Sophy, its artificial intelligence agent, to enhance cloud gaming. "I think cloud itself is an amazing business model, but when it comes to games, the technical difficulties are high," said Yoshida, citing latency -- the fast response times demanded by gamers -- as the biggest issue.

"So there will be challenges to cloud gaming, but we want to take on those challenges." Despite various attempts to remake the gaming industry around the cloud, many users have yet to switch from a console or high-end gaming PC to streaming games entirely over the Internet, fearing the lags that can be caused by slowing Internet connectivity and server speeds. Publishers have also not been fully supportive.
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Sony Chief Warns Technical Problems Persist for Cloud Gaming More

Sony Chief Warns Technical Problems Persist for Cloud Gaming

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  • Who wants cloud gaming? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Is it the same people who like DRM and copy protections so much?

    • People who game but don't want to shell out for for expensive equipment like it too. Personally, I don't do multiplay games much... I'd rather own my hardware, and have a hard copy so it can't be taken away on a whim.

  • He's right (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Monday June 05, 2023 @11:14AM (#63577327)

    Of course they'd say that. But then again, I have 1.25 Gbps fiber directly to my house and even with that connection cloud gaming sucks. It's fine for puzzle and adventure games, but if reaction time is a factor at all then it's not happening. They'd need to have a network of scalable edge nodes all over the place akin to Cloudflare to start to address these latency issues, and even then I doubt it will be satisfactory. It is an amazing business model, too bad they can't force gamers to accept the poor experience.

  • Cloud gaming (mostly) works (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RJMonkeyboy ( 8404903 ) on Monday June 05, 2023 @11:34AM (#63577369)
    I was part of the Stadia beta, and then six months ago, when gifted a couple games my now almost 7 year old rig couldn't really handle, started using Nvidia's GeForce NOW. Cloud gmaing mostly works for non-competitive twitch gamers. With a 200/25 Mbit connection, I could play action-y games like the recent Tomb Raider games, Jedi Fallen Order, etc. with little to no perceptible lag. Yes, there were occasional lag spikes that made me miss a jump or something, but that happens playing locally, too, when Windows decides it's going to start an update or someother background process goes nuts. It wasn't a frequent thing. For anyting else I played, performance was never an issue. Since it syncs with my Steam library, it was easy to go back and try things at full 4k glory without upgrading a PC, and at $0 a month vs $3k for a new computer, it's not that unreasonable. There are downsides. It doesn't have every game I own, and there were a couple notable "damn, I'd like to play that" moments (eg Jedi Survivor). It times out relatively quickly if you're inactive, and that was a pain in the ass as I'll often have a strategy game or RPG running the the background and switch in and out between work tasks, and getting disconnected when I forgot to save sucked. And mod support is iffy; I fired up the old Conan Exiles, and going through the process of reloading and reactivating mods every time i started the game was a monumental PITA. But the imepdiments aren't really technical at this point.

    • You must really be insensitive to input lag.

      • I don't have the reflexes i did when I was a kid, but I can play the games I mentioned without any issues. And I don't do FPS for the most part because most of them make me motion-sick pretty quickly. But as a GenXer who still games a lot, whatever input lag there is either wasn't noticeable or I adapted so quickly I didn't really notice it.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by mkse ( 10333947 )

          I use NVIDIA GeForce NOW as well over a Verizon 5G connection I can take anywhere with a laptop and it works pretty well. I play Guild Wars 2 (MMO) and intense PvP keeps up just fine and rarely there are any times of lag.

  • Physics (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gibgezr ( 2025238 ) on Monday June 05, 2023 @11:35AM (#63577375)

    Alternate headline: "Sony chief warns basic laws of physics still apply"
    Reminds me of Grace Hopper explaining nanoseconds to Admirals and Generals who wanted the speed of satellite communications increased:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • News at 11. No seriously did anyone see the Playstation Showcase? I'll sum it up for you:
    - All good games are cross platform, no need for a Playstation.
    - Those games which are not cross platform are such blatant rip-offs of Nintendo IP that I'm surprised their offices aren't being raided as we speak at the behest of angry lawyers.
    - All VR games to completement their pathetic existing line-up are either really crap looking and unappealing or just a sequel to other good games... which are also available on o

    • I really don't like Sony, but you have to admit, cloud gaming represents yet another move in the direction of service consolidation.

      At some point the latency issues will be solved, and when that happens, the death knell will be rung for personal ownership of hardware, for better and for worse.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KlomDark ( 6370 )

        They can't solve the latency issue without changing the laws of physics, so this is a silly waste of time and money.

        • They can't solve the latency issue without changing the laws of physics, so this is a silly waste of time and money.

          The latency issue is largely solved for any game other than competitive FPS games. When people have no issues doing perfect dodges in souls like games, you know you've got a solution to >95% of computer gaming.

      • I really don't like Sony, but you have to admit, cloud gaming represents yet another move in the direction of service consolidation.

        Not really. Only in Google's fucked up implementation of it. NVIDIA on the other hand lets you play and own your games locally on your device while offering them in the cloud.
        Likewise having cloud gaming as part of the Xbox game pass ultimate isn't a consolidation in the slightest. Unlike Sony and Epic games there's no exclusivity for Xbox game pass content and all games are available to purchase.

        A concept or technology doesn't mean anything for consolidation. That is dependent on how it's implemented.

    • Can you explain more of point 2.
      Also, to point 4, a Switch? I thought it was a WiiU

      • Can you explain more of point 2.
        Also, to point 4, a Switch? I thought it was a WiiU

        Actually yeah Wii U is a better comparison, the issue is that this is cloning last gen's idea from a company that frankly I thought Sony were ahead of and not into the gimmick nonsense.Either way a Nintendo rip off. For fun try and find a single news story about their exclusive from Square Enix "Foamstars" which doesn't include the words "Splatoon" in the headline. :-)

  • Got for a coupld months to play Last of Us and the Uncharted series. Worked just fine for me 5 years ago or whatever it was. So this is just absolute BS, the problem with cloud gamin is I didn't buy a PS4 (PS3?). Someone ask him why they shut that service down.

  • If the quality of a stream from my PS5 in my basement to my PC up stairs, over 1gig wired ethernet, sucks... So will the cloud version, but worse...

    Sucks =~ lag, low resolution, random weirdnessess

  • Unlikely to ever work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tyr07 ( 8900565 ) on Monday June 05, 2023 @03:52PM (#63578277)

    TL;DR
    They want to turn PC gaming into console gaming with a constant subscription and control over the games you have access to in a direction that benefits their profits the most.

    I know the $$$ in the eyes is making it blurry for them but there are major fundamental reasons this will not come to be until some sort of quantum miracle happens.

    1. Latency / physics. You can't defeat the speed of light yet, and the distance for processors to user input in a self contained system is always going to beat the daylights out of cloud gaming. Even my high in, in network wifi / lan configuration has latency using steamlink to a device in another room, that is connected via wifi, and the stand alone higher end AP is in direct line of site about 7 ft away. It runs great, it looks great, and I can even play platformers using it, but I can't still feel the slight latency.

    There is no way a network outside my home is going to have less latency with current technologies.

    2. Cost - Everyone supporting cloud gaming uses the cost of high end gaming pcs as a counter point, saving the money spent on it. Diablo 4 was just release, it's 90$ canadian, 120$ canadian if you want the early access digital delux version.
    The games are not getting cheaper, they're getting more expensive, regardless of your hardware.

    Someone who is not willing to build a high end gaming machine and put the money into it, is also not the person who will spend a lot of money per month on video games. If you think cloud gaming will just be 20$ a month with access to everything, that's like believing walmart will continue to sell products at a loss even after they force all the neighborhood competition to close shop.

    How's your cell phone and internet costs these days? Getting cheaper or offering way more benefits? No. Netflix starting to get pricey? Amazon video? Sub to all the extra channels to the content you want? Not cheap, is it?

    The same will apply to cloud gaming after adoption. The people who were not going to spend money on higher end gaming systems, are also not going to pay 60$ a month for cloud access, or 10$ a month to a limited set of games, as the 'premium games' will be in a higher tier. They're not the customer.

    At the end of the day, it's a way to try and force everyone to pay for access to old outdated games that they still enjoy, like how nintendo requires a subscription to their online service for the privilege to emulate old nintendo games of a limited choice on your switch. That's literally the fate of cloud gaming right there.

    They will also slowly increase the cost of the hardware to add more capabilities to it, to make it basically a console, with specific specifications to 'work' with their games better, but basically it'll be running the game locally, with half of it online like advanced DRM services the way diablo 3 works out. It will limit what games developers can produce as they'll want to be in the market for all the users on cloud gaming services, and have to design it around it.

    They will slowly try to push out 'random generic pc' and get people to buy their 'cost effective' specialized hardware that runs the cloud games better, and that price will steadily increase with 'features' as well.

    You may say sure, it will be unlikely to cost as much as a late gen Ryzen cpu and a 4090 or something. You know what else? It will never reach the performance of those components, either. So back to limiting what developers can push with their games.

  • Sony acquired a cloud gaming company in 2015 - OnLive. OnLive was doing cloud gaming for 10 years at the time and fairly successful, and that was before Stadia or Microsoft xCloud and other things. In fact, Sony announced Playstation Now, their streaming gaming service around that time.

    So Sony's had basically nearly 20 years of cloud gaming experience, and what did they do? They shut it all down. Heck, they're still offering game streaming with PlayStation Plus, so if it's so impractical, they're the ones m

  • ... and for once, I was correct.
  • As an indie game developer, I can say cloud gaming troubles include VARIOUS of issues: latency, network instability, compatibility. Regular patches are also crucial to improve the overall stability of the cloud gaming platform. It may be really challenging as Yoshida said, only thorough testing, monitoring, and regular updates are key to ensure a pleasant gaming experience for players. I know it, because when my little game was on the way to Steam, I decided to use quality assurance services of software dev

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