For those saying Yes, I would like to hear why. While I am among the most optimistic, I certainly see the drawbacks, but I have zero reason to think it will fail.

The main reason glass failed was because it was COMPLETELY affordable. And the use case wasn't there for it, or barley existed.

$10 a month for games being pushed out at higher performance than anything capable right now, yes provided you have the bandwidth ofc, in a climate where nearly everyone has at least one streaming subscription of some kind seems perfectly reasonable.

I said yes because Google has a lengthy track record of killing services they offer for any number of reasons, some of which had nothing to do with profitability. Stadia only exists to make money. I don't see Stadia as being profitable anytime soon, and they're not going to keep it going indefinitely for any altruistic reasons.

I am firmly in the camp of buying games digitally, knowing full well that my "ownership" of that product is nebulous at best. In Stadia's case, though, there's not even a whiff of ownership. You just pay full price for a product that would also be available elsewhere, and hope that Google keeps the servers running long enough for you to get your money's worth. Oh, and pay them $10/month if you want the full fidelity experience. If the back catalog of games that will eventually be included in that subscription fee are worthwhile, maybe I'd check it out for that, but I will never buy anything from the service for the simple fact that there's no way to ensure availability if the system folds.

Unless they merge some tier of paid Stadia (and free games) into YT Red/GP Music, probably

It will probably be dead in the water this year. Mandatory (?) expensive chromecast plus monthly subscription plus buying new titles firmly puts it in PS Now territory and we all know how that went.

Depending on how early the base tier arrives ("2020" is vague) will determine if it survives. And I think Google are morons for not starting with that tier in the first place. 1080p gaming with only software costs and no hardware sounds great. Not something I personally want (I spend too much on PC and consoles anyway) but something that could be great for saner people.

The base "subscription" has the potential to be a bigger impact to gaming than the PS2 (everyone's DVD Player) was and possibly even up there with the NES in terms of ushering in a new era. With the ever increasing crossplay and even crossprogress in games it just takes a few "My friend totally doesn't like games but thought Ghost Recon looked great. He bought it on sale with Stadia and we now play every night" to show the hamfisted benefits.

But 120 bucks a year is borderline predatory and reminds me a lot of when people used to rent consoles because "it is so much cheaper". And as long as the more expensive paid tier exists I see a lot of people not wanting to try the free one.

I think the world is ready for a streaming gaming solution. But this is really (presumably) Microsoft's game to lose now. Even if their requirement is "have a windows PC or a streaming only xbox" they'll seem more appealing than "Buy our device and then give us 120 bucks a month and then buy the games you actually want to play". Because even if it is the same price model it is one that has a lot more room to expand.

Because maybe 120 bucks a year to access a console is stupid. But maybe that includes free online multiplayer and I might want to buy an xbox next year. I am totally saving money, right? Right?

Let me play it for 10 minutes and I'll have an answer for you.

I wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pole now, but if it's still around a year after release and the tech is good... sure.

The game ownership thing is barely relevant at this point. Given that almost any game you buy in any format requires patching to be useful, we're all at the mercy of publishers and platform holders keeping their services running.

I don't plan to pre-order it and I don't think it looks awesome, but I also don't think it's going to be the next Google Glass.

I played Assassins Creed in the beta and thought it was pretty awesome, I pre-ordered it but have plenty of time to cancel. I mainly game on PC, so I'd probably keep that up-to-date for multiplayer stuff so not sure if it's worth maintaining another $10 google subscription as I already pay for Google Drive and Youtube Red.

I like the idea of possibly adding it to the Youtube Red/GP Music pair, but am not holding my breath as GP Music is in the midst of being killed off (Why!?).

https://killedbygoogle.com/

I'm strongly thinking of pre-ordering, cause it seems like an ok deal. Not cause I have great faith in system long term. For $140 I get controller and chromcast thingie. These are 2 actual things I could find some other use potentially if system fails. I also get destiny 2 which I never really touched. Will I be buying most games on stadia not likely. I can't see myself getting blown away, but If I'm right I don't have to keep paying them. Not 100% sure if you keep destiny rights or not.

My biggest question is, will this make my PC better? Since I don't have a great powerful PC will stadia help? or will I still be limited by hardware? It seems like to me the biggest question is how good is your internet? I have good internet.

So preorder and get controller and game and than likely never pay again.

I built a pretty beefy PC this year and still pre-ordered. I think their business model makes a lot more sense now we know the details. $10 a month isn't that much if you get access to a catalog of games, granted that would be something that needs to be fleshed out over time. I could definitely see myself using it for always online service games, where you're tied to internet access anyways. Being able to just grab the controller and go over to a friend's is pretty cool. And if it all blows up in six months, well I'll still have a Chromecast Ultra and a controller (which I hope is functional with a PC normally).

With giving users a decent array of options (founders pack, a cheap monthly subscription, or just buying the game outright), then play on any screen with Chrome or the Stradia app? The barrier to entry is extremely low, and if the performance is reflective to what's on paper, I don't see why anyone would be against it. I'm jacked in.

Data caps.

I think it's wild that there is so much about this that is still in the air(regarding library, what games will require purchasing and how the recommended speed changed from 25 to 35... and might change again) that there are people already spending money on it.

This is my exact reason for voting "Yes." Unless Google, or Microsoft for that matter, wants to make a serious push into becoming an affordable ISP, these streaming platforms and services put people on data caps in a serious financial bind. For goodness' sake, downloading, updating, saving, and playing games on Steam can take up to 60-100 GBs! While most look at that number and think it presents an issue related to storage, I look at it and say "Man, if I don't time that download, that'll make my ability to work at home impossible." And that's just a discussion I need to have about games I ALREADY OWN often to make them playable. Worse, it doesn't help public policy about data caps and net neutrality are looking great, but

Not only do a lot of us not have a lot of consumer choice, but the idea of buying into a separate ecosystem that will add into pre-existing financial expenditures holds very little appeal.

So, yeah, hard pass on the Stadia.

1TB is 65 hours at 4K/60 or 113 hours at 1080/60 if you do the math.

Which is, frankly, more time than I have in a month to play video games these days, but if you're in a house with a couple other people and you're all doing your thing, it adds up fast.

It's not even launching in my country, PSNow never released here, and Netflix still doesn't even have half of what it does in the US. It's already dead as far as I'm concerned.

can i just recommend that anyone interested in getting stadia use the speed test google has on the stadia site as i have around 56Mb with all other speed tests sites and get around that when downloading with xbox and i can dl files from GIANT BOMB at around 7MB which is around 56 in bits but when i test with the google speed test my max is 25Mb or 3.125MB so i cant get 4k according to them i live in n.ireland id be intrested to see how others do

Yeah, I guess this is my situation too, as I live alone, have a great connection speed, and don't game that much. I can see this as an issue for others with different circumstances, but I'm pretty sure users can adjust the stream quality to lessen the data usage.

While I'll always have a console or PC to play something a specific way, it seems nice to have something like Stradia to be a "fuck it, I just want to play something" alternative.

I just bought an 8TB hard drive for my games and my upgrade budget is somewhere around two or three grand; granted that I do more than just play games with my PC. So despite having 100 up and 100 down Mbps to work with, I'm not really going to think about Stadia too much since I like my powerful hardware and local storage for offline access, I'll just see how this unfolds from my peripheral vision.

I am most definitely going to check it out. Im not gonna pre order it though. If it works as advertised its going to let me game so much more than before for so much less money. I am crossing my fingers. I know one person who got to test it and said it worked pretty well.

I believe the poll options should be a bit more nuanced. I mean, I don't think it will be the next Google Glass, but I won't preorder and I don't think that highly of the controller.

@zombiepie: The funny/sad thing is that the heavy bandwidth usage is something that we will potentially all benefit from, regardless of if we engage with stadia itself

We as consumers have no voice because we as consumers are too fucking stupid to vote with our wallets.

You know who has a voice? The giant companies who "donate" large sums to lobbyist groups. Like Google

So we're getting fucked in the ass by not realizing we used up our Comcast quota grabbing and rage uninstalling Wildlands because of the fucking Predator mission (and then reinstalling because Jon Berenthal). I get a few pop-ups from Comcast and remember to be more careful

But once companies like Google need you to have high caps per month to give them money? They may not be an ISP (did they sell all the Fiber stuff?) but they have the ISPs on speed dial and will start making deals (yay... net neutrality....).

And unlike Netflix/whatever, streaming gaming is not really something the ISP/TV services will feel (as) threatened by. Maybe you play Siege AND... watch local news? I dunno what is actually on TV and not Hulu/whatever these days.

It is massively fucked, but it is also one of the cases where our corporate overlords' needs coincide with our own. That being said, I am sure this will get screwed up in some way

Well, there aren't many options here. What about 'No - I think it will do well but I'll wait and see before I buy'?

I don't think it's going to straight up die, but i think it will just be another moderately interesting service , instead of the mainstream number 1 service i thought it would end up to be. Being able to say 'oh wow,this new game looks great & i'll be able to play it on my devices as soon as i pay the 10$' would have been very compelling. Sadly, if you ever had that impulse, you need to make sure you have their 70$ ultra chromecast hooked up already & have a 70$ stadia controller laying around. And have to actually buy that new game you heard about. That all kinda ruins the mainstream impulse buy-in. Sure, you won't have to buy a console, but if you were looking at this as a console replacement, you're still spending 740$ in 5 years + game purchases. And that gives you a game experience reliant on your connection & 1 extra company that can decide to take your game away from you. I guess if this survives long enough that you're able to 'skip' having to buy the Ps6 / Xbox 3 generation, it would have it's value, but right now it seems tricky to bank on this project lasting over a decade.

Sure, if you already have a controller & a pc or laptop, you'll be able to use that, but not using their own controller might hamper you from playing the really input precise games. And at that point you probably have the means to get those games elsewhere. Buying the game to run natively on your hardware or stream / download it from a xbox gamepass-like service makes a ton more sense to me in that situation.

The thing is, it's a super safe thing for them to put out there on a whim. The server farm can be repurposed for any number of other things, so if Stadia fails it isn't even a big deal for them. It just doesn't seem like they're serious with that presentation.

@frytup: My cap is 250GB (sometimes it trips at 150 but my ISP never has anything to say on that topic so idk)... if I did nothing but play games with my internet, that's still only 27.78 hours (1080p/60fps) assuming the streaming math functions like this. I do like to have internet for things like GB content so Stadia is never going to be sustainable for anybody with internet like mine. I couldn't tell you what the % of gaming folks are in my shoes, but it's worth noting.

Stadia in its current promised form sounds like it's destined to fail in the U.S., though I'd be thrilled if by then internet disparity magically disappears. I wouldn't be surprised if by next year it blindsides the GB crew because they constantly forget about internet infrastructure problems in the U.S.

Or it'll recoup the U.S. losses in foreign markets, I don't know. I just find the whole thing untrustworthy without even mentioning Google's tendency to prematurely kill everything they do.

@siroptimusprime:

Sure. And probably a bigger issue than caps is people in large parts of the US who can't get decent bandwidth at all, so streaming is a non-starter to begin with.

While MS and Sony have certainly decided they have to get streaming off the ground soon, they're willing to let it co-exist with traditional hardware for the foreseeable future so they don't need it to work right away. Google basing their entire gaming division on streaming is definitely risky and it's probably going to be awhile before it turns a profit, but they're in a very similar position with YoutubeTV and so far they've been willing to let that service lose money while they grow the user base. We'll see.

Google Glass was never for sale to consumers at a point this is. As much as Google get thrown under the bus for trying things out and then discontinuing it, most of those service where A. free B. made for Dev's. I still think this is the future going forward for at least console gaming.

Also this is a great way to push data caps if to many people got small data caps i bet google will be lobying or atleast try to speak with ISP's to up there data cap or whitelist stadia traffic at googles expense.