That's a wasted update regarding game streaming. This gets us no closer to streaming Game services than we were before the update. Individual games being on the App Store is just individual games on the App Store. Who in hell is downloading a 50GB to over 100GB game to an iOS device? The whole point of streaming is to remove the hardware limitations and just get the game to the customer. The good folks at Apple aren't stupid and they know this update for streaming apps is nothing more than theater.
lol... You wouldn't be downloading a whole game you would still stream it... each game would just have its own page on the iOS app store.
Each streaming game," Apple said, "must be submitted to the App Store as an individual app so that it has an App Store product page, appears in charts and search, has user ratings and review, can be managed with ScreenTime and other parental control apps, appears on the user’s device, etc."
Not sure what you understand, but ↑↑↑ that means the game has to be downloaded from the App Store to be played. It's not just a page.
That's a wasted update regarding game streaming. This gets us no closer to streaming Game services than we were before the update. Individual games being on the App Store is just individual games on the App Store. Who in hell is downloading a 50GB to over 100GB game to an iOS device? The whole point of streaming is to remove the hardware limitations and just get the game to the customer. The good folks at Apple aren't stupid and they know this update for streaming apps is nothing more than theater.
lol... You wouldn't be downloading a whole game you would still stream it... each game would just have its own page on the iOS app store.
What he said, you (CloudTalkin) must have missed the part where they said, each "Cloud Store" will be able to create a "Catalog" and that Catalog will be on the App Store, but in order to get those items from those catalog you'll be given the link or info as to WHICH "Cloud Store" has said game/item, then you have to delve deep and get that PRODUCT from there.
This is much like how they do TV shows... except in this case they are letting people PURCHASE the WARE/MEDIA, etc etc
"The App Store Review Guidelines have been updated with a new section specifically addressing streaming games. While Apple technically now allows services like Xbox Game Streaming and Google Stadia on the App Store, they would have to publish each game as an individual app on the App Store. "Each streaming game," Apple said, "must be submitted to the App Store as an individual app so that it has an App Store product page, appears in charts and search, has user ratings and review, can be managed with ScreenTime and other parental control apps, appears on the user’s device, etc."
That's an incredible amount of extra work for streaming services, and it would also create added friction for customers — imagine having to install a bookmark for every TV show on Netflix that you wanted to watch. Each individual game would also be subject to the usual review requirements, which includes using Apple's payment system for in-app purchases, which takes a 30% cut.
Apple also adds fuel to the fire by insisting that "there is always the open Internet and web browser apps to reach all users outside of the App Store." However, the company doesn't allow third-party web engines, and Safari doesn't support many modern APIs that would be required to create a web-based version of Stadia or Xbox Game Streaming."
I won't argue with your statements. And I'm afraid to argue with anyone with 22k posts. It sounds like what you are saying is true, although I've never seen Netflix so I don't understand that metaphor. But I don't know what the conclusion is supposed to be from these facts. Are you saying Apple should be prohibited from doing what it's doing, or are you just pointing out Apple's incompetence? I'm not sure what conclusion to make from your post. I would appreciate your wisdom.
You can argue with anyone, 22k+ posts or not should not even matter. Coming to the conclusion part - I guess you don't need to look any further than read CloudTalking's posts in this thread.
This will still not allow iOS users to use a service like GeForce now Lots of games on GeForce now rely on Steam, who's already taking 30% of any purchases and got their own payment system. So that would mean that GeForce now on iOS would need to have a payment Going through iOS first, then Steam, and the both of them combined are going to take 60% of the revenue, leaving the dev with 40%...which makes iOS the less interesting platform by a miles. GeForce now big selling point is the Fact that you don't need to buy a game that you already own on Steam, and won't lose your progress with the steam cloud, no matter on what device you play.
It is interesting to watch Apple move on this a bit. It will be fascinating to see how the other companies will respond to it. I doubt if the established big players are going to settle for this. But the thing to watch out is if any new player will take advantage of the rules...
It is interesting to watch Apple move on this a bit. It will be fascinating to see how the other companies will respond to it. I doubt if the established big players are going to settle for this. But the thing to watch out is if any new player will take advantage of the rules...
They haven't really moved at all, they've just advised how a streaming service could comply with existing rules.
So the streaming services need to package each game in a controller app that handles the controls and receives the feed? Basically the same app every time, just with a different name and tie to an online title?
Seems like a pretty dumb solution that doesn't understand the problem.
It has some upsides. When all the games are contained in an app, you can't find them (including ratings/reviews) in the App Store. They can't be loaded directly from the home screen. Apple's allowed setup is how it's done on the Nintendo Switch:
This setup isn't designed to allow streaming game stores but to allow developers/publishers to stream individual games with heavy computing demands instead of running natively.
Capcom could bring every Resident Evil game to iOS this way directly. Ubisoft could bring Far Cry, The Division etc. But Microsoft/Google/Facebook/Tencent can't feasibly make a competing store. Same as you can't run Stadia on consoles or Playstation Now on XBox.
From a resources point of view, it probably wouldn't be economical to run games like this on iOS for each title. High performance servers are expensive to run and it's unlikely they'd be able to charge $40-60 per title like they can on Switch. Perhaps Apple can offer this kind of cloud service as an API and that way they can aggregate the costs of the server infrastructure across multiple developers. They'd be able to encode the video stream as HEVC to save bandwidth and could even require games to run on Apple Silicon, which makes them able to run natively on higher performance Macs.
This kind of service is inherently problematic to scale up and sustain economically. Mobile gamers can number in the tens of millions per title concurrently. Hosting a million high performance GPU instances in the cloud is not a trivial task. That would need around 1 Petaflop of computing power for mobile. Stadia has multiple 10TFLOP servers at ~7500 locations for PC:
If each GPU instance can be built for $300 (the service has to buy them from AMD/NVidia), it's a $3b cost to setup plus maintenance. Apple can build their own GPUs for $50-100 and they can hit a higher performance level vs the power level. They could have servers that run 10 GPU instances per blade ($1000) and run 1000 per colocation center in 1000 locations to support 10 million concurrent gamers at a $1b setup cost and charge $4.99 per month per user. The games would effectively need to require a subscription per title but it could be a floating subscription, similar to being subscribed to Apple Arcade (Apple Arcade+). This might seem excessive having to pay for streaming plus each game's purchases but that's how all streaming services work, the games are bought on top of the service fee.
The most interesting part of this (for me at least) was:
CNBC suggested in its report that Apple was blocking streaming services from the App store and only allowing individual games
AI suggested here that Apple allows streaming services but with caveats.
So which one is telling the truth?
The answer: Both of them! Each presents a flavor of the truth.
Essentially it's all in how you approach it:
If you favor and support unrestricted steaming of games you'll likely favor the CNBC story
If you favor and support Apple's protection of its ecosystem and its customers you'll likely favor the AI story.
The truth and fairness lies somewhere in the middle but reality is almost always grey. But we want to live in a black and white world with simple "yes or no", "good or bad", "right or wrong" answers.
"The App Store Review Guidelines have been updated with a new section specifically addressing streaming games. While Apple technically now allows services like Xbox Game Streaming and Google Stadia on the App Store, they would have to publish each game as an individual app on the App Store. "Each streaming game," Apple said, "must be submitted to the App Store as an individual app so that it has an App Store product page, appears in charts and search, has user ratings and review, can be managed with ScreenTime and other parental control apps, appears on the user’s device, etc."
That's an incredible amount of extra work for streaming services, and it would also create added friction for customers — imagine having to install a bookmark for every TV show on Netflix that you wanted to watch. Each individual game would also be subject to the usual review requirements, which includes using Apple's payment system for in-app purchases, which takes a 30% cut.
Apple also adds fuel to the fire by insisting that "there is always the open Internet and web browser apps to reach all users outside of the App Store." However, the company doesn't allow third-party web engines, and Safari doesn't support many modern APIs that would be required to create a web-based version of Stadia or Xbox Game Streaming."
I won't argue with your statements. And I'm afraid to argue with anyone with 22k posts. It sounds like what you are saying is true, although I've never seen Netflix so I don't understand that metaphor. But I don't know what the conclusion is supposed to be from these facts. Are you saying Apple should be prohibited from doing what it's doing, or are you just pointing out Apple's incompetence? I'm not sure what conclusion to make from your post. I would appreciate your wisdom.
He seems to want Apple to turn iOS into an open, no holds barred, platform like WIndows or Android.
And, he's right!
Open platforms offer a lot of benefits to the users.
But:
Walled gardens offer a lot of benefits to the users.
Fortunately we have a choice:
If you want free wheeling open architecture Samsung offers some very nice Android phones. If you want a safer more stable architecture Apple offers its walled garden.
You can have either one, but not both at the same time.
So the streaming services need to package each game in a controller app that handles the controls and receives the feed? Basically the same app every time, just with a different name and tie to an online title?
Seems like a pretty dumb solution that doesn't understand the probleM
This might seem excessive having to pay for streaming plus each game's purchases but that's how all streaming services work, the games are bought on top of the service fee.
That's not 100% true. If you already bought a game on a store supported by GeForce now, you don't have to buy it again when you use the service.
But that's also why GeForce now scared away some developers. Since it was effectively cannibalising some markets.
This might seem excessive having to pay for streaming plus each game's purchases but that's how all streaming services work, the games are bought on top of the service fee.
Pretty sure that isn't true of xCloud, and it definitely isn't true of Playstation Now.
So the streaming services need to package each game in a controller app that handles the controls and receives the feed? Basically the same app every time, just with a different name and tie to an online title?
Seems like a pretty dumb solution that doesn't understand the problem.
It has some upsides. When all the games are contained in an app, you can't find them (including ratings/reviews) in the App Store. They can't be loaded directly from the home screen.
Why would you need to find them in the app store if they were delivered by a single service app? They're in the app. Which probably maintains it's own ratings/reviews that are across all the platforms that the streaming service serves.
And not being able to load from the home screen is a pretty weak upside.
The most interesting part of this (for me at least) was:
CNBC suggested in its report that Apple was blocking streaming services from the App store and only allowing individual games
AI suggested here that Apple allows streaming services but with caveats.
So which one is telling the truth?
The answer: Both of them! Each presents a flavor of the truth.
Essentially it's all in how you approach it:
If you favor and support unrestricted steaming of games you'll likely favor the CNBC story
If you favor and support Apple's protection of its ecosystem and its customers you'll likely favor the AI story.
The truth and fairness lies somewhere in the middle but reality is almost always grey. But we want to live in a black and white world with simple "yes or no", "good or bad", "right or wrong" answers.
Given that Leswing was in the same briefing that I was in, and heard my explicit question and answer from Apple about the various scenarios for the apps (container with streaming, container with the whole app and all the code and assets, and etc), I'm honestly not sure where he got his interpretation.
As far as how I feel about it, I'm still not sure, and am still thinking about it. This is a nod in the direction of streaming. But, I knew from the jump that Microsoft and Google weren't going to be happy about it.
This might seem excessive having to pay for streaming plus each game's purchases but that's how all streaming services work, the games are bought on top of the service fee.
Pretty sure that isn't true of xCloud, and it definitely isn't true of Playstation Now.
Xcloud and Playstation Now are monthly fees, and games are not purchased individually.
From a resources point of view, it probably wouldn't be economical to run games like this on iOS for each title. High performance servers are expensive to run and it's unlikely they'd be able to charge $40-60 per title like they can on Switch. Perhaps Apple can offer this kind of cloud service as an API and that way they can aggregate the costs of the server infrastructure across multiple developers. They'd be able to encode the video stream as HEVC to save bandwidth and could even require games to run on Apple Silicon, which makes them able to run natively on higher performance Macs.
This kind of service is inherently problematic to scale up and sustain economically. Mobile gamers can number in the tens of millions per title concurrently. Hosting a million high performance GPU instances in the cloud is not a trivial task. That would need around 1 Petaflop of computing power for mobile. Stadia has multiple 10TFLOP servers at ~7500 locations for PC:
Your HEVC paradigm isn't likely the most efficient.
Every Apple device that would be capable of hosting games is already Metal compatible, and the current models are very performant. Apple could create ASi servers that merely handle the gameplay of the users in the cloud (GameCloud for lack of a better term), and all, or some, of the Physics and all of the Rendering would be handled by each users device, and this would reduce bandwidth considerably, and likely latency.
Yes, you would need API's and a new game engine to make this work, all of which Apple could make happen, and given Apple's focus on AR, rendering on an Apple device makes even more sense. Users could then embark on real world based game play, though beyond the few that are available today for iPhone.
This is why there could be no equivalent Game Engine from MS; there isn't any mobile user base with DirectX.
The most interesting part of this (for me at least) was:
CNBC suggested in its report that Apple was blocking streaming services from the App store and only allowing individual games
AI suggested here that Apple allows streaming services but with caveats.
So which one is telling the truth?
The answer: Both of them! Each presents a flavor of the truth.
Essentially it's all in how you approach it:
If you favor and support unrestricted steaming of games you'll likely favor the CNBC story
If you favor and support Apple's protection of its ecosystem and its customers you'll likely favor the AI story.
The truth and fairness lies somewhere in the middle but reality is almost always grey. But we want to live in a black and white world with simple "yes or no", "good or bad", "right or wrong" answers.
Given that Leswing was in the same briefing that I was in, and heard my explicit question and answer from Apple about the various scenarios for the apps (container with streaming, container with the whole app and all the code and assets, and etc), I'm honestly not sure where he got his interpretation.
As far as how I feel about it, I'm still not sure, and am still thinking about it. This is a nod in the direction of streaming. But, I knew from the jump that Microsoft and Google weren't going to be happy about it.
To be clear, I only heard a talking head interviewing one of their own. Whether that was any official position or not was unclear. But the direction of the interview seemed pretty clear -- but that may have been entirely due to the interviewer's bias. (and she did seem to be biased -- or at least have made up her mind prior to the interview).
The most interesting part of this (for me at least) was:
CNBC suggested in its report that Apple was blocking streaming services from the App store and only allowing individual games
AI suggested here that Apple allows streaming services but with caveats.
So which one is telling the truth?
The answer: Both of them! Each presents a flavor of the truth.
Essentially it's all in how you approach it:
If you favor and support unrestricted steaming of games you'll likely favor the CNBC story
If you favor and support Apple's protection of its ecosystem and its customers you'll likely favor the AI story.
The truth and fairness lies somewhere in the middle but reality is almost always grey. But we want to live in a black and white world with simple "yes or no", "good or bad", "right or wrong" answers.
Given that Leswing was in the same briefing that I was in, and heard my explicit question and answer from Apple about the various scenarios for the apps (container with streaming, container with the whole app and all the code and assets, and etc), I'm honestly not sure where he got his interpretation.
As far as how I feel about it, I'm still not sure, and am still thinking about it. This is a nod in the direction of streaming. But, I knew from the jump that Microsoft and Google weren't going to be happy about it.
To be clear, I only heard a talking head interviewing one of their own. Whether that was any official position or not was unclear. But the direction of the interview seemed pretty clear -- but that may have been entirely due to the interviewer's bias. (and she did seem to be biased -- or at least have made up her mind prior to the interview).
Yeah, I get that. I just wanted to add a little more color, and sausage-making details.
Apple wants to retain control of its iOS security and user experiences. It has to be particularly careful with interface technologies like streaming. Security and the overall user experience are some of the top reasons that people, like myself, stick with Apple, and why I recommend it to people like friends and family who often need protection and come to me for advice.
I have no problem with people criticizing Apple for not giving them what they want, but they already have what they want on other platforms. There is no reason at all to force Apple to follow the trends of other companies. If anything, critics should be HAPPY Apple is doing it "wrong", because it will lead to the downfall of Apple. It's like how I'm happy when a politician of an opposing political party shoots himself in the foot. That makes me happy!! And yet not a single Apple opponent has ever expressed joy over Apple's alleged bungles. I would be happy if any world dictator shot himself in the head, and there are plenty to choose from in that regard.
Fifty of them: https://planetrulers.com/current-dictators/ (P.S. AppleInsider is deleting my Carriage Returns for some mysterious reason. Sorry.)
I thought that xCloud and Stadia and Geforce Now were finally going to be available, but nope.
Sorry, but if the only reason to stay with iOS is to be able to play/stream games, you're in a minute minority. The idea that Apple would basically change iOS into an insecure hellhole just to accommodate that minute minority nauseates me. Thus, I am glad they don't.
Apple wants to retain control of its iOS security and user experiences. It has to be particularly careful with interface technologies like streaming. Security and the overall user experience are some of the top reasons that people, like myself, stick with Apple, and why I recommend it to people like friends and family who often need protection and come to me for advice.
I have no problem with people criticizing Apple for not giving them what they want, but they already have what they want on other platforms. There is no reason at all to force Apple to follow the trends of other companies. If anything, critics should be HAPPY Apple is doing it "wrong", because it will lead to the downfall of Apple. It's like how I'm happy when a politician of an opposing political party shoots himself in the foot. That makes me happy!! And yet not a single Apple opponent has ever expressed joy over Apple's alleged bungles. I would be happy if any world dictator shot himself in the head, and there are plenty to choose from in that regard.
Fifty of them: https://planetrulers.com/current-dictators/(P.S. AppleInsider is deleting my Carriage Returns for some mysterious reason. Sorry.)
Comments
Not sure what you understand, but ↑↑↑ that means the game has to be downloaded from the App Store to be played. It's not just a page.
This is much like how they do TV shows... except in this case they are letting people PURCHASE the WARE/MEDIA, etc etc
Lots of games on GeForce now rely on Steam, who's already taking 30% of any purchases and got their own payment system.
So that would mean that GeForce now on iOS would need to have a payment Going through iOS first, then Steam, and the both of them combined are going to take 60% of the revenue, leaving the dev with 40%...which makes iOS the less interesting platform by a miles. GeForce now big selling point is the Fact that you don't need to buy a game that you already own on Steam, and won't lose your progress with the steam cloud, no matter on what device you play.
https://kotaku.com/in-japan-the-nintendo-switch-is-streaming-games-that-i-1829071837
This setup isn't designed to allow streaming game stores but to allow developers/publishers to stream individual games with heavy computing demands instead of running natively.
Capcom could bring every Resident Evil game to iOS this way directly. Ubisoft could bring Far Cry, The Division etc. But Microsoft/Google/Facebook/Tencent can't feasibly make a competing store. Same as you can't run Stadia on consoles or Playstation Now on XBox.
From a resources point of view, it probably wouldn't be economical to run games like this on iOS for each title. High performance servers are expensive to run and it's unlikely they'd be able to charge $40-60 per title like they can on Switch. Perhaps Apple can offer this kind of cloud service as an API and that way they can aggregate the costs of the server infrastructure across multiple developers. They'd be able to encode the video stream as HEVC to save bandwidth and could even require games to run on Apple Silicon, which makes them able to run natively on higher performance Macs.
This kind of service is inherently problematic to scale up and sustain economically. Mobile gamers can number in the tens of millions per title concurrently. Hosting a million high performance GPU instances in the cloud is not a trivial task. That would need around 1 Petaflop of computing power for mobile. Stadia has multiple 10TFLOP servers at ~7500 locations for PC:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/19/18272809/google-stadia-specs-amd-teraflops-cloud-gaming
If each GPU instance can be built for $300 (the service has to buy them from AMD/NVidia), it's a $3b cost to setup plus maintenance. Apple can build their own GPUs for $50-100 and they can hit a higher performance level vs the power level. They could have servers that run 10 GPU instances per blade ($1000) and run 1000 per colocation center in 1000 locations to support 10 million concurrent gamers at a $1b setup cost and charge $4.99 per month per user. The games would effectively need to require a subscription per title but it could be a floating subscription, similar to being subscribed to Apple Arcade (Apple Arcade+). This might seem excessive having to pay for streaming plus each game's purchases but that's how all streaming services work, the games are bought on top of the service fee.
If you want a safer more stable architecture Apple offers its walled garden.
But that's also why GeForce now scared away some developers. Since it was effectively cannibalising some markets.
And not being able to load from the home screen is a pretty weak upside.
As far as how I feel about it, I'm still not sure, and am still thinking about it. This is a nod in the direction of streaming. But, I knew from the jump that Microsoft and Google weren't going to be happy about it.
Xcloud and Playstation Now are monthly fees, and games are not purchased individually.
Every Apple device that would be capable of hosting games is already Metal compatible, and the current models are very performant. Apple could create ASi servers that merely handle the gameplay of the users in the cloud (GameCloud for lack of a better term), and all, or some, of the Physics and all of the Rendering would be handled by each users device, and this would reduce bandwidth considerably, and likely latency.
Yes, you would need API's and a new game engine to make this work, all of which Apple could make happen, and given Apple's focus on AR, rendering on an Apple device makes even more sense. Users could then embark on real world based game play, though beyond the few that are available today for iPhone.
This is why there could be no equivalent Game Engine from MS; there isn't any mobile user base with DirectX.
To be clear, I only heard a talking head interviewing one of their own. Whether that was any official position or not was unclear. But the direction of the interview seemed pretty clear -- but that may have been entirely due to the interviewer's bias. (and she did seem to be biased -- or at least have made up her mind prior to the interview).