Quick Look: Google Stadia

This is bad for games, bad for people who play games, and bad for anyone else in your dorm/apartment building trying to use the internet. I have my computer in my home office with an ethernet cable running to my Nvidia shield in the living room and streaming games to my TV still feels like garbage (subjectively) so I can't imagine using anything less. I'm also saying this as someone who has Google Fiber in my home.

Now I keep seeing the argument that this isn't for people who already play games but I've seen people who almost never play games pick up controllers and say that something feels like shit way more often than people who play games all the time.

Honestly, it comes across to me like Google's main task was to figure out the tech behind it and regarding the business side of this whole ordeal, they checked what the console alternatives did on that end and matched it. After all, these companies had plenty of people subscribe to those services so the assumption was that it would probably be a good way to get people to subscribe to Stadia as well. What they saw was Xbox Gold & Playstation Plus. Now, years later, we suddenly have all these subscription passes emerge and google seems behind on the times.

Also, i think that when it comes to the fleeting action of streaming games that require constant internet access and will never be 'yours' as in, never be locally playable for you, the notion of paying full price for a game on top of paying for the service and all the bells & whistles that you need just feels like a bad time. More so than buying a full priced game through a digital store that you can still play locally. And that feeling doesn't get better when there are alternatives out there that straight up offer a better value and quality. Especially as a casual gamer that would be a key target for Stadia, i'd rather have a selection of games to choose from than to commit into buying 1 full game and hoping i can get through it while my 4k TV subscription lasts. I'd rather pay 15$ to figure out if gaming is interesting for me than going all out and spending 60$. That sounds like something someone would do that already chose to buy a console or PC.

Luckily, this is not an issue that's insurmountable. Like we've seen plenty of games already agree to be part of a subscription service. I don't see why these publishers wouldn't be open to negotiate with google to be part of a Stadia plan in the future as well. UNLESS... Unless it requires serious work to appear on Stadia. Given that it's a linux based service reliant on Vulkan and requires devs to go into their games and change certain aspects like menu's and perhaps matchmaking options.

I do question what happened to their ambitions to offer top of the line quality through all their territories when we see games perform on par with their console equivalent mostly. And this is at launch, when their tech should still be fresh & snappy.

Jasons dancing is perfect.

@larmer: You are confusing bandwidth with computing power. Remember: Even a phone can emulate a PS1/2 these days. Altavista it.

Also related: http://stadiacountdown.com/

Besides the fact you have to buy, sometime full price, to stream a game you can play in its original format for the same price, and you have to pay a monthly fee for a 4K upgrade, and the input lag according to Jeff isn't that good, at least so far... there is the simple fact that I'm jaded about Google overall in the last couple of years and wouldn't support them even if the Stadia was mind blowing good.

The giant bomb ritual. East coast, turn volume to 100%. West Coast, freak out / wake up, turn volume to 5%

@lonelyspacepanda: Google, of all companies, playing the "long game" with a service that won't be making a good profit for multiple years at a time...? Yeah, they have a great history that supports that they'll totally do that!

A quick search of the Google Graveyard shows that a Google product which is eventually killed living past 3 years is uncommon, and past 5 an utter rarity. Good luck, Stadia. Hopefully Google has a better plan for you than to just can you the second you aren't printing money.

"Won't be making a good profit" Yeah, we'll see about that. I know gamers are rising up but gamers online are always a vocal minority (see Resident Evil 6 and Pokemon: Sword/Shield breaking records). I see people very positive on Stadia now that it's out. It works.

I can not wait until all the dust settles and we can have a true comparison of Project XCloud, Stadia and whatever Sony has up their sleeve. Been using XCloud for a week now and I am thoroughly impressed by the tech.

Please please tell me about 234 gifs were cut for the community from the Just Dance section. It is a gold mine for years to come.

@larmer: Please read the comment again and understand what's being said (and what's not being said).

Let us give you a clue: The performance doesn't scale, that's why "many-computers" both are a scythe and a saw - not because there isn't enough computational power.