Amazon Is Hiring DXVK, Mesa & Proton Linux Developers For Luna Cloud Gaming

[rhadlee]

Don’t care so much about streaming, but I applaud the fact that another heavyweight will contribute to making Proton better. Not so much for Linux desktops, but for the likes of Steam Deck.

[rhadlee]

Don't worry, they will all fail!
The laws of physics protects us from this software as a service crap!
The latency will always be too high no matter how much money they throw at it.
Some of us plan to upgrade to 120-240 Hz monitors to get better latency and these guys trying to sell us streamed games...

Honestly, I don’t think that it is the technology that’s in the way. We may not get down to latencies that get PC players excited. But its good enough for a large audience that doesn’t care or notice anyway.

At the end of the day, the likes of Stadia and Luna have to compete with the already inexpensive Xbox Series S + Game Pass combo. That leaves relatively little room for a business model that needs to cover the cost of cloud and network resources, incentivise publishers to port their games and to produce a controller (unless you want to game with your TV remote), all while yielding a decent profit margin.

But time will tell, if nobody ends up building a commercially successful game streaming service then its certainly not for the lack of trying.

[r1348]

But why? After all, Luna is built on Windows..

AWS is not fond at all of running Windows as a host system, and has plenty of linux expertise already inside. It seems only logical they want to capitalize on this expertise if a viable toolset is available.

[tildearrow]

Sounds like Amazon figured they can capitalize on Wine/Proton to make a streaming service. I'm surprised Valve didn't do it before them yet.

Because Valve knows this cloud gaming thing is deceptive.

[Etherman]

Why Proton? Why not Wine(-staging) + dxvk and stuff?
Proton is for Steam.

[shmerl]

Because Valve knows this cloud gaming thing is deceptive.

It's as deceptive as someone tries to overhype it. If properly advertised for what it is, it doesn't have to be deceptive.

Either way, if Amazon are hiring for it, they think they can make money. Hard to say if that's correct or not. Google tried it, and so far Stadia had some hard time. But unlike some Windows/Xbox focused services by Nvidia and MS, looks like Amazon are at least going with Linux like Google did.

I wonder who will be next. Netflix gaming?

[OmniNegro]

Anyone remember the last time Amazon made or improved any hardware or software and gave away the source? I do not think it has ever happened. Therefore this is a universally bad thing.

Amazon is good to order products from, but terrible for content as a service.

[shmerl]

It was already in the news that Netflix will probably enter the gaming market in the near future. Until they officially announce it, it is just a rumour, of course.

I saw something like that. I just wonder if they'll use Linux or not. That's what I mean by next. Now everyone and their uncle will try to have a streaming service for games. But not everyone will be using Linux for it.

[board]

Stop with this cloud gaming bs!
We are already dependent enough to renting online services and this is going too far.

A world where our computers are not even belonging to us anymore feels really terrible and frightening.

I wish them the exact same success as Stadia.

I've thought about this too. What I fear is that if cloud-services replace offline software that the end-user controls, then there is no financial incentive anymore to make computational resources available to the average consumer. This could cause hardware that we take for granted today to be less available. This might not hit companies and large institutions, but it will very likely hit the average person who doesn't have the money to buy, what might become, specialized enterprise hardware.

In this worst case scenario, we will end up with locked-down low-powered devices (such as Chromebooks) that are dependent on being constantly connected to large corporations for any meaningful work to be done. All files, private or otherwise will be in the cloud, and people's privacy will hang by merely a promise that it will not be infringed upon, which of course will turn out to be an open lie, as usual.

In an age where everything is becoming digitized, and where people are unable to live without these devices, digital freedom becomes increasingly important. This includes having control over computational power.

tl;dr; We need to control our own hardware just as much as we need free software, so that we can maintain our digital privacy and freedom.

[middy]

Honestly, I don’t think that it is the technology that’s in the way. We may not get down to latencies that get PC players excited. But its good enough for a large audience that doesn’t care or notice anyway.

At the end of the day, the likes of Stadia and Luna have to compete with the already inexpensive Xbox Series S + Game Pass combo. That leaves relatively little room for a business model that needs to cover the cost of cloud and network resources, incentivise publishers to port their games and to produce a controller (unless you want to game with your TV remote), all while yielding a decent profit margin.

But time will tell, if nobody ends up building a commercially successful game streaming service then its certainly not for the lack of trying.

this has been my take too. look at all the people that stick to console gaming. sub 30fps gaming with wireless controllers. not all that great for latency and response time. but for most people, its good enough. they have fun. and really looking at steam's hardware survey results when it comes to pc gaming, seeing the type of rigs a lot of gamers, at least on steam have, 1080p and lower resolutions, cpu's and gpu's that honestly i would argue consoles would probably make a better experience. i think those that actually care about having the best possible response time and latency are in the minority. i think most people just care about it being good enough.

as long as they can get the overall latency down enough to be just good enough, then i think it will become good enough for a lot of people. i don't think its a threat to normal gaming. streaming didn't kill private ownership of media. streaming just showed a lot of people never really cared about owning every piece of media they consumed. only some of it they wanted to keep. and it varies among person. i look at myself, the only stuff i buy to privately own and keep is stuff i care about. but stuff like watching flip or flop with my wife, i don't care about watching ever again after we finished it. game streaming once it takes off, if it does, will be similar. i can see a lot of people just using streaming to try a game or those games you only play once. while people only buying games to privately own that they care about, has meaning to them, and like playing over and over again.