Game Streaming Review: NVIDIA GeForce Now, Google Stadia, XCloud, PS Now, & Amazon Luna
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Date: 2021-07-05
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Comments and reviews: 10
IonBlade
Great comparison! It might be worth the revisit on the Series X upgrade to xcloud you'd discussed; depending on how close you are to a datacenter, you might find it quite a bit better than your early test results.
I ran a test on the web version of Xbox Game Streaming earlier this week on the new systems, using Edge to run it in a browser with a second window running gamepadviewer.com next to the stream. This let me see when the button press was registered by my system and therefore sent to the remote server (in the gamepadviewer site), versus when there was a reaction in the game (in the xcloud window). I then recorded both these with the 240fps slow motion mode in an iPhone 12, and then exported that video out to my desktop, where I opened up the video in a video editor and counted the frames between the button lighting up in gamepadviewer (my system locally registering the button press, and sending that input to xcloud) and the response in game.
My results showed that on the new SX blades, the raw reaction time in Destiny 2 in Xbox Cloud Gaming over a 2 minute test varied between 3 and 5 frames 60 FPS (between 50 and 83ms).
This test, of course, disregards delay from the controller to the local PC, and any delay in the monitor I'm using itself to process the image locally once it's received, since both the input received measurement in gamepadviewer and the movement in game are rendered on the same screen (where the same latency applies to both being displayed), so this measures actual raw frames of latency added by the game itself and from xcloud.
If you look at _total_ time from button press to reaction, taking into account controller -> PC and PC -> monitor, as measured by a 240fps camera pointed at both my controller and the screen at once, was between 11-13 frames at 60FPS for Xcloud. As a comparison point, the same test on Destiny 2 running locally on my PC on this monitor / controller measured at 8 frames, so this still worked out to around a 3-5 frame at 60 FPS extra latency added by the Series X models in Xbox Cloud Streaming. So even that test, which included all the latency of the input peripherals and the latency of my monitor (which is a 2015 Samsung TV that has pretty abyssmal latency, as seen by even local D2 on the PC itself measuring 8 frames lag) are lower than the older Series S xcloud test you had previously encountered.
(Can't speak for performance on a phone - haven't tried it on my iPhone, and I wouldn't have a way to measure that without a second phone with high speed camera to film the first.)
These tests were run on gigabit fiber, from a hardwired PC, in a major metropolitan area in Texas.
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Great comparison! It might be worth the revisit on the Series X upgrade to xcloud you'd discussed; depending on how close you are to a datacenter, you might find it quite a bit better than your early test results.
I ran a test on the web version of Xbox Game Streaming earlier this week on the new systems, using Edge to run it in a browser with a second window running gamepadviewer.com next to the stream. This let me see when the button press was registered by my system and therefore sent to the remote server (in the gamepadviewer site), versus when there was a reaction in the game (in the xcloud window). I then recorded both these with the 240fps slow motion mode in an iPhone 12, and then exported that video out to my desktop, where I opened up the video in a video editor and counted the frames between the button lighting up in gamepadviewer (my system locally registering the button press, and sending that input to xcloud) and the response in game.
My results showed that on the new SX blades, the raw reaction time in Destiny 2 in Xbox Cloud Gaming over a 2 minute test varied between 3 and 5 frames 60 FPS (between 50 and 83ms).
This test, of course, disregards delay from the controller to the local PC, and any delay in the monitor I'm using itself to process the image locally once it's received, since both the input received measurement in gamepadviewer and the movement in game are rendered on the same screen (where the same latency applies to both being displayed), so this measures actual raw frames of latency added by the game itself and from xcloud.
If you look at _total_ time from button press to reaction, taking into account controller -> PC and PC -> monitor, as measured by a 240fps camera pointed at both my controller and the screen at once, was between 11-13 frames at 60FPS for Xcloud. As a comparison point, the same test on Destiny 2 running locally on my PC on this monitor / controller measured at 8 frames, so this still worked out to around a 3-5 frame at 60 FPS extra latency added by the Series X models in Xbox Cloud Streaming. So even that test, which included all the latency of the input peripherals and the latency of my monitor (which is a 2015 Samsung TV that has pretty abyssmal latency, as seen by even local D2 on the PC itself measuring 8 frames lag) are lower than the older Series S xcloud test you had previously encountered.
(Can't speak for performance on a phone - haven't tried it on my iPhone, and I wouldn't have a way to measure that without a second phone with high speed camera to film the first.)
These tests were run on gigabit fiber, from a hardwired PC, in a major metropolitan area in Texas.
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Max
This past year was the perfect year for these services. Not enough people understood what they were otherwise there would have been much greater adoption.
I m one of the few people whose used Stadia, GeForce Now (along with game streaming from home pcs to Shields, fire sticks, & chromecasts), & Gamepass on PC&Xbox.
Use cases:
- college between class for games like KSP where latency does not matter but having powerful hardware does.
- giving my brother a way to play games with his friends where a normal console would have quickly been stolen.
- lots of cheap TVs is a common sight in many households. Stadia makes it cheap to host lan parties again.
I can expand on my experience if you d like Steve.
Ultimately the ideal solution seems to be one of better GPU virtualization allowing for a single device at home (or as an apartment / dorm perk) that would allow you to play party games on any tv on the network without needing to move setups around.
obviously this would allow for business functionality from anywhere as well the whole work from home & have windows / office / word cast to any device as a second screen push might help develop this technology of last mile computing as a service as an extension of AWS/Azure s edge computing capabilities.
//my case is weird because I have a ton of chromecasts & firesticks laying around as they come in gift baskets these companies send me for working in the space and interacting with them. To the point where I ve given a lot of these devices away to my friends.
Also, I wish the FireTVCube would rebrand itself to be a shield competitor a bit. Works great for game streaming with an Xbox controller attached but not officially supported. just the out of the box experience is not a great experience on firesticks where it ll show inappropriate adds on the screensaver by default & other similarly bad business decisions when they should support it as a platform for apps rather than a product that has already been sold Roku does this part better but lacks the hardware on their most popular devices to even connect Bluetooth headphones. chromecasts don t even handle casting from Google apps correctly for the most part but at least they are great for Stadia when you have a solid internet connection.
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This past year was the perfect year for these services. Not enough people understood what they were otherwise there would have been much greater adoption.
I m one of the few people whose used Stadia, GeForce Now (along with game streaming from home pcs to Shields, fire sticks, & chromecasts), & Gamepass on PC&Xbox.
Use cases:
- college between class for games like KSP where latency does not matter but having powerful hardware does.
- giving my brother a way to play games with his friends where a normal console would have quickly been stolen.
- lots of cheap TVs is a common sight in many households. Stadia makes it cheap to host lan parties again.
I can expand on my experience if you d like Steve.
Ultimately the ideal solution seems to be one of better GPU virtualization allowing for a single device at home (or as an apartment / dorm perk) that would allow you to play party games on any tv on the network without needing to move setups around.
obviously this would allow for business functionality from anywhere as well the whole work from home & have windows / office / word cast to any device as a second screen push might help develop this technology of last mile computing as a service as an extension of AWS/Azure s edge computing capabilities.
//my case is weird because I have a ton of chromecasts & firesticks laying around as they come in gift baskets these companies send me for working in the space and interacting with them. To the point where I ve given a lot of these devices away to my friends.
Also, I wish the FireTVCube would rebrand itself to be a shield competitor a bit. Works great for game streaming with an Xbox controller attached but not officially supported. just the out of the box experience is not a great experience on firesticks where it ll show inappropriate adds on the screensaver by default & other similarly bad business decisions when they should support it as a platform for apps rather than a product that has already been sold Roku does this part better but lacks the hardware on their most popular devices to even connect Bluetooth headphones. chromecasts don t even handle casting from Google apps correctly for the most part but at least they are great for Stadia when you have a solid internet connection.
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IPWNUNinjaQuick
Full disclosure, I am Stadia insider, so I have a vested interest in Stadia's success.
Investment and expansion of Stadia's library are accelerating, and developer-side features that everyone will benefit from are also in the works. I know GN really wants Stadia to die for some reason, and it is pretty nonsensical, but that's your editorial prerogative. Most users should be seeing a 50-70 ms latency in 60fps games on Stadia, and if you're not I think sharing your network and infrastructure info would be incredibly helpful - nothing personally identifiable. As press you should be able to get a line with Stadia CMs (grace at google, etc) to possibly provide your feedback directly to the team. I've tested it on DSL 30down 5up and still had no latency issues (within the expected performance I mentioned), so it isn't like you need gigabit fiber for it to work.
My personal Stadia account on a system that lacks VP9 decode still yields latency on par with the game running locally with vsync on - however my latency to the Stadia edge nodes is under 3ms so there's that.
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Full disclosure, I am Stadia insider, so I have a vested interest in Stadia's success.
Investment and expansion of Stadia's library are accelerating, and developer-side features that everyone will benefit from are also in the works. I know GN really wants Stadia to die for some reason, and it is pretty nonsensical, but that's your editorial prerogative. Most users should be seeing a 50-70 ms latency in 60fps games on Stadia, and if you're not I think sharing your network and infrastructure info would be incredibly helpful - nothing personally identifiable. As press you should be able to get a line with Stadia CMs (grace at google, etc) to possibly provide your feedback directly to the team. I've tested it on DSL 30down 5up and still had no latency issues (within the expected performance I mentioned), so it isn't like you need gigabit fiber for it to work.
My personal Stadia account on a system that lacks VP9 decode still yields latency on par with the game running locally with vsync on - however my latency to the Stadia edge nodes is under 3ms so there's that.
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MrJobocan
My only experience with any of these is Stadia. It was for the free demo of Immortals: Fenyx Rising. I have wired internet for this computer, and nothing was happening on my home network at the time. For the first minute or so of streaming the game it worked actually near-flawless, I'd press buttons and things would happen with hardly noticeable delay. After that first minute though... oh boy. Basically I'd press a button and the action would happen in the game. I know that because the sound from my action was playing, so sound streaming was fine and as was streaming the feedback from my controller to the game. However, I'd see none of it... for 5 seconds. Then whatever I did actually happened on screen, so the video part of the streaming was heavily delayed. 5 whole seconds between button press and the video catching up. It eventually went up to 10 seconds. That's way less than unplayable.
I'm not touching streaming as long as I can.
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My only experience with any of these is Stadia. It was for the free demo of Immortals: Fenyx Rising. I have wired internet for this computer, and nothing was happening on my home network at the time. For the first minute or so of streaming the game it worked actually near-flawless, I'd press buttons and things would happen with hardly noticeable delay. After that first minute though... oh boy. Basically I'd press a button and the action would happen in the game. I know that because the sound from my action was playing, so sound streaming was fine and as was streaming the feedback from my controller to the game. However, I'd see none of it... for 5 seconds. Then whatever I did actually happened on screen, so the video part of the streaming was heavily delayed. 5 whole seconds between button press and the video catching up. It eventually went up to 10 seconds. That's way less than unplayable.
I'm not touching streaming as long as I can.
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Smart
I'm in the worst location in Australia for latency and I had a completely different experience with Beta Project X-cloud, it was almost identical to local nVidia Gamestream (tested Halo Master Chief on both), your video shows X-cloud with an obvious delay, for me, it was almost impossible to detect the delay, it felt more like sub 60ms, in home is around 20ms, I tested on an old Pixel 2 XL with a Raser Kishi and Wifi 5, if I had anything like what you got, I would not play at all, but I have been using in home gamestream since the nVidia Shield Gen 1 was released, and still currently use moonlight on my ATV's with bluetooth Xbox controllers, the only time I can notice the delay is fast paced racing games, otherwise most FPS games and even Cyberpunk function flawlessly, so I am used to using local gamestream, and my initial impression of online X-cloud was really good, where my initial impression of online nVidia Gamestream was not great.
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I'm in the worst location in Australia for latency and I had a completely different experience with Beta Project X-cloud, it was almost identical to local nVidia Gamestream (tested Halo Master Chief on both), your video shows X-cloud with an obvious delay, for me, it was almost impossible to detect the delay, it felt more like sub 60ms, in home is around 20ms, I tested on an old Pixel 2 XL with a Raser Kishi and Wifi 5, if I had anything like what you got, I would not play at all, but I have been using in home gamestream since the nVidia Shield Gen 1 was released, and still currently use moonlight on my ATV's with bluetooth Xbox controllers, the only time I can notice the delay is fast paced racing games, otherwise most FPS games and even Cyberpunk function flawlessly, so I am used to using local gamestream, and my initial impression of online X-cloud was really good, where my initial impression of online nVidia Gamestream was not great.
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Jakir
Referencing the Google graveyard is so misleading. Every company has a graveyard. If you filter out services that don't charge money, Google has the SMALLEST graveyard compared to other companies.
Also, that website includes programming languages and frameworks in the graveyard alongside actual consumer products which unfairly bloats the number because Sony hasn't come out with their own programming frameworks.
The Google graveyard argument really makes no sense when you actually look at what that site lists. Most of the listings just got renamed or merged into something else Google is doing. When you take away the graveyard argument, what else do you really have against Stadia?
If you want to have any credibility, try thinking about this for just a few seconds. Your next video on this would be better for it.
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Referencing the Google graveyard is so misleading. Every company has a graveyard. If you filter out services that don't charge money, Google has the SMALLEST graveyard compared to other companies.
Also, that website includes programming languages and frameworks in the graveyard alongside actual consumer products which unfairly bloats the number because Sony hasn't come out with their own programming frameworks.
The Google graveyard argument really makes no sense when you actually look at what that site lists. Most of the listings just got renamed or merged into something else Google is doing. When you take away the graveyard argument, what else do you really have against Stadia?
If you want to have any credibility, try thinking about this for just a few seconds. Your next video on this would be better for it.
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Skele-Ton
I was gonna say who keeps thinking that playing single player games with crippling lag is a good idea but then I remember I get into an argument with a dozen people every time I voice that opinion. So apparently the market is there. I just remember playing Assassin's Creed 2 once on a streaming service and I literally couldn't climb a wall because the delay between my presses and the reactions were massively jamming my brain and I kept faking myself out and pressing buttons at the wrong time and falling off, and that was when I was like this is shit, who wants this?
I also have said time and time again that if you can't afford a gaming PC, you almost certainly don't live in a place with a good enough internet connection to play a streaming service at sub-100ms lag.
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I was gonna say who keeps thinking that playing single player games with crippling lag is a good idea but then I remember I get into an argument with a dozen people every time I voice that opinion. So apparently the market is there. I just remember playing Assassin's Creed 2 once on a streaming service and I literally couldn't climb a wall because the delay between my presses and the reactions were massively jamming my brain and I kept faking myself out and pressing buttons at the wrong time and falling off, and that was when I was like this is shit, who wants this?
I also have said time and time again that if you can't afford a gaming PC, you almost certainly don't live in a place with a good enough internet connection to play a streaming service at sub-100ms lag.
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willgart
will be interesting to see how the update of xCloud impacts the performance for sure.
and how PC vs phone changes the experience.
Microsoft has several patent for streaming 3D content, I hope a day we'll see them in action
where some process is done on the client, and multiple frames calculated in the cloud, so the local device is doing the final rendering only based on the latest movement of the player, so this can cut the latency by a huge margin.
also its where FSR like upscaling technics can improve the experience.
we have to check in again 2/3 years to see what as changed.
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will be interesting to see how the update of xCloud impacts the performance for sure.
and how PC vs phone changes the experience.
Microsoft has several patent for streaming 3D content, I hope a day we'll see them in action
where some process is done on the client, and multiple frames calculated in the cloud, so the local device is doing the final rendering only based on the latest movement of the player, so this can cut the latency by a huge margin.
also its where FSR like upscaling technics can improve the experience.
we have to check in again 2/3 years to see what as changed.
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carcifier
I've been using GeForce Now for a while, as a free service. I haven't paid for it, because some of the games I own that I want to use with it aren't available. It works pretty well, it just doesn't let me play the key games I want to use it with. It also has a weird thing where it will sync with your Steam library, yet NOT show some of the games available afterwards. Some games NEVER appear in your library , even though they're playable on the service. You have to find the games, see if they exist listed somewhere and then you can add them manually to your library . Annoying.
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I've been using GeForce Now for a while, as a free service. I haven't paid for it, because some of the games I own that I want to use with it aren't available. It works pretty well, it just doesn't let me play the key games I want to use it with. It also has a weird thing where it will sync with your Steam library, yet NOT show some of the games available afterwards. Some games NEVER appear in your library , even though they're playable on the service. You have to find the games, see if they exist listed somewhere and then you can add them manually to your library . Annoying.
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Robin
People have been saying stadia is going to die or is on life support since it launched and it hasn't. It can't be shutting down next year since it has next gen only titles anounced for it coming next year with more to come. It even has a 2023 title anounced for it. They just opened up a new job for stadia which means they are hiring. Ubisoft is commited to stadia and ea recently stated that stadia is a alive and well platform. Ubisoft opened up a job specifically for optimizing games to stadia. Even if stadia is going to die it wont be this year, next year, or even 2023.
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People have been saying stadia is going to die or is on life support since it launched and it hasn't. It can't be shutting down next year since it has next gen only titles anounced for it coming next year with more to come. It even has a 2023 title anounced for it. They just opened up a new job for stadia which means they are hiring. Ubisoft is commited to stadia and ea recently stated that stadia is a alive and well platform. Ubisoft opened up a job specifically for optimizing games to stadia. Even if stadia is going to die it wont be this year, next year, or even 2023.
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