To be honest I had kind of forgotten that I'd ordered one, but the Google Stadia was on sale for 20 euros over Black Friday and I guess I bought one. I'm mostly interested in taking the Chromecast, which was cheaper to buy this way, and using it as a streaming stick when traveling, but it'd be nice to find some gaming use for the thing too. Maybe I'll use the controller as a wired PC controller?

I'd appreciate any tips on games or use cases for the Stadia if there are Stadia owners out there. Are there free games I can get or do I have to pay for that subscription? Can I use some sort of browser on the Chromecast to play Xbox Cloud games instead?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Black Friday deals are still on if you hurry. Gylt?

What's your take on the controller quality?

Honestly for the chromecast it's not a terrible deal. I would love to know how the controller is, as a matter of curiosity. My guess is they probably lock you out of using it as a wired controller (because of the whole, you know, wifi controller thing they were so keen to talk about) but maybe there's some hack someone figured out.

I only used Stadia for the trial when it first launched, but I thought it was a fine way to play some games. It's actually a pretty good way to play Destiny 2 - your progress is shared across platforms so it's a good way to play when you're not at your main system. Someone in our clan plays that way exclusively. Dunno about any other games - maybe you get a month of their "pro" service by buying the controller, or something - in which case, there are some games in your library, I think?

@kyary: You can actually just plug it in over USB and your PC should see it just fine, no hacks needed. If you want to use it wireless then yeah, i think its wants to only work with Stadia.

Stadia is still an operating service?

I also picked up the Black Friday Stadia offer, though in my case it was primarily to get an extra control pad ;D

You can totally use it plugged in to your PC via USB. Steam even reads it as a Stadia controller. Gamepass games don't read it at all, but there's a workaround with the StadiaController app on Github (GitHub - 71/stadiacontroller: Command line application that emulates an Xbox 360 controller from a wired Stadia controller on Windows.) which just fools the PC into thinking its an Xbox pad, and it works great.

As for the quality of the pad, I'm impressed with it. Its chunky and hefty, but not heavy, and certainly feels better than the majority of third party controllers out there. Maybe not quite on par with the Series X and DualSense pads, but its way better than the PowerA pads I have.

You don't need Pro to play games. Stadia, is a free console that exists in the cloud. There are a few free games. My son played through Cyberpunk 2077 when it came out. He had a couple crashes but nothing game breaking. I got about half way through before I decided to wait untill the game was complete, my only beef with it was some artifacting in darker areas. I'm currently playing Red Dead 2, no problems. I have 1 Gig fiber internet. We have played a fair amount MK 11 with no lag. IMO, its a really good service and its slowly getting better.