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.
With Geforce Now the player still had to buy the game separate from the service, it's not that the game was included with the price of Geforce Now. New games have to be purchased on top. Some of the publishers who removed their games would prefer people to pay again, with some there was a dispute over how the game is allowed to be delivered.
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.
Sure, some providers go the Netflix/Spotify model and the main game platform providers can include their own first party titles. What I mean is they can't offer 3rd party titles like Ubisoft's or EA's games for free. They may not be charged as a separate purchase but they are being paid somehow. Usually it's an upfront payment by the service provider and the titles are removed from the service after a certain date.
What I was saying was in the context of Apple providing a streaming service, there would have to be payment in some way for both their cloud hardware and network and the content. It doesn't have to be multiple payments, just that both content and service have to be paid for. They could do it like Apple Arcade but I suspect it would have to be more like Stadia where the payments are separate.
"Android users on Samsung devices can download a version of the app from the Samsung Galaxy Store which allows the purchase of games, subscriptions, and downloadable content directly from the app, as well as in-game store purchases. In-game purchases are not supported by other versions of the Xbox Game Pass app at this time."
Samsung made a deal with Microsoft for in-app purchase support that isn't in the Google Play version:
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 rendering and physics part is the whole reason to use the cloud, it's by far the most intensive part of the process. There's no benefit to putting the gameplay in the cloud, that's the worst of both as it introduces latency without reducing the frame processing time. Metal makes little difference vs desktop/server GPUs, they have their own APIs for efficient draw calls.
The reason cloud gaming is becoming more widely implemented is due to the lower costs of streaming video than the cost of high power gaming hardware. It will be unlikely that an iPhone ever gets a 10TFLOP GPU in a 5W power profile (this would require 2TFLOPs/Watt efficiency, 100GFLOPs/Watt is currently the most advanced, it will probably stop around 300-400GFLOPs/Watt) and even if it did, it would be running at max load all the time. Using the cloud, it only has to handle a video stream like Netflix.
As for efficiency, a high-end game is 20GB+ in size. An hour of 1080p video at 5Mbps HEVC is ~2.5GB of bandwidth. If it's played for 10 hours with variable bitrate then it's comparable to downloading and playing locally. The bandwidth difference depends on the play time vs size of the game but the savings in processing power offer enough of a benefit.
Basically network bandwidth is getting cheaper faster than hardware (especially mobile) is improving. It's also easier from a developer point of view to debug the game as they can target a single GPU and OS instead of dozens.
Cloud gaming isn't a replacement for native though, it's complementary and mainly benefits backwards compatibility and bringing compute-heavy titles to mobile.
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.
With Geforce Now the player still had to buy the game separate from the service, it's not that the game was included with the price of Geforce Now. New games have to be purchased on top. Some of the publishers who removed their games would prefer people to pay again, with some there was a dispute over how the game is allowed to be delivered.
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.
Sure, some providers go the Netflix/Spotify model and the main game platform providers can include their own first party titles. What I mean is they can't offer 3rd party titles like Ubisoft's or EA's games for free. They may not be charged as a separate purchase but they are being paid somehow. Usually it's an upfront payment by the service provider and the titles are removed from the service after a certain date.
What I was saying was in the context of Apple providing a streaming service, there would have to be payment in some way for both their cloud hardware and network and the content. It doesn't have to be multiple payments, just that both content and service have to be paid for. They could do it like Apple Arcade but I suspect it would have to be more like Stadia where the payments are separate.
"Android users on Samsung devices can download a version of the app from the Samsung Galaxy Store which allows the purchase of games, subscriptions, and downloadable content directly from the app, as well as in-game store purchases. In-game purchases are not supported by other versions of the Xbox Game Pass app at this time."
Samsung made a deal with Microsoft for in-app purchase support that isn't in the Google Play version:
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 rendering and physics part is the whole reason to use the cloud, it's by far the most intensive part of the process. There's no benefit to putting the gameplay in the cloud, that's the worst of both as it introduces latency without reducing the frame processing time. Metal makes little difference vs desktop/server GPUs, they have their own APIs for efficient draw calls.
The reason cloud gaming is becoming more widely implemented is due to the lower costs of streaming video than the cost of high power gaming hardware. It will be unlikely that an iPhone ever gets a 10TFLOP GPU in a 5W power profile (this would require 2TFLOPs/Watt efficiency, 100GFLOPs/Watt is currently the most advanced, it will probably stop around 300-400GFLOPs/Watt) and even if it did, it would be running at max load all the time. Using the cloud, it only has to handle a video stream like Netflix.
As for efficiency, a high-end game is 20GB+ in size. An hour of 1080p video at 5Mbps HEVC is ~2.5GB of bandwidth. If it's played for 10 hours with variable bitrate then it's comparable to downloading and playing locally. The bandwidth difference depends on the play time vs size of the game but the savings in processing power offer enough of a benefit.
Basically network bandwidth is getting cheaper faster than hardware (especially mobile) is improving. It's also easier from a developer point of view to debug the game as they can target a single GPU and OS instead of dozens.
Cloud gaming isn't a replacement for native though, it's complementary and mainly benefits backwards compatibility and bringing compute-heavy titles to mobile.
Funny, I'm talking about how Apple could do a subscription service, not how MS. et al are forced to implement their cloud for lack of a common mobile GPU, and when AR/VR becomes common in gaming, edge computing performance will be of benefit. Hence, why Apple could do well creating its own game engine, and rendering as much as possible on the edge. Even then, Apple wouldn't need to create video frames in the cloud; merely send a packet of metal instructions and textures for the device SOC to render the frame. Given the pace that Apple A Series is evolving, none of what I state seems unreasonable, excepting for those that want gaming rig performance, but why would these people be using mobile devices in the first place?
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.
And in the very next paragraph:
When we asked for clarification on what that meant, Apple was clear that what each App Store entry or bundle contains, be it native iOS game executables or streaming frameworks for services like Microsoft Xcloud or Google Stadia, is left to the developer.
Which means ↑↑↑ it can literally just be their streaming framework shell app and not a full executable game.
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.
With Geforce Now the player still had to buy the game separate from the service, it's not that the game was included with the price of Geforce Now. New games have to be purchased on top. Some of the publishers who removed their games would prefer people to pay again, with some there was a dispute over how the game is allowed to be delivered.
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.
Sure, some providers go the Netflix/Spotify model and the main game platform providers can include their own first party titles. What I mean is they can't offer 3rd party titles like Ubisoft's or EA's games for free. They may not be charged as a separate purchase but they are being paid somehow. Usually it's an upfront payment by the service provider and the titles are removed from the service after a certain date.
What I was saying was in the context of Apple providing a streaming service, there would have to be payment in some way for both their cloud hardware and network and the content. It doesn't have to be multiple payments, just that both content and service have to be paid for. They could do it like Apple Arcade but I suspect it would have to be more like Stadia where the payments are separate.
"Android users on Samsung devices can download a version of the app from the Samsung Galaxy Store which allows the purchase of games, subscriptions, and downloadable content directly from the app, as well as in-game store purchases. In-game purchases are not supported by other versions of the Xbox Game Pass app at this time."
Samsung made a deal with Microsoft for in-app purchase support that isn't in the Google Play version:
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 rendering and physics part is the whole reason to use the cloud, it's by far the most intensive part of the process. There's no benefit to putting the gameplay in the cloud, that's the worst of both as it introduces latency without reducing the frame processing time. Metal makes little difference vs desktop/server GPUs, they have their own APIs for efficient draw calls.
The reason cloud gaming is becoming more widely implemented is due to the lower costs of streaming video than the cost of high power gaming hardware. It will be unlikely that an iPhone ever gets a 10TFLOP GPU in a 5W power profile (this would require 2TFLOPs/Watt efficiency, 100GFLOPs/Watt is currently the most advanced, it will probably stop around 300-400GFLOPs/Watt) and even if it did, it would be running at max load all the time. Using the cloud, it only has to handle a video stream like Netflix.
As for efficiency, a high-end game is 20GB+ in size. An hour of 1080p video at 5Mbps HEVC is ~2.5GB of bandwidth. If it's played for 10 hours with variable bitrate then it's comparable to downloading and playing locally. The bandwidth difference depends on the play time vs size of the game but the savings in processing power offer enough of a benefit.
Basically network bandwidth is getting cheaper faster than hardware (especially mobile) is improving. It's also easier from a developer point of view to debug the game as they can target a single GPU and OS instead of dozens.
Cloud gaming isn't a replacement for native though, it's complementary and mainly benefits backwards compatibility and bringing compute-heavy titles to mobile.
Funny, I'm talking about how Apple could do a subscription service, not how MS. et al are forced to implement their cloud for lack of a common mobile GPU, and when AR/VR becomes common in gaming, edge computing performance will be of benefit. Hence, why Apple could do well creating its own game engine, and rendering as much as possible on the edge. Even then, Apple wouldn't need to create video frames in the cloud; merely send a packet of metal instructions and textures for the device SOC to render the frame. Given the pace that Apple A Series is evolving, none of what I state seems unreasonable, excepting for those that want gaming rig performance, but why would these people be using mobile devices in the first place?
Edge computing could potentially benefit AR/VR rendering but textures for 3D are much bigger than a video frame. In a 3D scene each object has its own texture, say 1MB per object. If you have a scene with 100 objects, it would have to send 100MB of data in a single frame (AAA games use GBs of textures), which would need a 50Gbps network. A single frame of 5Mbps 60FPS video is 10KB.
Creating video frames in the cloud is the most efficient way to deliver cloud-rendered data to a client device.
What Microsoft has tested in the past with the cloud is compute things like physics and send the compute result to the client:
These kind of things need synced scenes between client and server. If you are in a scene on the device, tell the server where everything is, it computes something and sends it back, the result of the computation has to be the same frame the client is about to show, otherwise objects will start glitching. Frame-accurate data sync is hard to do over a network, especially a mobile network. Video frames simplify everything.
For AR/VR, the client couldn't stream video to the server but potentially an edge node could precompute accurate lighting/shadows for objects being added and send the lighting down so the client can composite objects more quickly.
I think for AR/VR, they will try to do full local computing, maybe even use local hardware like surrounding Macs to do the compute. Glasses could use an iPhone for compute when mobile and a Mac when in the house. The latency would be higher using a server, you need about 90FPS for AR/VR to avoid motion sickness, that only allows for 11ms round-trip to a server.
The Ars Technica thread on this is fascinating — the initial rush of hot-take comments are overwhelmingly negative and any attempt to actually assess what Apple is doing here is downvoted to the point that the comment is hidden. But later on, more measured and thoughtful discussion becomes possible. I’m not sure I would recommend the thread, but it does show that Apple needs to do a better job of communicating anything that involves gaming — that sector is different, and Apple’s usual approach to PR must adapt. The baseline of trust Apple has earned in other areas doesn’t exist here.
My own view is that this is a wait-and-see moment — yes, it means that Google and Microsoft will have to do some extra work, possibly a lot of it, to bring Stadia and xCloud to iOS/iPadOS and tvOS [?], but no, it does not mean it won’t happen, which is what most of the aforementioned hot takes assume.
None of the negative commenters there seem to grasp that it’s entirely possible that the end result will be that the user experience in these high-end game-streaming apps will be better on Apple devices due to this integration, not worse. I mean, to me, these guidelines mostly just point to where Apple is heading with Screen Time.
The Ars Technica thread on this is fascinating — the initial rush of hot-take comments are overwhelmingly negative and any attempt to actually assess what Apple is doing here is downvoted to the point that the comment is hidden. But later on, more measured and thoughtful discussion becomes possible. I’m not sure I would recommend the thread, but it does show that Apple needs to do a better job of communicating anything that involves gaming — that sector is different, and Apple’s usual approach to PR must adapt. The baseline of trust Apple has earned in other areas doesn’t exist here.
My own view is that this is a wait-and-see moment — yes, it means that Google and Microsoft will have to do some extra work, possibly a lot of it, to bring Stadia and xCloud to iOS/iPadOS and tvOS [?], but no, it does not mean it won’t happen, which is what most of the aforementioned hot takes assume.
None of the negative commenters there seem to grasp that it’s entirely possible that the end result will be that the user experience in these high-end game-streaming apps will be better on Apple devices due to this integration, not worse. I mean, to me, these guidelines mostly just point to where Apple is heading with Screen Time.
I don't see how this "integration" you mentioned will improve the experience. If that's the case, then Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime should move to this method of integration too.
And I don't see any issues with xCloud and Screen Time, since you could control the xCloud app as you do with other apps.
I think Microsoft's xCloud sounds promising more than Google Stadia and Sony PS Now. Microsoft has the upper hand on both server end and game collection. Pre-rendered games on server end is a brilliant idea so you are not restrict to any device's hardware. Glad Apple jumps on the wagon and I think streaming games will slowly and eventually becoming the next generation of gaming..... but not for casual gamers though unless there's an on-demand package on its way.
The Ars Technica thread on this is fascinating — the initial rush of hot-take comments are overwhelmingly negative and any attempt to actually assess what Apple is doing here is downvoted to the point that the comment is hidden. But later on, more measured and thoughtful discussion becomes possible. I’m not sure I would recommend the thread, but it does show that Apple needs to do a better job of communicating anything that involves gaming — that sector is different, and Apple’s usual approach to PR must adapt. The baseline of trust Apple has earned in other areas doesn’t exist here.
My own view is that this is a wait-and-see moment — yes, it means that Google and Microsoft will have to do some extra work, possibly a lot of it, to bring Stadia and xCloud to iOS/iPadOS and tvOS [?], but no, it does not mean it won’t happen, which is what most of the aforementioned hot takes assume.
None of the negative commenters there seem to grasp that it’s entirely possible that the end result will be that the user experience in these high-end game-streaming apps will be better on Apple devices due to this integration, not worse. I mean, to me, these guidelines mostly just point to where Apple is heading with Screen Time.
I don't see how this "integration" you mentioned will improve the experience. If that's the case, then Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime should move to this method of integration too.
And I don't see any issues with xCloud and Screen Time, since you could control the xCloud app as you do with other apps.
Well, as I said, it's wait and see. Devil is in the details, etc. But however it will be implemented, comparing it to video apps is WTF unfair, and yet many people, including you, think this is a clever thing to say. Listing tens of thousands (at least) of movies and television shows in the App Store is absurd, while listing every one of (at most) hundreds of games isn't.
Nonetheless, playing along, if you set Netflix aside because they do not want Apple or anyone to have access to their viewership/popularity numbers (a position I can understand, even if I don't like it because it degrades my overall experience in tvOS), everyone else (Hulu, Amazon, Disney+, CBS, Showtime, HBO Max, Peacock) plays nice with the tv app. It makes for an improved experience, and the software is basically still just v1.0, or maybe v1.1 (at best) at this point. tv 2.0 and beyond is yet to come.
By "integration" I do mean something like this, but of course completely different since it will be about games, not film and television. It actually isn't that hard to imagine how integration can improve user experience, especially in the mobile context.
With regard to Screen Time, I'd say you are looking at where the puck is now, not where it is going to be. ["Skate to where the puck will be, not to where it is."] We'll see, but I think parental (and self-) control on a much more granular level is coming.
The Ars Technica thread on this is fascinating — the initial rush of hot-take comments are overwhelmingly negative and any attempt to actually assess what Apple is doing here is downvoted to the point that the comment is hidden. But later on, more measured and thoughtful discussion becomes possible. I’m not sure I would recommend the thread, but it does show that Apple needs to do a better job of communicating anything that involves gaming — that sector is different, and Apple’s usual approach to PR must adapt. The baseline of trust Apple has earned in other areas doesn’t exist here.
My own view is that this is a wait-and-see moment — yes, it means that Google and Microsoft will have to do some extra work, possibly a lot of it, to bring Stadia and xCloud to iOS/iPadOS and tvOS [?], but no, it does not mean it won’t happen, which is what most of the aforementioned hot takes assume.
None of the negative commenters there seem to grasp that it’s entirely possible that the end result will be that the user experience in these high-end game-streaming apps will be better on Apple devices due to this integration, not worse. I mean, to me, these guidelines mostly just point to where Apple is heading with Screen Time.
I don't see how this "integration" you mentioned will improve the experience. If that's the case, then Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime should move to this method of integration too.
And I don't see any issues with xCloud and Screen Time, since you could control the xCloud app as you do with other apps.
Well, as I said, it's wait and see. Devil is in the details, etc. But however it will be implemented, comparing it to video apps is WTF unfair, and yet many people, including you, think this is a clever thing to say. Listing tens of thousands (at least) of movies and television shows in the App Store is absurd, while listing every one of (at most) hundreds of games isn't.
Nonetheless, playing along, if you set Netflix aside because they do not want Apple or anyone to have access to their viewership/popularity numbers (a position I can understand, even if I don't like it because it degrades my overall experience in tvOS), everyone else (Hulu, Amazon, Disney+, CBS, Showtime, HBO Max, Peacock) plays nice with the tv app. It makes for an improved experience, and the software is basically still just v1.0, or maybe v1.1 (at best) at this point. tv 2.0 and beyond is yet to come.
By "integration" I do mean something like this, but of course completely different since it will be about games, not film and television. It actually isn't that hard to imagine how integration can improve user experience, especially in the mobile context.
What about the possibility of MS being right, and that the integration Apple is trying to do breaks down the xCloud experience? Isn't that a possibility, considering that MS have far more gaming experiences than Apple?
With regard to Screen Time, I'd say you are looking at where the puck is now, not where it is going to be. ["Skate to where the puck will be, not to where it is."] We'll see, but I think parental (and self-) control on a much more granular level is coming.
The thing is that you are speculating on changes for Screen Time. Maybe there are changes coming, maybe not. As a today, you could control the xCloud / Stadia app with Screen Control.
BTW, I find interesting that you talk about "skating where the puck will be". Isn't that what MS and Google are doing with xCloud and Stadia, while Apple rules try to force them to "skate where the puck is"?
The Ars Technica thread on this is fascinating — the initial rush of hot-take comments are overwhelmingly negative and any attempt to actually assess what Apple is doing here is downvoted to the point that the comment is hidden. But later on, more measured and thoughtful discussion becomes possible. I’m not sure I would recommend the thread, but it does show that Apple needs to do a better job of communicating anything that involves gaming — that sector is different, and Apple’s usual approach to PR must adapt. The baseline of trust Apple has earned in other areas doesn’t exist here.
My own view is that this is a wait-and-see moment — yes, it means that Google and Microsoft will have to do some extra work, possibly a lot of it, to bring Stadia and xCloud to iOS/iPadOS and tvOS [?], but no, it does not mean it won’t happen, which is what most of the aforementioned hot takes assume.
None of the negative commenters there seem to grasp that it’s entirely possible that the end result will be that the user experience in these high-end game-streaming apps will be better on Apple devices due to this integration, not worse. I mean, to me, these guidelines mostly just point to where Apple is heading with Screen Time.
Apple needs to do better job of communicating MANY things.
Perhaps the most egregious example was when the slowed down iphone 6's when the battery was weak in order to prevent an unexpected full shut down (and it couldn't be restarted without an AC Charger). They didn't communicate well and the world thought they were trying to force people to buy new phones! Instead, they were trying to prevent an unsafe situation.
The Ars Technica thread on this is fascinating — the initial rush of hot-take comments are overwhelmingly negative and any attempt to actually assess what Apple is doing here is downvoted to the point that the comment is hidden. But later on, more measured and thoughtful discussion becomes possible. I’m not sure I would recommend the thread, but it does show that Apple needs to do a better job of communicating anything that involves gaming — that sector is different, and Apple’s usual approach to PR must adapt. The baseline of trust Apple has earned in other areas doesn’t exist here.
My own view is that this is a wait-and-see moment — yes, it means that Google and Microsoft will have to do some extra work, possibly a lot of it, to bring Stadia and xCloud to iOS/iPadOS and tvOS [?], but no, it does not mean it won’t happen, which is what most of the aforementioned hot takes assume.
None of the negative commenters there seem to grasp that it’s entirely possible that the end result will be that the user experience in these high-end game-streaming apps will be better on Apple devices due to this integration, not worse. I mean, to me, these guidelines mostly just point to where Apple is heading with Screen Time.
I don't see how this "integration" you mentioned will improve the experience. If that's the case, then Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime should move to this method of integration too.
And I don't see any issues with xCloud and Screen Time, since you could control the xCloud app as you do with other apps.
Well, as I said, it's wait and see. Devil is in the details, etc. But however it will be implemented, comparing it to video apps is WTF unfair, and yet many people, including you, think this is a clever thing to say. Listing tens of thousands (at least) of movies and television shows in the App Store is absurd, while listing every one of (at most) hundreds of games isn't.
Nonetheless, playing along, if you set Netflix aside because they do not want Apple or anyone to have access to their viewership/popularity numbers (a position I can understand, even if I don't like it because it degrades my overall experience in tvOS), everyone else (Hulu, Amazon, Disney+, CBS, Showtime, HBO Max, Peacock) plays nice with the tv app. It makes for an improved experience, and the software is basically still just v1.0, or maybe v1.1 (at best) at this point. tv 2.0 and beyond is yet to come.
By "integration" I do mean something like this, but of course completely different since it will be about games, not film and television. It actually isn't that hard to imagine how integration can improve user experience, especially in the mobile context.
What about the possibility of MS being right, and that the integration Apple is trying to do breaks down the xCloud experience? Isn't that a possibility, considering that MS have far more gaming experiences than Apple?
With regard to Screen Time, I'd say you are looking at where the puck is now, not where it is going to be. ["Skate to where the puck will be, not to where it is."] We'll see, but I think parental (and self-) control on a much more granular level is coming.
The thing is that you are speculating on changes for Screen Time. Maybe there are changes coming, maybe not. As a today, you could control the xCloud / Stadia app with Screen Control.
BTW, I find interesting that you talk about "skating where the puck will be". Isn't that what MS and Google are doing with xCloud and Stadia, while Apple rules try to force them to "skate where the puck is"?
I didn't say that there is no possibility that MS is correct. Anyhow, this isn't that thread. I haven't actually read that -- did not notice it until just now. This is the thread dedicated to guessing what Apple is doing.
But I do think MS is making stuff up (because they are way smarter than that) -- like promoting the assumption that once you are inside the xCloud or Stadia apps, everything will be different when in fact it will very likely be the same, and you will be able use it as if the games were not listed in the App Store. This is how the tv app precedent works, after all. You can use all the individual streaming apps if you want, but there's also an aggregator app, called "tv" ...
My thoughts about why Microsoft has said whatever they said is because they want a Netflix exception. They may get it, too -- just as Sony could if they wanted to. Stadia is probably SOL, though, since Google doesn't sell gaming hardware. And yes, that's just my own thinking. The first thing I was taught in graduate school was that's easy to poke holes in other people's arguments. It's far harder to come up with your own.
On Screen Time -- of course I'm speculating!? Again, WTF? This is an Internet forum. I am a Screen Time user, I use it to help keep things under control for a 22-year old autistic person who was dumped on my doorstep two years ago. So I'm intimately familiar with how it works (and doesn't work), and that experience gives me some insight where that particular puck might be headed. But no, I don't work for Apple and I don't know anything other than what I think.
With regard to the gaming puck, put yourself in Apple's shoes -- pretty soon there will multiple streaming apps for gaming on iOS/iPadOS/tvOS, not to mention macOS. It's not a huge leap to imagine that Apple will want users to have an aggregator similar to what they have begun to do with tv. I'll leave it to others to try to imagine what that might look like. It's not easy, but I guarantee you there are smart, creative people at Apple working on it.
The Ars Technica thread on this is fascinating — the initial rush of hot-take comments are overwhelmingly negative and any attempt to actually assess what Apple is doing here is downvoted to the point that the comment is hidden. But later on, more measured and thoughtful discussion becomes possible. I’m not sure I would recommend the thread, but it does show that Apple needs to do a better job of communicating anything that involves gaming — that sector is different, and Apple’s usual approach to PR must adapt. The baseline of trust Apple has earned in other areas doesn’t exist here.
My own view is that this is a wait-and-see moment — yes, it means that Google and Microsoft will have to do some extra work, possibly a lot of it, to bring Stadia and xCloud to iOS/iPadOS and tvOS [?], but no, it does not mean it won’t happen, which is what most of the aforementioned hot takes assume.
None of the negative commenters there seem to grasp that it’s entirely possible that the end result will be that the user experience in these high-end game-streaming apps will be better on Apple devices due to this integration, not worse. I mean, to me, these guidelines mostly just point to where Apple is heading with Screen Time.
I don't see how this "integration" you mentioned will improve the experience. If that's the case, then Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime should move to this method of integration too.
And I don't see any issues with xCloud and Screen Time, since you could control the xCloud app as you do with other apps.
Well, as I said, it's wait and see. Devil is in the details, etc. But however it will be implemented, comparing it to video apps is WTF unfair, and yet many people, including you, think this is a clever thing to say. Listing tens of thousands (at least) of movies and television shows in the App Store is absurd, while listing every one of (at most) hundreds of games isn't.
Nonetheless, playing along, if you set Netflix aside because they do not want Apple or anyone to have access to their viewership/popularity numbers (a position I can understand, even if I don't like it because it degrades my overall experience in tvOS), everyone else (Hulu, Amazon, Disney+, CBS, Showtime, HBO Max, Peacock) plays nice with the tv app. It makes for an improved experience, and the software is basically still just v1.0, or maybe v1.1 (at best) at this point. tv 2.0 and beyond is yet to come.
By "integration" I do mean something like this, but of course completely different since it will be about games, not film and television. It actually isn't that hard to imagine how integration can improve user experience, especially in the mobile context.
What about the possibility of MS being right, and that the integration Apple is trying to do breaks down the xCloud experience? Isn't that a possibility, considering that MS have far more gaming experiences than Apple?
With regard to Screen Time, I'd say you are looking at where the puck is now, not where it is going to be. ["Skate to where the puck will be, not to where it is."] We'll see, but I think parental (and self-) control on a much more granular level is coming.
The thing is that you are speculating on changes for Screen Time. Maybe there are changes coming, maybe not. As a today, you could control the xCloud / Stadia app with Screen Control.
BTW, I find interesting that you talk about "skating where the puck will be". Isn't that what MS and Google are doing with xCloud and Stadia, while Apple rules try to force them to "skate where the puck is"?
I didn't say that there is no possibility that MS is correct. Anyhow, this isn't that thread. I haven't actually read that -- did not notice it until just now. This is the thread dedicated to guessing what Apple is doing.
But I do think MS is making stuff up (because they are way smarter than that) -- like promoting the assumption that once you are inside the xCloud or Stadia apps, everything will be different when in fact it will very likely be the same, and you will be able use it as if the games were not listed in the App Store. This is how the tv app precedent works, after all. You can use all the individual streaming apps if you want, but there's also an aggregator app, called "tv" ...
My post included xCloud because it was mentioned in one of the threads. And I use a rhetoric question to explain my point, and not because you said that MS is or isn't correct.
My thoughts about why Microsoft has said whatever they said is because they want a Netflix exception. They may get it, too -- just as Sony could if they wanted to. Stadia is probably SOL, though, since Google doesn't sell gaming hardware. And yes, that's just my own thinking. The first thing I was taught in graduate school was that's easy to poke holes in other people's arguments. It's far harder to come up with your own.
On Screen Time -- of course I'm speculating!? Again, WTF? This is an Internet forum. I am a Screen Time user, I use it to help keep things under control for a 22-year old autistic person who was dumped on my doorstep two years ago. So I'm intimately familiar with how it works (and doesn't work), and that experience gives me some insight where that particular puck might be headed. But no, I don't work for Apple and I don't know anything other than what I think.
With regard to the gaming puck, put yourself in Apple's shoes -- pretty soon there will multiple streaming apps for gaming on iOS/iPadOS/tvOS, not to mention macOS. It's not a huge leap to imagine that Apple will want users to have an aggregator similar to what they have begun to do with tv. I'll leave it to others to try to imagine what that might look like. It's not easy, but I guarantee you there are smart, creative people at Apple working on it.
What you said maybe it's true. The thing is that while Apple decides how to do it, we, Apple customers, are missing from a very good gaming service.
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.
With Geforce Now the player still had to buy the game separate from the service, it's not that the game was included with the price of Geforce Now. New games have to be purchased on top. Some of the publishers who removed their games would prefer people to pay again, with some there was a dispute over how the game is allowed to be delivered.
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.
Sure, some providers go the Netflix/Spotify model and the main game platform providers can include their own first party titles. What I mean is they can't offer 3rd party titles like Ubisoft's or EA's games for free. They may not be charged as a separate purchase but they are being paid somehow. Usually it's an upfront payment by the service provider and the titles are removed from the service after a certain date.
What I was saying was in the context of Apple providing a streaming service, there would have to be payment in some way for both their cloud hardware and network and the content. It doesn't have to be multiple payments, just that both content and service have to be paid for. They could do it like Apple Arcade but I suspect it would have to be more like Stadia where the payments are separate.
"Android users on Samsung devices can download a version of the app from the Samsung Galaxy Store which allows the purchase of games, subscriptions, and downloadable content directly from the app, as well as in-game store purchases. In-game purchases are not supported by other versions of the Xbox Game Pass app at this time."
Samsung made a deal with Microsoft for in-app purchase support that isn't in the Google Play version:
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 rendering and physics part is the whole reason to use the cloud, it's by far the most intensive part of the process. There's no benefit to putting the gameplay in the cloud, that's the worst of both as it introduces latency without reducing the frame processing time. Metal makes little difference vs desktop/server GPUs, they have their own APIs for efficient draw calls.
The reason cloud gaming is becoming more widely implemented is due to the lower costs of streaming video than the cost of high power gaming hardware. It will be unlikely that an iPhone ever gets a 10TFLOP GPU in a 5W power profile (this would require 2TFLOPs/Watt efficiency, 100GFLOPs/Watt is currently the most advanced, it will probably stop around 300-400GFLOPs/Watt) and even if it did, it would be running at max load all the time. Using the cloud, it only has to handle a video stream like Netflix.
As for efficiency, a high-end game is 20GB+ in size. An hour of 1080p video at 5Mbps HEVC is ~2.5GB of bandwidth. If it's played for 10 hours with variable bitrate then it's comparable to downloading and playing locally. The bandwidth difference depends on the play time vs size of the game but the savings in processing power offer enough of a benefit.
Basically network bandwidth is getting cheaper faster than hardware (especially mobile) is improving. It's also easier from a developer point of view to debug the game as they can target a single GPU and OS instead of dozens.
Cloud gaming isn't a replacement for native though, it's complementary and mainly benefits backwards compatibility and bringing compute-heavy titles to mobile.
Funny, I'm talking about how Apple could do a subscription service, not how MS. et al are forced to implement their cloud for lack of a common mobile GPU, and when AR/VR becomes common in gaming, edge computing performance will be of benefit. Hence, why Apple could do well creating its own game engine, and rendering as much as possible on the edge. Even then, Apple wouldn't need to create video frames in the cloud; merely send a packet of metal instructions and textures for the device SOC to render the frame. Given the pace that Apple A Series is evolving, none of what I state seems unreasonable, excepting for those that want gaming rig performance, but why would these people be using mobile devices in the first place?
Edge computing could potentially benefit AR/VR rendering but textures for 3D are much bigger than a video frame. In a 3D scene each object has its own texture, say 1MB per object. If you have a scene with 100 objects, it would have to send 100MB of data in a single frame (AAA games use GBs of textures), which would need a 50Gbps network. A single frame of 5Mbps 60FPS video is 10KB.
Creating video frames in the cloud is the most efficient way to deliver cloud-rendered data to a client device.
What Microsoft has tested in the past with the cloud is compute things like physics and send the compute result to the client:
These kind of things need synced scenes between client and server. If you are in a scene on the device, tell the server where everything is, it computes something and sends it back, the result of the computation has to be the same frame the client is about to show, otherwise objects will start glitching. Frame-accurate data sync is hard to do over a network, especially a mobile network. Video frames simplify everything.
For AR/VR, the client couldn't stream video to the server but potentially an edge node could precompute accurate lighting/shadows for objects being added and send the lighting down so the client can composite objects more quickly.
I think for AR/VR, they will try to do full local computing, maybe even use local hardware like surrounding Macs to do the compute. Glasses could use an iPhone for compute when mobile and a Mac when in the house. The latency would be higher using a server, you need about 90FPS for AR/VR to avoid motion sickness, that only allows for 11ms round-trip to a server.
I understand where you are coming from, though I'm not seeing Apple doing what MS, et al, are doing with cloud gaming, so I'll link to this from Jean Louis Gassee;
Jean Louis thinks goggles, not glasses. would be Apple's entry, and for AR/VR gaming.
“Apple Goggles” would accentuate the company’s involvement in gaming as currently seen in the decent but unremarkable Apple Arcade. If Apple could untether their Goggles from the gaming rig, one could imagine an exciting future for the Apple Arcade service and its game developers — plus another revenue stream for the company. Once the battery size challenge is dealt with, a powerful Apple Silicon chip can be harnessed to the sensing and imaging tasks required to provide first-rate and untethered hallucinations. A gaming rig that’s seemingly inside your head."
Comments
Sure, some providers go the Netflix/Spotify model and the main game platform providers can include their own first party titles. What I mean is they can't offer 3rd party titles like Ubisoft's or EA's games for free. They may not be charged as a separate purchase but they are being paid somehow. Usually it's an upfront payment by the service provider and the titles are removed from the service after a certain date.
What I was saying was in the context of Apple providing a streaming service, there would have to be payment in some way for both their cloud hardware and network and the content. It doesn't have to be multiple payments, just that both content and service have to be paid for. They could do it like Apple Arcade but I suspect it would have to be more like Stadia where the payments are separate.
Another thing is how to handle in-app purchases:
https://support.xbox.com/help/subscriptions-billing/manage-subscriptions/xbox-game-pass-mobile-intro
"Android users on Samsung devices can download a version of the app from the Samsung Galaxy Store which allows the purchase of games, subscriptions, and downloadable content directly from the app, as well as in-game store purchases. In-game purchases are not supported by other versions of the Xbox Game Pass app at this time."
Samsung made a deal with Microsoft for in-app purchase support that isn't in the Google Play version:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/5/21354079/microsoft-samsung-xbox-game-pass-partnership-android-galaxy-note-20
The rendering and physics part is the whole reason to use the cloud, it's by far the most intensive part of the process. There's no benefit to putting the gameplay in the cloud, that's the worst of both as it introduces latency without reducing the frame processing time. Metal makes little difference vs desktop/server GPUs, they have their own APIs for efficient draw calls.
The reason cloud gaming is becoming more widely implemented is due to the lower costs of streaming video than the cost of high power gaming hardware. It will be unlikely that an iPhone ever gets a 10TFLOP GPU in a 5W power profile (this would require 2TFLOPs/Watt efficiency, 100GFLOPs/Watt is currently the most advanced, it will probably stop around 300-400GFLOPs/Watt) and even if it did, it would be running at max load all the time. Using the cloud, it only has to handle a video stream like Netflix.
As for efficiency, a high-end game is 20GB+ in size. An hour of 1080p video at 5Mbps HEVC is ~2.5GB of bandwidth. If it's played for 10 hours with variable bitrate then it's comparable to downloading and playing locally. The bandwidth difference depends on the play time vs size of the game but the savings in processing power offer enough of a benefit.
Basically network bandwidth is getting cheaper faster than hardware (especially mobile) is improving. It's also easier from a developer point of view to debug the game as they can target a single GPU and OS instead of dozens.
Cloud gaming isn't a replacement for native though, it's complementary and mainly benefits backwards compatibility and bringing compute-heavy titles to mobile.
Which means ↑↑↑ it can literally just be their streaming framework shell app and not a full executable game.
Creating video frames in the cloud is the most efficient way to deliver cloud-rendered data to a client device.
What Microsoft has tested in the past with the cloud is compute things like physics and send the compute result to the client:
These kind of things need synced scenes between client and server. If you are in a scene on the device, tell the server where everything is, it computes something and sends it back, the result of the computation has to be the same frame the client is about to show, otherwise objects will start glitching. Frame-accurate data sync is hard to do over a network, especially a mobile network. Video frames simplify everything.
For AR/VR, the client couldn't stream video to the server but potentially an edge node could precompute accurate lighting/shadows for objects being added and send the lighting down so the client can composite objects more quickly.
I think for AR/VR, they will try to do full local computing, maybe even use local hardware like surrounding Macs to do the compute. Glasses could use an iPhone for compute when mobile and a Mac when in the house. The latency would be higher using a server, you need about 90FPS for AR/VR to avoid motion sickness, that only allows for 11ms round-trip to a server.
My own view is that this is a wait-and-see moment — yes, it means that Google and Microsoft will have to do some extra work, possibly a lot of it, to bring Stadia and xCloud to iOS/iPadOS and tvOS [?], but no, it does not mean it won’t happen, which is what most of the aforementioned hot takes assume.
And I don't see any issues with xCloud and Screen Time, since you could control the xCloud app as you do with other apps.
Nonetheless, playing along, if you set Netflix aside because they do not want Apple or anyone to have access to their viewership/popularity numbers (a position I can understand, even if I don't like it because it degrades my overall experience in tvOS), everyone else (Hulu, Amazon, Disney+, CBS, Showtime, HBO Max, Peacock) plays nice with the tv app. It makes for an improved experience, and the software is basically still just v1.0, or maybe v1.1 (at best) at this point. tv 2.0 and beyond is yet to come.
By "integration" I do mean something like this, but of course completely different since it will be about games, not film and television. It actually isn't that hard to imagine how integration can improve user experience, especially in the mobile context.
With regard to Screen Time, I'd say you are looking at where the puck is now, not where it is going to be. ["Skate to where the puck will be, not to where it is."] We'll see, but I think parental (and self-) control on a much more granular level is coming.
The thing is that you are speculating on changes for Screen Time. Maybe there are changes coming, maybe not. As a today, you could control the xCloud / Stadia app with Screen Control.
BTW, I find interesting that you talk about "skating where the puck will be". Isn't that what MS and Google are doing with xCloud and Stadia, while Apple rules try to force them to "skate where the puck is"?
But I do think MS is making stuff up (because they are way smarter than that) -- like promoting the assumption that once you are inside the xCloud or Stadia apps, everything will be different when in fact it will very likely be the same, and you will be able use it as if the games were not listed in the App Store. This is how the tv app precedent works, after all. You can use all the individual streaming apps if you want, but there's also an aggregator app, called "tv" ...
My thoughts about why Microsoft has said whatever they said is because they want a Netflix exception. They may get it, too -- just as Sony could if they wanted to. Stadia is probably SOL, though, since Google doesn't sell gaming hardware. And yes, that's just my own thinking. The first thing I was taught in graduate school was that's easy to poke holes in other people's arguments. It's far harder to come up with your own.
On Screen Time -- of course I'm speculating!? Again, WTF? This is an Internet forum. I am a Screen Time user, I use it to help keep things under control for a 22-year old autistic person who was dumped on my doorstep two years ago. So I'm intimately familiar with how it works (and doesn't work), and that experience gives me some insight where that particular puck might be headed. But no, I don't work for Apple and I don't know anything other than what I think.
With regard to the gaming puck, put yourself in Apple's shoes -- pretty soon there will multiple streaming apps for gaming on iOS/iPadOS/tvOS, not to mention macOS. It's not a huge leap to imagine that Apple will want users to have an aggregator similar to what they have begun to do with tv. I'll leave it to others to try to imagine what that might look like. It's not easy, but I guarantee you there are smart, creative people at Apple working on it.
If you noticed, I agree with you when I said about Screen Time that "maybe there are changes coming, maybe not." I could see MS using Screen Time controlling the xCloud App, considering they have something similar for the XBox console. I'm sure they know the importance of controlling game time, as it's in your case.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028244/microsoft-account-set-screen-time-limits-on-your-kids-devices
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/for-everyone/responsible-gaming
What you said maybe it's true. The thing is that while Apple decides how to do it, we, Apple customers, are missing from a very good gaming service.
https://mondaynote.com/the-fantastic-apple-glasses-again-648ebf24b3b2
Jean Louis thinks goggles, not glasses. would be Apple's entry, and for AR/VR gaming.
“Apple Goggles” would accentuate the company’s involvement in gaming as currently seen in the decent but unremarkable Apple Arcade. If Apple could untether their Goggles from the gaming rig, one could imagine an exciting future for the Apple Arcade service and its game developers — plus another revenue stream for the company. Once the battery size challenge is dealt with, a powerful Apple Silicon chip can be harnessed to the sensing and imaging tasks required to provide first-rate and untethered hallucinations. A gaming rig that’s seemingly inside your head."