Cyberpunk 2077 - Coming to Google Stadia

I'm not so sure it will be Linux based. They would have to pay Microsoft for licensing but I'm sure they could cut a deal and it would save the game developers from having to work so hard to convert. The cost for all the servers and bandwidth should dwarf the MS licenses.

Regarding how hard the game is to run: it shouldn't matter that much. I'm sure you could go crazy with the graphics enough that you could make Google's servers fall victim to the China Syndrome but that's just a matter of getting enough hardware to handle demand. It's bandwidth that will be the killer. It's hard enough to get all those pixels on a screen - now you've got to push them over the net!

Originally Posted by Zloth
I'm not so sure it will be Linux based. They would have to pay Microsoft for licensing but I'm sure they could cut a deal and it would save the game developers from having to work so hard to convert. The cost for all the servers and bandwidth should dwarf the MS licenses.

Regarding how hard the game is to run: it shouldn't matter that much. I'm sure you could go crazy with the graphics enough that you could make Google's servers fall victim to the China Syndrome but that's just a matter of getting enough hardware to handle demand. It's bandwidth that will be the killer. It's hard enough to get all those pixels on a screen - now you've got to push them over the net!

Google has already announced how it will work. Stadia doesn't draw on the general Google servers. Each node is an independent chipset, essentially a console on a single board, in vast banks. The software will be Linux and Vulkan. The games are already being ported.

EDIT: Also, porting to Linux is not a big deal, if you stick to Vulkan and avoid any middleware that doesn’t support Linux. So long as you do that, it’s almost as simple as choosing the platform you want to build for in the game engine – in Unreal engine, you literally click the OS you want to export to. The main reason not to do it is that it would be another platform to support, with a market too small to be worth it. Now there is a reason to do so.