9 ms·

You can buy the game and use Stadia without subscription. You are capped at 1080p though.

by yegle 7y ago

worble 7y ago
If you buy the game, do you actually own it though? Or do you lose it when Stadia shuts down? If I'm going to pay full price for a game, then I want to be able to play it 10 or 20 years from now.
- nathankunicki 7y ago
  To be fair, this is little different to buying a game on the PlayStation Store or Xbox Store. As soon as those go offline, you will no longer be able to download those games. And so you'll be at the mercy of the lifespan of the hard drive. You won't be able to copy the games to another device as it won't be able to validate ownership.
  - zeusk 7y ago
    To be fair, PlayStation and Xbox have a lot longer and reliable track record compared to Google products. And so, you'll be at the mercy of the lifespan of yet another Google product.
  - paxys 7y ago
    An Xbox can play all games that have already been downloaded and all physical disks indefinitely, regardless of whether you have internet or whether Microsoft's servers are up.
    - nathankunicki 7y ago
      While correct, that was not the point made in my comment. For downloaded games, once the service has gone offline, you are at the mercy of the lifespan of the hard drive. If I had a physical disc, I could just buy another when it goes bad.
      - nightski 7y ago
        Not sure about Xbox because I haven't owned it in a while but PS4 lets you copy your system drive to a new drive pretty easily. The function is even built into the OS. I switched out the hard drive to an SSD using this technique.
        nathankunicki 7y ago
        It only works as long as the console is signed into the same account as used on the original hard drive.
  - supernovae 7y ago
    This isn't being fair, this is projecting valid fears of a new service and comparing them to other platforms that haven't experienced said fears on any scale to make such a comparison valid to begin with. We all know when MS or Sony get punched, they come back and swing harder. When Google gets punched, are they ready to dump another billion in to surviving or will they cancel and run? Google isn't known for long tail losess on new launches.
- skocznymroczny 7y ago
  Nowadays it's very hard to own a game. Unless you buy on services like GOG, which offer DRM free installers. You don't really own your games on Steam or Origin and they can remove your access at any time without a warning.
gravypod 7y ago
Is Stadia forbidden from changing this pricing model? Lets say I buy 6x $60 games. Is Google going to be able to flip a switch and change it so I need to pay a subscription to access previously purchases games? Am I prorated for downtime?
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  I would be more concerned about Google discontinuing the service
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    Wasn't this the concern with Amazon Kindle books? The mega-corporation would discontinue the service, and the media one had paid for would cease to be accessible?
    - Arelius 7y ago
      Yes, indeed! However Google has historically shown that they are eager to shut down products, and the costs of distributing Stadia games far outweigh the costs of distributing Kindle books. Competition makes this also less likely to succeed. I think the concern is fundamentally the same, but the chances feel much higher, which makes it a bigger worry.
      - stcredzero 7y ago
        the costs of distributing Stadia games far outweigh the costs Games are just another form of media. YouTube costs Google a ton of money. But the control over media, virality, discovery, and advertisement is worth it to them. So has it been for video. So it shall be for games.
        ctvo 7y ago
        YouTube is profitable and brought an estimated 15 billion in revenue for Google last year. It’s not operational because of some other motive, it’s operational because it’s successful. The same can’t be said for this new business model. The entire point of the comment you’re replying to is that Google doesn’t have a good track record of letting products that don’t make them money live.
obenn 7y ago
On a cloud service like this even if you buy the game you don’t really own it, you basically have a perpetual license to it. The issue being referred to here is that if google cancels the service, the games you bought are now lost.
zeusk 7y ago
Still a no deal for me, if my purchases in Stadia cannot grant me access to the game on other platforms. Who knows when Google decides Stadia isn't worth it anymore?
- chronogram 7y ago
  And with Google's legendary support quality, will you even get an answer to your questions when something is wrong?
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    Isn't the cold, heedless authority a trope of fiction? Doesn't it signify, "the authoritarian power that everyone agrees is bad, so can be used as a villain without offending anyone?" Isn't that a trope of future dystopian Sci-fi? The cold, heartless, amoral mega-corporation, uninterested in any individual's plight, only in efficiency? We no longer own our entertainment purchases. We no longer hold the data. We no longer own our communications with our friends, relatives, and coworkers. The very fabric of our relationships and our most intimate and valued expressions is now wholly contained on the servers of mega-corporations, to be traded and sold to other corporations, to be mined for information for profit. Medieval peasants no longer owned the land they worked. There was another level of status in medieval England, the villein: a feudal tenant entirely subject to a lord or manor to whom he paid dues and services in return for land. The villein didn't own his land. He was a chattel accessory to the land.
- notimetorelax 7y ago
  Isn’t it very similar to Steam?
  - zeusk 7y ago
    Not quite. I can play steam games offline, I can share them with my friends/family and the most important part being - steam's platform has been reliable with top notch support since 90s while Google hasn't gotten that even in 2019.
nathankunicki 7y ago
Not at launch, this is promised for 2020. Until then you will have to buy the game and pay the subscription fee.
- ariwilson 7y ago
  AFAICT, to participate in Stadia at all you have to buy 3 months of a subscription that starts in November. That takes you into 2020.
  - CraftThatBlock 7y ago
    The founder's edition is just to pre-order the countroller (and Chromecast + few more goodies), but at launch you'll be able to buy the subscription until the free tier becomes available
Amygaz 7y ago
I can buy the game on Steam and play at my 4K laptop or stream it to my 4k TV. Am I missing something? edit: sorry slowpoke here replying to himself: I get that you are "renting" a gaming hardware for that price, so you don't need to own a gaming computer. So at $120/y it is not bad, if the service is as promised. And then if they shut it down in 3 years then, you spent/lost $360 toward a gaming device. But what happens to the games you purchased? How about renting the games also, like an additional gaming subscription?
- ehsankia 7y ago
  As your edit says, the whole point is for people who don't have computers that can run high end games. Also, once you purchase the game, you can play one any device (phone, laptop, chromecast, etc). It also has all the usual perks that comes with cloud games, such as seemlessly jumping from one device to another, instant launch into the game (no update/download time), etc. It definitely has its pros and cons, and it all comes down to your specific gaming pattern and situation. If you already have a gaming pc or console, this may not be for you.
- AJ007 7y ago
  It fits in the niche of people who want to play AAA games, can’t afford a dedicated console and TV, and have a consistently fast internet connection. Sarcasm aside, in the longer term there is probably a business model here where anyone who wants to play a subscription game like World of Warcraft signs up and gets a $100 tablet sent to them for free. There also might be a model where very high performance rendering combined with ML does stuff where the consumer would otherwise have to pay thousands of dollars for. Not sure that would work in an AR-VR - competitive gaming future. I saw a demo of Stadia in person a while ago. It was ok, but hardcore, competitive gamers aren’t going to accept the latency gap.
  - enos_feedler 7y ago
    I play one "AAA" game: NHL. I buy a ps4 pro for $400 and then every 12 months I have to buy a $70 game and a $60 ps online membership. For this money I also need to wait 5+ minutes to get my ps4 out of sleep mode and into a multiplayer game. The service experiences pretty consistent downtime where I am locked out. The ps messages mobile app is terrible for trying to chat with a player. In game experience is even worse. I am also restricted to playing on my sofa at home when I spend a lot of time traveling for work with my laptop, iPad, etc. I would love to play NHL in my down time there. If Stadia got EA Sports to publish NHL, I'm sold. The end to end product experience is just going to be miles better. I imagine certain games unlock Stadia for certain people.
hartator 7y ago
1080p games should be able to run on a low spec PC. Why not buying the actual game?
- fastball 7y ago
  What modern game can run at 1080p/60fps on a low spec PC? What kinda of cost are we talking about when you say "low spec"?
  - abdulmuhaimin 7y ago
    the free one is 1080p/30fps, not 60fps.
    - drusepth 7y ago
      The free Stadia tier is 1080p at 60fps. Ctrl+F "Stadia Base" at stadia.com.
  - mrguyorama 7y ago
    Honestly? 4ish years of a stadia subscription will run any game released in that time period, and also the entire back catalog of PC gaming, minus some annoyingness around early 2000s games and permissions. My $500 PC runs VR at 1.7x supersampling with zero issues, and can 1080p60hz any game at all with zero trouble.
    - fastball 7y ago
      Exactly. Four years of a subscription you can pay month-to-month (and cancel if you're not using it) is much more doable for many people than a $500+ upfront investment in a gaming rig. Presumably you also built this yourself at that price point, which is another thing other people are not as willing to do. For me personally, I travel a lot so I like the idea of Stadia because obviously I'm not going to travel around with a gaming rig, and you can pry my 2015 Macbook Pro from my cold, dead hands.

You can buy the game and use Stadia without subscription. You are capped at 1080p though.

by yegle 7y ago

You can buy the game and use Stadia without subscription. You are capped at 1080p though.

If you buy the game, do you actually own it though? Or do you lose it when Stadia shuts down? If I'm going to pay full price for a game, then I want to be able to play it 10 or 20 years from now.

nathankunicki 7y ago
To be fair, this is little different to buying a game on the PlayStation Store or Xbox Store. As soon as those go offline, you will no longer be able to download those games. And so you'll be at the mercy of the lifespan of the hard drive. You won't be able to copy the games to another device as it won't be able to validate ownership.
- zeusk 7y ago
  To be fair, PlayStation and Xbox have a lot longer and reliable track record compared to Google products. And so, you'll be at the mercy of the lifespan of yet another Google product.
- paxys 7y ago
  An Xbox can play all games that have already been downloaded and all physical disks indefinitely, regardless of whether you have internet or whether Microsoft's servers are up.
  - nathankunicki 7y ago
    While correct, that was not the point made in my comment. For downloaded games, once the service has gone offline, you are at the mercy of the lifespan of the hard drive. If I had a physical disc, I could just buy another when it goes bad.
    - nightski 7y ago
      Not sure about Xbox because I haven't owned it in a while but PS4 lets you copy your system drive to a new drive pretty easily. The function is even built into the OS. I switched out the hard drive to an SSD using this technique.
      - nathankunicki 7y ago
        It only works as long as the console is signed into the same account as used on the original hard drive.
- supernovae 7y ago
  This isn't being fair, this is projecting valid fears of a new service and comparing them to other platforms that haven't experienced said fears on any scale to make such a comparison valid to begin with. We all know when MS or Sony get punched, they come back and swing harder. When Google gets punched, are they ready to dump another billion in to surviving or will they cancel and run? Google isn't known for long tail losess on new launches.
skocznymroczny 7y ago
Nowadays it's very hard to own a game. Unless you buy on services like GOG, which offer DRM free installers. You don't really own your games on Steam or Origin and they can remove your access at any time without a warning.

gravypod 7y ago

Is Stadia forbidden from changing this pricing model? Lets say I buy 6x $60 games. Is Google going to be able to flip a switch and change it so I need to pay a subscription to access previously purchases games? Am I prorated for downtime?

Rebelgecko 7y ago
I would be more concerned about Google discontinuing the service
- stcredzero 7y ago
  Wasn't this the concern with Amazon Kindle books? The mega-corporation would discontinue the service, and the media one had paid for would cease to be accessible?
  - Arelius 7y ago
    Yes, indeed! However Google has historically shown that they are eager to shut down products, and the costs of distributing Stadia games far outweigh the costs of distributing Kindle books. Competition makes this also less likely to succeed. I think the concern is fundamentally the same, but the chances feel much higher, which makes it a bigger worry.
    - stcredzero 7y ago
      the costs of distributing Stadia games far outweigh the costs Games are just another form of media. YouTube costs Google a ton of money. But the control over media, virality, discovery, and advertisement is worth it to them. So has it been for video. So it shall be for games.
      - ctvo 7y ago
        YouTube is profitable and brought an estimated 15 billion in revenue for Google last year. It’s not operational because of some other motive, it’s operational because it’s successful. The same can’t be said for this new business model. The entire point of the comment you’re replying to is that Google doesn’t have a good track record of letting products that don’t make them money live.

obenn 7y ago

On a cloud service like this even if you buy the game you don’t really own it, you basically have a perpetual license to it. The issue being referred to here is that if google cancels the service, the games you bought are now lost.

zeusk 7y ago

Still a no deal for me, if my purchases in Stadia cannot grant me access to the game on other platforms. Who knows when Google decides Stadia isn't worth it anymore?

chronogram 7y ago
And with Google's legendary support quality, will you even get an answer to your questions when something is wrong?
- stcredzero 7y ago
  Isn't the cold, heedless authority a trope of fiction? Doesn't it signify, "the authoritarian power that everyone agrees is bad, so can be used as a villain without offending anyone?" Isn't that a trope of future dystopian Sci-fi? The cold, heartless, amoral mega-corporation, uninterested in any individual's plight, only in efficiency? We no longer own our entertainment purchases. We no longer hold the data. We no longer own our communications with our friends, relatives, and coworkers. The very fabric of our relationships and our most intimate and valued expressions is now wholly contained on the servers of mega-corporations, to be traded and sold to other corporations, to be mined for information for profit. Medieval peasants no longer owned the land they worked. There was another level of status in medieval England, the villein: a feudal tenant entirely subject to a lord or manor to whom he paid dues and services in return for land. The villein didn't own his land. He was a chattel accessory to the land.
notimetorelax 7y ago
Isn’t it very similar to Steam?
- zeusk 7y ago
  Not quite. I can play steam games offline, I can share them with my friends/family and the most important part being - steam's platform has been reliable with top notch support since 90s while Google hasn't gotten that even in 2019.

nathankunicki 7y ago

Not at launch, this is promised for 2020. Until then you will have to buy the game and pay the subscription fee.

ariwilson 7y ago
AFAICT, to participate in Stadia at all you have to buy 3 months of a subscription that starts in November. That takes you into 2020.
- CraftThatBlock 7y ago
  The founder's edition is just to pre-order the countroller (and Chromecast + few more goodies), but at launch you'll be able to buy the subscription until the free tier becomes available

Amygaz 7y ago

I can buy the game on Steam and play at my 4K laptop or stream it to my 4k TV. Am I missing something? edit: sorry slowpoke here replying to himself: I get that you are "renting" a gaming hardware for that price, so you don't need to own a gaming computer. So at $120/y it is not bad, if the service is as promised. And then if they shut it down in 3 years then, you spent/lost $360 toward a gaming device. But what happens to the games you purchased? How about renting the games also, like an additional gaming subscription?

ehsankia 7y ago
As your edit says, the whole point is for people who don't have computers that can run high end games. Also, once you purchase the game, you can play one any device (phone, laptop, chromecast, etc). It also has all the usual perks that comes with cloud games, such as seemlessly jumping from one device to another, instant launch into the game (no update/download time), etc. It definitely has its pros and cons, and it all comes down to your specific gaming pattern and situation. If you already have a gaming pc or console, this may not be for you.
AJ007 7y ago
It fits in the niche of people who want to play AAA games, can’t afford a dedicated console and TV, and have a consistently fast internet connection. Sarcasm aside, in the longer term there is probably a business model here where anyone who wants to play a subscription game like World of Warcraft signs up and gets a $100 tablet sent to them for free. There also might be a model where very high performance rendering combined with ML does stuff where the consumer would otherwise have to pay thousands of dollars for. Not sure that would work in an AR-VR - competitive gaming future. I saw a demo of Stadia in person a while ago. It was ok, but hardcore, competitive gamers aren’t going to accept the latency gap.
- enos_feedler 7y ago
  I play one "AAA" game: NHL. I buy a ps4 pro for $400 and then every 12 months I have to buy a $70 game and a $60 ps online membership. For this money I also need to wait 5+ minutes to get my ps4 out of sleep mode and into a multiplayer game. The service experiences pretty consistent downtime where I am locked out. The ps messages mobile app is terrible for trying to chat with a player. In game experience is even worse. I am also restricted to playing on my sofa at home when I spend a lot of time traveling for work with my laptop, iPad, etc. I would love to play NHL in my down time there. If Stadia got EA Sports to publish NHL, I'm sold. The end to end product experience is just going to be miles better. I imagine certain games unlock Stadia for certain people.

hartator 7y ago

1080p games should be able to run on a low spec PC. Why not buying the actual game?

fastball 7y ago
What modern game can run at 1080p/60fps on a low spec PC? What kinda of cost are we talking about when you say "low spec"?
- abdulmuhaimin 7y ago
  the free one is 1080p/30fps, not 60fps.
  - drusepth 7y ago
    The free Stadia tier is 1080p at 60fps. Ctrl+F "Stadia Base" at stadia.com.
- mrguyorama 7y ago
  Honestly? 4ish years of a stadia subscription will run any game released in that time period, and also the entire back catalog of PC gaming, minus some annoyingness around early 2000s games and permissions. My $500 PC runs VR at 1.7x supersampling with zero issues, and can 1080p60hz any game at all with zero trouble.
  - fastball 7y ago
    Exactly. Four years of a subscription you can pay month-to-month (and cancel if you're not using it) is much more doable for many people than a $500+ upfront investment in a gaming rig. Presumably you also built this yourself at that price point, which is another thing other people are not as willing to do. For me personally, I travel a lot so I like the idea of Stadia because obviously I'm not going to travel around with a gaming rig, and you can pry my 2015 Macbook Pro from my cold, dead hands.