Do people know how much Stadia Costs?

I can't pick an option, because no I don't know. It could be any of those.

It is not completely free. Only for two months. Then the subscription kicks in.

That would be like me saying that Hulu is completely free because they are offering me a one month free trial. It would not be a true statement.

Can you play in a web browser or on regular non-bundled Chromecasts yet?

@thursday1977: That is for Pro though, there is a free tier as well.

I wouldn't really consider people on these forums the general public.

Is there? The Stadia website only seems to mention the $9.99 price point and nothing about free. At least that I can see. Unless I missed it, which is ABSOLUTELY possible.

@thursday1977: I think its now if you create an account and opt out of the Pro trial then that's just the free basic tier which is limited to like 1080p I think and obviously has no monthly perks associated with it.

It seems a little obtuse but then again of course it does.

It would be 59.99 a month for me for having to buy unlimited data from comcast just to use it lol.

but the answer is the last 2 options, you can use your chrome browser and just "buy" the games but that's only in 1080p (if your lucky anyway lol)

Including relocation costs to a country where it's available, I imagine it'll cost me somewhere in the range of thousands.

It's free.

I'm thinking it's free now, but i also don't know how much Amazon Prime, Netflix or Xbox Game Pass is either.

Don't care...that is the correct answer, right?

@monkeyking1969: so do you have like 8k posts that contribute nothing to the conversation?

@cikame: I think it's less about the exact price and more about the price structure as a whole.

I think that even with the limitations of the free tier. And with you paying full price for each game license. They must be losing money on the free tier. Hence the messaging not making it clear it is available. At this point they are probably hemorrhaging money on the whole venture. I’ve always thought the ideal audience for this thing is casual sports gamers and 1. They haven’t really pushed to get those sort of games on. 2. There marketing push began and ended with hardcore gamers who don’t need the service and are the sort of people who are bothered by its shortcomings. Is FIFA ported to it? And is it available outside of the US yet? If FIFA 21 ends up on there and is available in Europe they might have a thing. Particularly if society is still mostly on hold waiting for a vaccine. But it would have to run noticeably better than a base ps4 at the 1080P tier.

Oh I almost forgot they don’t have a free way to play on a TV yet do they? You need one of the bundled Cromecasts to do that still. Any word on enabling the other Cromecast Ultra’s to run Stadia games? There was anecdotal evidence that the bundled Cromecasts were having heat dissipation problems running Stadia. That could explain why they haven’t pushed the code out to the other devices yet. That could mean that a better version of the Cromecasts is needed and could be further delayed by manufacturing woes via Covid 19. That would also explain why there has not been a renewed marketing push to go along with the soft launch of the Free Tier. I suppose if Google has decided that they can afford to wait we can too. They could still have a holiday push coming at the end of the year. As their biggest selling point against the PS5 and XSX is that you don’t need new hardware to play new games. (Or any hardware other than a USB controller and a Crome browser enable PC)

@mikewhy: I thought the topic was about peoples awareness of the product, i was aware there was an expensive early adoption price but i think it's free now (sans game purchases) with subscriptions for higher quality, but i don't think i'm a good example of an average person because i'm unaware of the price of any subscription service... i don't really like subscribing to things.

Price is the least of Stadia's problems. How would you even make non-gamer gamers aware Stadia exist to begin with, these folks don't visit or look at gaming media at all.

I mean, it's kind of all your answers? Assuming that the free tier has now become a thing. Didn't hear anything about that launching personally, but it probably has.

Honestly, it's incredibly hard to figure out that there's a 'free way' to get access to.. Well, buying the games.

Like they're all like 'YO GIMME YOUR 130 EURO'S AND WE SHIP THIS PACKAGE TO YOU'. YOU CAN ALSO GIVE US 10 EURO'S A MONTH AND GET A BUNCH OF GAMES FOR THAT. But that's pretty much all their sites indicate. I checked out their app too and yea, you can make your Stadia account there, and i assume that opens up their game-store and the ability to buy & play games at 1080P. But at that point you are already very engaged in getting access to this platform, so you probably know what's up.

There's nothing out there that drives the message home that i can apparently buy games on their store just like i would buy a game off any other store but with the benefit of being able to play it on a shitty laptop from 2012. Locking away their entire store until you decide to make your stadia account kinda does that. When i go to Gog, i immedialy understand what i can do there. When i go to humble bundle, i see what this site wants me to do. When i go to Stadia, i only see them trying to sell me a thing for 130 euro's + a subscription service. Where are the games i could be buying & playing with the press of a button no matter what my hardware situation is like?

Also, it seems like the only big upcoming sports game that might move the needle here in the EU is F1 2020. No Fifa. They do have Football manager though, but that's exactly the kind of game that if you enjoy that, you want to have access to the game files and be able to mod it. And certainly won't appeal to 90% of the Fifa audience.

Wasn't the whole idea that you could watch a gamevideo on youtube and be a few button clicks away from playing that game on your shitty laptop? It seems like that whole experience is not there at all and the only way you end up playing games on Stadia is if you are very keyed in, have your whole Stadia-account set up and stuff and WANT to be playing on Stadia because you know about it already.

Edit: Saw this quote from Phil Harrisson

`For Stadia, we’ve always adjusted bandwidth use based on a variety of in-home and local internet factors. To reduce load on the internet further, we’re working toward a temporary feature that changes the default screen resolution from 4k to 1080p. The vast majority of people on a desktop or laptop won’t notice a significant drop in gameplay quality, but you can choose your data usage options in the Stadia app.`

Understandable, and not a big deal if you can override the setting if you want to, but aren't they still very much in the 'building a playerbase' phase of this whole Stadia project? If they're already experiencing heavy loads now, i wonder how that would develop if the general youtube audience suddenly got wind of Stadia being a thing simply by watching gaming video's and seeing that logo on the page. I imagine that big area's like San Fran, LA and NY can be somewhat quickly be upscaled to meet the demand of an increasing playerbase, but i do wonder what it means for a server in Finland when Stadia starts making it's presence known better through youtube or something.

It also doesn't sit right with me that they launched this with a heavy emphasis on the game enthusiast that wants the best visuals , the newest tech and all, but at the same time the Stadia people are already twiddling with bandwith settings in the background and say that adjusting bandwith is an ongoing concern for them that they tinker with. It must be extremely frustrating to pay for a service and then constantly feel like your experience is impacted by the amount of players nearby you and whether your datacenter is important enough to be adjusted to handle more demand in a timely fashion. Like there's some sort of hidden options menu that you don't control , but does change the game you play.

I've been trying Geforce Now for a bit now, and while it definity is awesome to play games your hardware won't let you, my screen does turn to jelly when it's rush hour every now and then. I wouldn't want to have all my games locked to Stadia permanently and then try to schedule my play-sessions around when others are not playing.

@mattnicholas: $9.99 is Stadia's PS Plus/GWG equivalent, its buy to play register a account stadia.google.com buy any game from their small selection and play has much as you want from any chrome browser with no monthly fee.

This whole thread feels like some weird marketing thing.

@mattnicholas Yep it's free and you can go start a free pro trial if you want or just opt out of pro trial and just try the free option completely and buy games a la carte at https://stadia.google.com. You just need a Gmail account. But personally i don't see the harm in trying out the trial as it will unlock a bunch of games for you to try out during the trial period which I believe is still 2 months till the end of May.

Giant Bomb is an enthusiast website, we are hardly "the general public."

And I'm not saying that as a value judgement one way or the other, but it's important to have the proper context for discussions like this.

Is Google paying for this ad?

Uhhhh this is definitely guerilla marketing @rorie , right?

He's got 230 posts so I doubt it!

I was just curious about what people knew about Stadia and I got the answer I pretty much expected. Hope Stadia gets some more coverage in the future as I think it's pretty mind blowing for what it can do.