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> I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. In my experience you should should never buy a product for w

> I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. In my experience you should should never buy a product for what it might be one day and instead only pay for the what you're getting on day one. That way you're never disappointed/always get what you paid for. For example I recently purchased an Oculus Rift. I waited until enough games released so that I couldn't be disappointed by the experience/value, and I haven't been. Anything else added after this is just value add. > I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2, the cheapest way to do that as I don't have a console nor an expensive computer is Stadia. Stadia costs $129 with no games. An XBox One S (Digital) on Black Friday, including a game, costs $200 or $150 with no game (e.g. NewEgg). So while your point is accurate, there isn't as much in "cost" as you'd think, and I'd argue that you get far more value with an XBox One S than a Stadia (even the digital one that cannot play BluRays).

tonmoy 7y ago
> Stadia costs $129 with no games No, stadia founder’s edition costs $129. The regular 1080p stadia is free
- gilrain 7y ago
  ... and isn't available.
- clinth 7y ago
  Right now, $130 is the only edition. I think the one you're talking about comes out next year.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    We're talking about the fundamental value of the product, so the normal price matters a lot more than the preorder price.
    - clinth 7y ago
      I get where you're coming from, but go to Stadia's page. Click "Buy Now". You land at $130 plus $10/month with no other options. This isn't a future product or preorder, this is launch. The hardware and service are live right now. If you want to play: $130 plus $10/month. I think this release structure is pretty daring. They're getting a lot of bad press, it's expensive, it's not a smooth experience. Also, if nobody gets on this holiday season, I'd expect game developers to throttle on putting money into optimizing for the platform, which would begin the platform death spiral.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        They don't have to say on their website that it's three-ish months of paid beta access to make that the reality. > Also, if nobody gets on this holiday season, I'd expect game developers to throttle on putting money into optimizing for the platform, which would begin the platform death spiral. Google can very easily afford to pay 50 developers to optimize for it. I only see this dying from Google's direct failures, not from that kind of death spiral.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- krzyk 7y ago
  > The regular 1080p stadia is free Will be free, somewhere in 2020
kyrra 7y ago
The $129 starting bundle gives you a controller ($69), and a Chromecast Ultra ($69), which is... $138. Plus the bundle gives 3 months of "Stadia Pro" which is the 4k streaming support (plus other goodies). So the $129 is more of a starter bundle. If you just want to play on your phone or PC, it's free (outside the cost of buying games). You can plug a PS4 or XBox controller into your PC, or pair them with your phone via bluetooth and use those. I believe there is also Nintendo Switch controller support. (I'm a googler, opinions are my own)
- v01dlight 7y ago
  Ok Google.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  Just to be clear the XBox One S for $150/$200 listed above also included a controller, it isn't just a bare console with no way to play on it. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
  - touchpadder 7y ago
    As an author of a browser game https://bad.city https://bad.city I noticed that over the last 5 years browser performance became 10x faster. The game currently works at 60fps, even on 2 year old Galaxy Note and has 0ms lag. With web workers and web assembly soon we'll see AAA games running in the browser on any device. No need to download 50gb game when you can progressively stream the 3d models in real time while playing and it will not depend on latency. It's already possible to run local wifi game servers on the phones. I see Stadia working for casual games on smart TVs but not for any competitive gaming. This process creates too much lag: send controller input over the wire, render on server, compress 4k video, send over the wire to the client, decompress 4k video, display in the device
    - dwild 7y ago
      > With web workers and web assembly soon we'll see AAA games running in the browser on any device. I heard something similar to that for the past 10 years at least. > you can progressively stream the 3d models in real time while playing People were amazed of the speed at which models loaded using an SSD instead of a mechanical hard drive... and that was when games were in the 5 GB range. Loading time is latency too. > I see Stadia working for casual games on smart TVs but not for any competitive gaming. Competitive gaming go toward more expensive gear... they won't care about buying an expensive graphic card if that give them an edge, or lower latency screen. If they are forced to play on cloud, they'll just pay for a better connection to do it. This is just like the stock market where they build datacenter just beside the exchange. I don't know if you would call me a "casual gamer", I'm certainly not a competitive gamer, but I get quite a bit of fun playing Borderland 3 on Nvidia Geforce Now. The latency isn't that bad, nothing I can really notice at least.
siffland 7y ago
cough Nintendo Virtual Boy cough Imagine buying that and only getting 22 Games total.......Good call on waiting on the Oculus Rift
tracer4201 7y ago
The Xbox One S for $150 is 7 year old hardware. I would hands down pay $130 if I don’t need to be concerned with hardware and can play with the latest and greatest graphics. I haven’t tried Stadia but just wanting to make the larger point.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  Only if you assume Stadia will be around seven years from now. You're essentially talking about spending $60 on game licenses, plus $130 on hardware, that may ultimately no longest exist in a few years. At least I can reasonably assume an XBox One S digital purchased today will still "basically work" five-seven years from now. I won't assume that about Stadia.
  - tracer4201 7y ago
    If it’s not around, for me thats okay. I bought a PS3 just before the PS4 came out. I’ve had it since 2012 - about 7 years. I haven’t touched it in quite a while.
sjs382 7y ago
> Stadia costs $129 with no games. Stadia is a service which Google says will be free in 2020. The $129 "Stadia FE" is a controller ($79 a la carte) and a Chromecast Ultra ($69 a la carte). "Stadia FE" also comes with two games: Destiny 2 and Samurai Showdown.
- odessacubbage 7y ago
  the fact that google is trying to to use a fighting game to showcase their product should tell you everything you need to know about their understanding of the market.
  - ssully 7y ago
    Can you elaborate on this comment? I really don't understand what you are trying to say
    - duskwuff 7y ago
      Fighting games are highly latency-sensitive, to the extent that many fighting game tournaments are played on CRTs (because image processing on flatscreen TVs introduces additional frames of latency). They're practically a worst case for a streaming video game service.
      - Ajedi32 7y ago
        Fighting games are also a best-case scenario for Stadia's latency-mitigation tech, since they often already have a rollback system implemented for online multiplayer.
      - ssully 7y ago
        I think that's exactly why they included it - to demonstrate how good (or bad) the latency is on Stadia.
      - odessacubbage 7y ago
        not only that, but the audience for fighting games and in particular one as niche as a legacy snk title, are people who will buy a 200 dollar arcade stick just to have slightly more consistent inputs & execution. this is not exactly a group of people that will accept latency that ranges from okayish to semi-unplayable. the samsho community is fucking livid right now that snk went through with this deal before releasing a proper pc port.
DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
> In my experience you should should never buy a product for what it might be one day and instead only pay for the what you're getting on day one. That way you're never disappointed/always get what you paid for. This seems apropos to Kickstarter as well. I've had some successes, but I also funded Animusic 3 and Star Citizen. EDIT: I've been somewhat disappointed about Star Citizen, but my mistake was telling my kids (unconditionally) that we'd be getting Animusic 3. Back then, that was a big deal for them.
larnmar 7y ago
I strongly suspect that if I bought a current-gen console today I’d probably be stuck waiting overnight for it to download and install whatever new updates it thinks it needs, and then if I didn’t use it for a few months it would be downloady-installs again. Consoles used to be nice and easy, plug and play, but the last couple of generations they’ve started to become almost as much trouble as gaming PCs, and I can’t be bothered dealing with that, so I’ve pretty much given up playing games. If there was a decent subscription service (Netflix priced) which let me play new games without having to deal with all that crap, I might take it.

tonmoy 7y ago

> Stadia costs $129 with no games No, stadia founder’s edition costs $129. The regular 1080p stadia is free

gilrain 7y ago
... and isn't available.
clinth 7y ago
Right now, $130 is the only edition. I think the one you're talking about comes out next year.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  We're talking about the fundamental value of the product, so the normal price matters a lot more than the preorder price.
  - clinth 7y ago
    I get where you're coming from, but go to Stadia's page. Click "Buy Now". You land at $130 plus $10/month with no other options. This isn't a future product or preorder, this is launch. The hardware and service are live right now. If you want to play: $130 plus $10/month. I think this release structure is pretty daring. They're getting a lot of bad press, it's expensive, it's not a smooth experience. Also, if nobody gets on this holiday season, I'd expect game developers to throttle on putting money into optimizing for the platform, which would begin the platform death spiral.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      They don't have to say on their website that it's three-ish months of paid beta access to make that the reality. > Also, if nobody gets on this holiday season, I'd expect game developers to throttle on putting money into optimizing for the platform, which would begin the platform death spiral. Google can very easily afford to pay 50 developers to optimize for it. I only see this dying from Google's direct failures, not from that kind of death spiral.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
krzyk 7y ago
> The regular 1080p stadia is free Will be free, somewhere in 2020

kyrra 7y ago

The $129 starting bundle gives you a controller ($69), and a Chromecast Ultra ($69), which is... $138. Plus the bundle gives 3 months of "Stadia Pro" which is the 4k streaming support (plus other goodies). So the $129 is more of a starter bundle. If you just want to play on your phone or PC, it's free (outside the cost of buying games). You can plug a PS4 or XBox controller into your PC, or pair them with your phone via bluetooth and use those. I believe there is also Nintendo Switch controller support. (I'm a googler, opinions are my own)

v01dlight 7y ago
Ok Google.
Someone1234 7y ago
Just to be clear the XBox One S for $150/$200 listed above also included a controller, it isn't just a bare console with no way to play on it. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
- touchpadder 7y ago
  As an author of a browser game https://bad.city https://bad.city I noticed that over the last 5 years browser performance became 10x faster. The game currently works at 60fps, even on 2 year old Galaxy Note and has 0ms lag. With web workers and web assembly soon we'll see AAA games running in the browser on any device. No need to download 50gb game when you can progressively stream the 3d models in real time while playing and it will not depend on latency. It's already possible to run local wifi game servers on the phones. I see Stadia working for casual games on smart TVs but not for any competitive gaming. This process creates too much lag: send controller input over the wire, render on server, compress 4k video, send over the wire to the client, decompress 4k video, display in the device
  - dwild 7y ago
    > With web workers and web assembly soon we'll see AAA games running in the browser on any device. I heard something similar to that for the past 10 years at least. > you can progressively stream the 3d models in real time while playing People were amazed of the speed at which models loaded using an SSD instead of a mechanical hard drive... and that was when games were in the 5 GB range. Loading time is latency too. > I see Stadia working for casual games on smart TVs but not for any competitive gaming. Competitive gaming go toward more expensive gear... they won't care about buying an expensive graphic card if that give them an edge, or lower latency screen. If they are forced to play on cloud, they'll just pay for a better connection to do it. This is just like the stock market where they build datacenter just beside the exchange. I don't know if you would call me a "casual gamer", I'm certainly not a competitive gamer, but I get quite a bit of fun playing Borderland 3 on Nvidia Geforce Now. The latency isn't that bad, nothing I can really notice at least.

siffland 7y ago

cough Nintendo Virtual Boy cough Imagine buying that and only getting 22 Games total.......Good call on waiting on the Oculus Rift

tracer4201 7y ago

The Xbox One S for $150 is 7 year old hardware. I would hands down pay $130 if I don’t need to be concerned with hardware and can play with the latest and greatest graphics. I haven’t tried Stadia but just wanting to make the larger point.

Someone1234 7y ago
Only if you assume Stadia will be around seven years from now. You're essentially talking about spending $60 on game licenses, plus $130 on hardware, that may ultimately no longest exist in a few years. At least I can reasonably assume an XBox One S digital purchased today will still "basically work" five-seven years from now. I won't assume that about Stadia.
- tracer4201 7y ago
  If it’s not around, for me thats okay. I bought a PS3 just before the PS4 came out. I’ve had it since 2012 - about 7 years. I haven’t touched it in quite a while.

sjs382 7y ago

> Stadia costs $129 with no games. Stadia is a service which Google says will be free in 2020. The $129 "Stadia FE" is a controller ($79 a la carte) and a Chromecast Ultra ($69 a la carte). "Stadia FE" also comes with two games: Destiny 2 and Samurai Showdown.

odessacubbage 7y ago
the fact that google is trying to to use a fighting game to showcase their product should tell you everything you need to know about their understanding of the market.
- ssully 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on this comment? I really don't understand what you are trying to say
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    Fighting games are highly latency-sensitive, to the extent that many fighting game tournaments are played on CRTs (because image processing on flatscreen TVs introduces additional frames of latency). They're practically a worst case for a streaming video game service.
    - Ajedi32 7y ago
      Fighting games are also a best-case scenario for Stadia's latency-mitigation tech, since they often already have a rollback system implemented for online multiplayer.
    - ssully 7y ago
      I think that's exactly why they included it - to demonstrate how good (or bad) the latency is on Stadia.
    - odessacubbage 7y ago
      not only that, but the audience for fighting games and in particular one as niche as a legacy snk title, are people who will buy a 200 dollar arcade stick just to have slightly more consistent inputs & execution. this is not exactly a group of people that will accept latency that ranges from okayish to semi-unplayable. the samsho community is fucking livid right now that snk went through with this deal before releasing a proper pc port.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago

> In my experience you should should never buy a product for what it might be one day and instead only pay for the what you're getting on day one. That way you're never disappointed/always get what you paid for. This seems apropos to Kickstarter as well. I've had some successes, but I also funded Animusic 3 and Star Citizen. EDIT: I've been somewhat disappointed about Star Citizen, but my mistake was telling my kids (unconditionally) that we'd be getting Animusic 3. Back then, that was a big deal for them.

larnmar 7y ago

I strongly suspect that if I bought a current-gen console today I’d probably be stuck waiting overnight for it to download and install whatever new updates it thinks it needs, and then if I didn’t use it for a few months it would be downloady-installs again. Consoles used to be nice and easy, plug and play, but the last couple of generations they’ve started to become almost as much trouble as gaming PCs, and I can’t be bothered dealing with that, so I’ve pretty much given up playing games. If there was a decent subscription service (Netflix priced) which let me play new games without having to deal with all that crap, I might take it.