I'm curious as to whether anyone else watched the recent Gamescom Stadia Connect (or any other coverage) and are more or less excited about getting in on it now?
Regardless of the whole service not actually being announced for Australia (where I live) yet I feel the more that Google talk about it the less I want to invest in it. This most recent Connect announced a bunch of new games coming to the platform, nothing surprising and honestly if the some of the big name games (Cyberpunk, Watchdogs, Doom, etc) weren't coming to the platform then they shouldn't even bother launching the service to begin with.
Ignoring all the other business stuff around digital rights ownership, their current business model and Google's willingness to kill services left and right, the single most important thing that is the backbone of this whole platform being able to work is whether the streaming part actually works. It doesn't matter that all these (potentially) great games are coming to the platform if the tech doesn't work.
Obviously the biggest problem that Google face with this product is that it relies completely on networks that they have zero control over. Having a connection with low latency and high bandwidth is so crucial to having a good experience and without including data caps too (yes I know I am ignoring a lot of real issues that seriously threaten the success of Stadia) Google's reassurances of basically "ISPs will sort themselves out" give me no confidence in the product. I don't need to be reminded again and again that your server hardware can play all the games at 4K on the highest graphics settings, its ok I believe you there!
I get that its probably impossible to actually show in a believable way that the tech really works the way they say it does in a video but I feel that's really what they need to be demonstrating now. I know there have been opportunities for hands on demos at events in the US and Europe but it seems like they are set up in pretty controlled environments and not real world situations (apart from that Assassin's Creed/Project Stream demo thing they did).
In theory, I am fortunate enough to have good enough internet that I should be able to easily play at 1080p, probably even 4K, but at this stage I won't be buying in until there is enough real world evidence that it works... but who knows Google may just kill the whole thing before that can become a reality here in Aus anyway.
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