Diving into game streaming
AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOUR NETWORK.
FOR MOST OF us, video streaming is the thing most likely to consume the lion’s share of our bandwidth. Sure, there may be the occasional game or application download that sucks up our bandwidth for a time, but video is the prime reason for the explosive growth in demand for ever-faster broadband in the last decade.
But that may be changing soon. There are services coming where the bandwidth demands are going to dwarf those of video streaming: game streaming services. So what will the new wave of game streaming services mean for your home network, and how do you best set up for them?
THE SERVICES
Let’s start by taking a look at the services. Game streaming services have been around for a few years now – but not so much for us antipodeans. PlayStation Now launched in the US in 2014, but still hasn’t made it to our shores. Internationally, there have also been services like Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Shadow by
Blade, Jump Gaming and a few others, but nothing that was practically usable from Australia.
The closest thing we have had is selfstreaming services, where you stream from one of your devices to another on your home network. Steam Link, Nvidia GameStream, PS4 Remote Play, the Xbox App and Remotr allow you to stream games on your local network, from one device to another. These are all free to use, though of course you have to own the games you want to stream.
But all that looks set to change. Game streaming servers may finally be coming to our shores, allowing us to stream to any device, wherever we are – assuming we have the bandwidth. Here are a few of the potential contenders.
GOOGLE STADIA
Earlier this year Google Announced Stadia, and while no Australian launch date has been announced (it just launched in the US in November), Google has the servers and infrastructure to make Google Stadia happen in Australia.
When it does come to our shores, the requirements will be hefty. For just 720p streaming, you’ll need a steady 10mbps. If you want 1080p, you’ll need to be able to sustain 20mbps, and if you plan on going all the way to 4K, you’ll need to be able to sustain a minimum of 35mbps, which is a big ask for Australian networks. All streams work at 60fps.
In the US, Google charges US$10 per month for the subscription, and users also need a US$69 controller. But it’s not like Netflix – the subscription does not come with ‘free’ games (with the sole exception of Destiny 2, which is bundled as part of the subscription). Users still have to buy or rent the games they want to play, with a list of 30 or so games available right now. After paying for the game, subscribers can then stream the game to pretty much any device they want – mobiles, Chromecasts, PCs, smart TVs that support it and so on.
Google has also announced that there will be a free tier for the service starting in 2020 that will be limited to 1080p.
Like Google, Microsoft is a company with the local infrastructure – including its extensive Azure Cloud network – to actually launch a game streaming service in Australia. In October, it started trialling its upcoming Project xCloud service in the US, UK and Korea. Again, we have no Australian launch date, but Microsoft has said that it will launch in Australia eventually.
The xCloud trial lets mobile users with a recent-model Xbox Controller play console games like Gears 5 and Sea of Thieves on their Android device, though other devices will be available at launch.
It’s only a trial for now, so a lot of things are still up in the air. We don’t know how much it will cost or how it will work with things like Microsoft’s Netflix-for-games Xbox Game Pass. Bandwidth requirements haven’t been revealed yet, either, though 10mbps is needed for the trial and the requirements are likely to be similar to Stadia.
PLAYSTATION NOW AND NVIDIA GEFORCE NOW
The world’s other two big game streaming services, PlayStation Now and GeForce Now, have yet to come to our shores, and it’s not yet certain that they will. Internationally PS Now has been in operation for years, and it hasn’t been a huge success for the company, perhaps because of the hefty monthly price and a 720p resolution limit.
GeForce Now, although launched by Nvidia in 2015, is still officially in ‘Beta’ and is presently free (with time limits). Users still need to own the game (on Steam, Uplay, or Battle.Net) to play it, and resolution is limited to 1080p. Given it has been four years and the service still hasn’t exited the beta phase, we don’t have high hopes for it appearing in Australia anytime soon.
THE POTENTIAL ISSUES
If this all sounds like something that will appeal to you, then you should know that your network will need to be up to snuff. The issues you’ll need to be concerned about will include:
BANDWIDTH
The bandwidth requirements of game streaming exceed just about any other service. At the maximum resolution Google Stadia demands 35mbps. That’s 35 mbps sustained, meaning it can’t have dips, slowdowns or pauses that drop it below that rate, otherwise the stream will halt or stutter.
According to the ACCC, two thirds of NBN fixed line broadband plans get over 90% of the plan speed during busy times, so a 50mbps plan should be adequate if you’re in that two-thirds. The other third get either 50-90% of plan speed (27% of users) or less than 50% of plan speed (6.3% of users), and for those people game streaming may not even be viable. Often the cause is a problem with the ISP not provisioning enough bandwidth locally, so an ISP switch may be a solution. But otherwise it may be a function of a poor FTTN connection or other line issue, which is less easily fixed.
You’ll also need the internal bandwidth in your home to handle it. If you use wired connections, it should be fine, but wireless networks, especially those that use the 2.4GHz spectrum, may struggle. You may need to upgrade your router or re-engineer your network to get better reception for your devices.
LAG
As we discussed back in the August issue in this column, lag is going to be a critical factor – the critical factor – when it comes to game streaming. How quickly inputs from your game controller are received, sent over the internet and reacted to in the game is going to be what makes or breaks game streaming.
Anything more than 50ms is probably going to be very clunky. In Australia, with its vast distances between locations, it’s a particular problem. If Google or Microsoft only set up servers in Sydney and Melbourne, for example, then WA and maybe even Qld and SA users are probably going to have issues.
As noted in August, there’s not a huge amount you can do to tackle latency. Switching from wireless to wired on your local network is probably the biggest thing, as well as eliminating wireless relays (like range extenders or mesh networks where the nodes are not connected by wires). That might be just the edge you need to make game streaming viable, whenever it might arrive on our shores.