 This is Game Chat 1 episode 131, Epic Moves. Nice moves. Chat with Buona, welcome to the show. Now here's your host Buona McCall with all the gaming news of this week. By the way, that's me. Greetings, folks, and welcome to episode 131 of Game Chat 1. We've got a great show lined up for you. Tons of news. This is one of those episodes where I just have issues because I think about 400 stories came out of the GDC or the Game Developers Conference alone. So I apologize in advance if I skip a few stories from before then, because I just got tired of looking. I'm like, I'm going to talk about that. I want to talk about this. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about this. I want to talk about Game Chat 1 episode 129. And I apologize for missing last week's episode, but we had a good excuse. We got a brand new PC. Well, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. We got a brand new PC and we set it up. So that Wednesday that I was supposed to record Game Chat with Buona was spent pretty much the entire day, set up the new PC, get the software installed. But I'm happy to say that we got it all installed and we're ready to give you another great show with Game Chat. Buona, Twitch.tv slash Buona live. People watching over there. Buona.tv. We got a great show. Let's go. If our first story, we're going to talk about the biggest story of the day of the hour of the evening. Google has made their play and then Google Play. Oh, gosh, I'm like a minute into the show and I got puns already. Google has made their play. They have introduced their gaming service that has been rumored for quite some time. It's called Google Stadia. Stadia, I'm not making this up. Google Stadia and it is a gaming streaming service. Yes, I can hear you groaning because it has followed the likes of game services like on live and even most recently, Sony picked up some stuff and they got Sony PlayStation now and we got Nvidia GeForce now and all these different services that promise you the wonders of gaming without having to hard have the hardware. All you need is a good internet connection and wait a minute, I need a good internet connection? What? What if I don't have, what if I'm in America and I don't have a good America in America, in America? I have terrible internet. Well, that's tough. Well, anyway, Google is trying to differentiate themselves. I'm very skeptical as you can probably hear, but Google is trying to differentiate themselves from everybody else. According to the article over on Engadget.com, it says they're going to be powered by servers running custom CPUs and AMD GPUs capable of 10.7 teraflops. That's very fast if you don't know what teraflops are. It's on par with the Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti, which is very good. They claim that the Stadia will support up to 4K HDR at 60 frames per second, which is really good. And they're going to be looking at 8K, 120 frames per second. And they're also going to be using multiple servers and GPU seamlessly to account for a lot of the games that are out there that are demanding. So there's going to be some scaling going on. I mean, we've heard this before, right? This is what online promise. This is what everybody is like. We can dynamically scale. We have all this hardware. You don't have to worry about hardware. And they say you don't have to worry about specs anymore. But the biggest issue, and I'm glad this article addresses this, is because it's not necessarily that has been an issue for streaming gaming that has really caused it to sputter. It has been just the internet component because that's one thing that Google has a hard time controlling. They have a hard time controlling your internet. They have a hard time controlling when your internet starts to act up, which it will. They have a hard time controlling when your ISP will start throttling you or they have a hard time determining if you have a bandwidth cap or not. So a lot of these things that come up when it comes to streaming gaming is outside of the control of the provider, which is why you could do everything perfect, but it still will flop. That's kind of why I am a little bit, a little bit pessimistic about this. But there's one thing about this. One thing about this that's just giving me a little bit of a hope. And it's that they're going to be using a Wi-Fi controller. They're going to be trying something different because input lag and inputs can be a big issue. Just input stability, input lag, input consistency can be a big issue. They're going to be using a Wi-Fi connected controller which will directly communicate with the server, thereby giving you probably a much more accurate representation of inputs versus the traditional system where you have to do inputs locally. The input information has a travel to the server and back and there's some acknowledgement that goes on, some handshaking. That can create some input delay. To have a direct connected controller can probably alleviate some of that input lag. Some of it. I'm not going to say all of it, some of it. But I said the C word. It's a controller. What if I don't want to play with a controller? Well, all bets are off. There you go, GG, game over. I don't know if they're going to give me a Wi-Fi connected keyboard or a mouse, I don't know. But I'm very, very pessimistic about this. I don't expect this to succeed. I'm going to be straight up with you. I think Google's got their head in the right place. I think they've got a lot of cool things happening. They've got a really fast spin up. They say you'll be playing the game within five minutes. You don't have to download anything. You'll be able to play on anything. But that's what these services have been promising them for years. It's like VR all over again. It's like, what are you going to do to make VR stand out from what it did back in the 80s? So far, I don't think anybody's really done anything. Because VR is still stuck in niche. And I think that's the way this is going to go. Again, they have to be able to control the internet situation. I think I put in my discord when it came out. I said, unless they're going to market this to somewhere outside of the United States, I don't see it succeeding. Because everybody else has better internet than us. Our internet is terrible. It's notoriously terrible across the country. Not just rural areas, but everywhere. I mean, we have really stringent rules from ISPs. They like the throttle list. They like the bottleneck list. They put bandwidth limitations all over us. So to have something like this that claims to be 4K HDR or 60 FPS, that's going to be quite a bit of data. And nobody's going to want to do that freely. They're going to want you to pay more, especially if it's a competing service like Google. So check the story out, guys. Overinengadget.com, they got the details about it. I'm very skeptical. This was Google's big thing. And I'm just like, are you kidding me? You're going to do online? You're going to do PlayStation now? You're going to do GeForce? The GeForce now, whatever it's called. You're going to do that. And we're supposed to believe that you're going to solve all the internet issues. It's going to be a wait and see moment. But all signs point to, well, here we go again. Another service by Google that's going to flop before it even gets out of the gate. Check it out, guys. Overinengadget.com, they got the details. And for our next story, we're going to talk about more streaming gaming. This time it came from Valve. And this was pre-announced before GDC. Steam link anywhere, beta. It's going to take your PC game streaming on the road according to this article over on engadget.com. Well, we knew that the Steam link boxes, you remember those boxes that Valve was trying to give away? They were just like, oh my gosh, we'll even pay for shipping. Just take it. OK, we'll charge you $5. And you pay, OK, don't pay any shipping. We pay $5. We'll give you a Steam link. They were trying to give away these boxes, which essentially were hardware equivalents of Steam link or Steam streaming, which allowed you to stream your Steam library to another TV or another screen in your house. And they couldn't give away. People just weren't taking them. And the hardware has been since discontinued. So this announcement in light of the GDC came on, I believe, on what day it was at. That was the 14th, which was last Thursday. So it was almost a full week ahead of time. This Steam link beta is going to be online. And the good thing is that it doesn't require you to have anything installed except for the app. So it's going to be competing with that previous story I just talked about with the Google Stadia. With the Google Stadia, you're not going to have anything to be installed. That's one of the selling points. And I think the Steam link hardware was kind of a hurdle. But now all you have to do is have another computer, or Android device, or Android TV set-top box. But you won't be able to use it on Apple because they're blocking the Steam app. But anyway, if you got anything other than Apple, you'll be able to stream your Steam game to that particular device. It could be a mobile phone. It could be a TV. It could be whatever you want. Now, they haven't gone into too much detail what the quality is like Google did. They're like 4K HDR, 60 FPS, blah, blah, blah, blah. But essentially, this is going to take what we had in the Steam link hardware device or hardware box, and they're going to shove it in the cloud in that mystical place in the sky where all hardware goes that you don't need to worry about it. That thing that they advertise is never being bad, or never going down. That has probably had more failures since the history of mankind, since it came out. I'm sorry. That was a little bit of a sandbox. But all they require is that you need to have a good upload speed from your host computer and a strong network connection on the device that you're playing on. So I don't think I'll use this. I mean, I think the biggest thing I'll use it for is maybe an update. Even then, I mean, I wouldn't use it. A lot of the games that I play require keyboard and mouse. I can't really do anything with a mobile device. Maybe if I'm on a remote computer in a hotel and I just got to play Warframe or something. Log in and get my, yeah, that's something. I can log in and get my daily reward on Warframe or go into Elite Dangerous and maybe check something out or accept somebody to decline. They're like little one-off things. But I can't really see myself doing a long gaming session streaming just given the nature of the internet. And we talked about this in the previous story. It's just the networks are so unpredictable. That's going to be the thing that Google, that Steam and anybody, nobody can control. And when you're talking about streaming, gaming service, once again, that's going to be the biggest issue. It's going to be your internet connection and it's the most unpredictable. So how in the world can you justify investing in something like this? I don't know why Steam's doing it. I don't know why PlayStation is doing it. I don't know why GeForce and video is doing it. I don't know why everybody's trying to go this route because they're assuming that everybody's got their fiber connection like they do. You don't understand, you go to these people houses, they still got DSL, man, they still got dial-up. People are using satellite. People are paying for 20 up, 20 down with Comcast and they're getting one up and one down. And they don't even know it. So you're going to have a lot of complaints. You're going to have a lot of issues surrounding the network connection itself. These support people, poor support people with Steam and Valve and everywhere else that's going to be doing this, Google, Sony, all these people that are going to have these services. I feel sorry for your support because they're going to be troubleshooting ISP issues the entire time. Well, I tried to connect and play Dota 2 and I got in the queue and everything and everybody got mad at me because I was lagging and I clicked and I tried to move and I was support, I was support. So I had to go in, I had to put down some boards and I got the courier and all of a sudden I died and then I didn't know and I was using your service and it said everything was fine. But all of a sudden I started dropping packets. Sir, can you go into your command prompt and type in the following IP config slash renew all? Sir, sir, are you still there? Call disconnected because you just reset the freaking internet. I don't know. It's going to be crazy to see what people do, but I don't think it's going to take off. I'm very pessimistic. I got my cane out, I got my old, my old get off my lawn face out. I don't think it's going to take off and we're going to see how much money they waste before they cancel this, especially with Google. You know how Google does, man. They cancel things like it's nothing. So I wonder whose project this was to get promoted at Google and whose project this was at Valve. A lot of people leave in Valve too. I don't know what's going on over there. Gaming is great, guys. Don't let Buona deter you. Games are fun. Satisfactory just came out. Go play that. Check it out, guys. Don't forget to catch it.com. They got the details. Steam is going to be doing a Steam link anywhere and Satisfactory is on Epic Store. And for our next story, we're going to talk about Epic Games. Speaking of Epic Games, we're going to talk about Epic Games and they're making a big splash over at GDC as well. A lot of things have been announced by them. We're going to talk about a couple today, but I think these are the two biggest things. The first one is their online service. Epic Games, according to the article, over on venturebeat.com, Epic Games makes online services available for free to game developers. Now, when you read that headline, you're probably thinking, oh yeah, they're probably going to give it to all the people who signed up for exclusivity or who are in the Epic Games store. Apparently not. This quote from Mr. Timmy Boy says, you can use our Epic online services on any platform across any store for free, including competing stores. You have no obligation to ship on our store. Everything works. You can put games from any engine on our store and use any services you like. Developers are free to mix and match and choose. He was very careful with his words there. So I find it interesting, I find it interesting that they're welcoming developers from competing stores to use something and not be required to use the Epic Games store or the Epic store or whatever you want to call it. And this goes to a point about this whole Epic versus Steam thing. It's a big, big brouhaha right now in the gaming community. Lots of people are anti-Epic for whatever reason. It could be Fortnite. It could be Tim Sweeney. It could be they love Steam so much. I don't know the motivations, but they just hate Epic. Everything they're doing. They're trying to stop them. There's smear campaigns going on. People are just going up in arms about every little thing. They're dissecting the program, seeing what it does, using wiresharks, sniffing packets. See what it's like. They're really trying to find some dirt on Epic. But here's the thing. Here's the thing that I want to get clear. And I've been saying it for a long time. Epic doesn't care about you right now. They don't care about you as the end user. Epic is going after the developers. Since they came out with this game store, everything has been tailored towards the developers. Number one, the thing about the licensing with the Unreal Engine, how you get a discount with that. Number two, how you get more royalties from the developer. This has nothing to do with us. This has nothing to do with the gamer. This is all developer. Now look at this thing now that they're talking about. That you get to use all the online services for free. They're catering towards developers. There's nothing for us. And the current store and the current client is pretty bare right now, that faith is going to get stuff added to it. But right now, if you look very, very closely, Epic is focusing on the developer and the developer teams. All developer teams that have joined the Epic Store have been singing praises about how well they've been treated, the deals that they have, and how it's just awesome that this deal actually exists. It's a too good to be true type of situation, which means it probably is too good to be true. So this is just one example of, or another example, I should say, of Epic really catering towards developers and not necessarily trying to get you, because I think they're smart enough to realize that if the developers are over there, you will follow them. Despite what some of the Steam fanboys may say, or even the Epic Game Store fanboys may say, if the developer moves over to the Epic Game Store, a lot of people are gonna move, they're gonna complain about it, but they'll go over there and buy it. I think Epic realizes that, no matter how bad or good the story is, because despite what people may say, when it comes to apples, comparing apples to apples with the Steam Store and the Epic Store and features and friends and reviews and all this stuff and search functionality and duplicate hiding, that stuff doesn't mean anything at the end of the day. It matters not. The thing that matters the most is the actual games themselves. That's why you go to Steam and you buy a game. You don't go to Steam to buy a game to talk to your friends or to go to the forums or to do all these things that are missing from it. No, you're going to buy the actual game and play it. So I think Epic realizes that you will follow the game if you actually really wanna play it. You will go there. There's nothing preventing you from going there. You may go on Reddit and be like, eh, eh, eh, it's Tim Sweeney's The Devil. Nah, all hell gave it, nah, see? I don't know why I did that, but you might say that online, but at the end of the day, you're gonna go over there and buy a satisfactory. You're gonna go over there and buy the division too, or you might go do you play, I don't know. You're gonna follow the game. And I think Epic realizes that they're pushing that, they're stressing that, and the developers are appreciating the way they're being treated by Epic, and they're showing it by moving over. And we gotta follow up story coming up about some more studios that you probably would not have guessed are going to the Epic store. Shocked me to death. Check it out, guys. Overonvicturebeat.com, they got the details. Epic is allowing developers to use their online services for free no matter what store or what game engine they are using. Check it out. The next story talks about Epic as well. Yes, I previewed that the previous story. Are you paying attention? You're probably not. Welcome back. The next story we'll talk about is a rock, paper, shotgun. And this kind of shocked me because these are titles that I get asked on my Twitch stream at twitch.tv slash wanna. I get asked, hey, boy, do you think this is coming to PC? I'm like, nah, man. Nah, this game's not coming to PC. It's just like, this is a console exclusive. It'll be there till the end of time. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah. Heavy Rain, Beyond Two Souls, and Detroit Becoming Human are coming to the PC via the Epic Game Store. These are three Juggernaut titles from, gosh, Indigo Prophecy. I forgot the name of the studio. From Indigo Prophecy, which have pretty much been Sony staples. Do you hear that? Heavy Rain, which was from 2010. That's an old one, but Beyond Two Souls and Detroit Becoming Human. I can't say human. Becoming human. Yes, I am huming. Hear me roar. Quantic, chat. Indigo Prophecy Studio has been lured back to Epic Game Store exclusivity. Quantic's three most recent games are coming to PC this year, but only Epic's exclusive Hugging Store. Today at GDC, they announced they've been persuaded big games including the outer worlds, including the outer worlds, switch to Epic exclusivity as well. This is really nice. This is insane, because a lot of times, a lot of PC gaming master race people, they're like, er, yes, we don't need all those console games. We have Half-Life or we have Counter-Strike, but deep down the side, they look into their heart of hearts and they go, I wish I could play Detroit Becoming Human. I wish I could play Heavy Rain Man. I wish I could play Beyond Two Souls, so they go and buy a PlayStation. They don't tell nobody. They have it in the corner and they go in the closet and they play it. They go, wow, this game is actually pretty good. I better not let my PC master race brother and see me right now. It's some guilty pleasure. These games are actually pretty good. I haven't played Beyond Two Souls. I haven't played Detroit Becoming Human. Huming, Detroit Becoming Huming, but it is something that I definitely will hopefully play. Yes, check it out guys, over a rock, paper, shot gun, they got the details. I wanna play these games. I don't wanna buy them, but I do wanna play them, especially Beyond Two Souls and Detroit Becoming Human. I already played Heavy Rain. I already played that one. But Detroit Becoming Human, Becoming Huming, Becoming Human. Is that gonna be the title of the podcast? Detroit Becoming Huming. Beyond Two Souls, I definitely wanna play those. Check it out, man. Epic's gonna be getting them. It's a good time. And if you use the Epic Game Store, you can use this as hashtag at the moment. You can use the creator code Buona to support your boy, you know. You play these games in the future. Check it out. And for our next story, we're gonna continue to talk about this whole, it's just console games coming to PC. And it's been the news, and voicecrack.exe. It's been the news about Halo Master Chief Collection coming to PC via Steam. And I think a lot of people were surprised that it was gonna be on Steam because we all assumed, including myself, that if it did come to PC ever, it would be on the Windows Store exclusively doing that thing that Microsoft does that we don't particularly love too much. But it is going to be on Steam. And the reason why I'm talking about this now, we talked about the previous story with all those games that were console exclusives are now coming to PC via the Epic Game Store. This is an email sent, I found this on Reddit, and I read it over there, that was sent to Gabe, asking him, how did the process of working with 343 and Microsoft to get, how did the process go of getting them to get Halo on Steam? Was this a simple task? And the Gabon responded with, the credit for this goes to Phil Spencer and his team at Microsoft. They made it happen. So yes, it was simple for us. That is amazing. And I gotta admit, ever since Phil took over, I've been saying this about Microsoft. I've been saying it for 10 years, ain't I been saying it? I've been saying it about Microsoft. Ever since Phil took over, there's been a shift towards PC. There has been. You can think back when he took over. Now, when he did take over, that was the dark days of Connect and TV, TV, TV, TV, and the media, the cable, TV, Xbox, that kind of stuff. That was when Phil took over. And then Phil took over and all of a sudden we got play anywhere, essentially with Windows 10, Xbox, being able to play PC games on your Windows computer. We got Xbox on the PC. We got the game DVR on PC. We got all these gaming features that were on the Xbox. We got those on PC. Even though we turned a lot of these things off as PC gamers, they're still on PC. And even at the E3 conferences and all the big things, there's a lot of cross-platform. Play anywhere. That's what Microsoft calls it. Play anywhere. You got this game on Windows 10. You can play it on the Xbox. The vice versa. You get on the Xbox. You can play it on Windows 10. And a lot of gamers shunned that because they were still on Windows 7. They refused to get off Windows 7. But apparently, Halo's gonna be working on Windows 7 as well. So there's that. So they're gonna make those gamers happy. I don't know what to say, man. This is a shift. I don't know how to read this. Maybe Microsoft and Steam see the threat of Epic. Because next thing you know, Epic Games might come out with an OS. They call it Epic OS or something. And they might start to compete with Microsoft. I think Microsoft may start to see Epic as a threat. That's the only thing I can see out of this. Because why would Microsoft put one of their staple flagship franchises? Halo is synonymous with Xbox. Why would they put that on a competing store on Windows? Why? If not for some strategic reason that we don't know yet. Something for the future. And I really think it has to do with Epic. I think Microsoft and Valve are going to join forces to battle Epic because Epic is a juggernaut. Epic is essentially single-handedly by themselves. Nobody, I mean, Rocket League had to play in it, but Epic came on the scene with Fortnite and strong armed all these game studios into putting in cross-play. They essentially made them do it. And I don't think Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo know what happened until after it was over. It was like, how did we get here? Epic did it. That's how strong they were with the market with Fortnite. They came in and they said, you are going to do this. And all of a sudden we got cross-play on all platforms with Fortnite. And I think Microsoft are like, all right, that's just a little bit too much power. We need to do something. Gabe, do something. That's pretty much what was going on. That's my only guess. If you guys got anything, let me know in the comments. I don't know what in the world why Microsoft is doing this. Unless they're going to get rid of the Windows 10 store, they realize how bad it is because it is awful. Hopefully they can improve it, but I don't see how. It's just bad on so many fronts. It's worse than if some people, if people want to talk about, you know, the Epic game store is being bad, you need to look at the Windows 10 store. That thing just doesn't work. It's just non-functional. Forget lack of features. It just doesn't operate, just doesn't function at all. So check the story out guys. This is a Reddit thread, screenshot of an email. I don't know how legit it is, but it still was interesting enough for me to talk about tonight on Game Chat with Warner because I think it's a shift in the gaming companies. I think we're going to see a big Epic play that's happening. And I think Microsoft and Valve were preparing for it. Check it out guys. They got the details over there, reddit.com over on our halo talking about this. And that concludes episode 131 of Game Chat. Well, thank you all for listening today. Follow me at Twitter, at twitter.com slash one. I'm also on twitch, twitch.tv slash one. I stream pretty much every day. I say I have days off, but somehow I'm still live. 10 a.m. in the morning, 8 p.m. I almost forgot my times. 8 p.m. at night. Come over to twitch.tv slash one and watch the shenanigans. We do all kinds of stuff, man. Lately we've been playing shenanigans. That's not the name of the game. Lately we've been playing Satisfactory and The Division too. And we've been having a great time. I'm addicted to both. So I'm kind of torn which one to play. So it's actually pretty awesome. Check out my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash one. And we've been putting up steady releases of videos. I am in line to produce a couple more videos this week on top of these videos with Game Chat with Warner. Tech Talk with Warner has made a return. So if you haven't followed that, go over to Warner.tv slash podcast. Subscribe on your favorite podcast or whether it be Spotify, whether it be Google Play, whether it be Apple iTunes. I am on all those services. You can subscribe to the podcast. This one right here. And you'll get Tech Talk with Warner as a bonus. Delicious. We record that every Friday morning as well. Today is my birthday. Today is your birthday. And I'm celebrating by recording this podcast with you all. I have been with you all for, I don't know how long. Warner.org radio began like in 2005 and it is now 2019. So that's 14 years of podcasting. That is nuts. And you guys have been here through it all. I wanna thank you all for listening. Those of you, all the 20 people that downloaded the last episode, welcome back. We'll get their name back out there. Don't worry guys. All right, I'll see you next time. Next week, same time, same session for more news. This is Game Chat with Warner and I will see you all next time. Have a good day.