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"Gamers" don't want Stadia. And all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. It's targeted for those that don't have

"Gamers" don't want Stadia. And all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. It's targeted for those that don't have either, like me. I carry my Pixelbook everywhere and would be nice to play games on it. I don't want another device to carry around and don't have the time or patience to wait for patches/updates or the ridiculous storage requirements games have nowadays. The only part that stumps me is why you need pay $130 for a controller and a Chromecast with "special" software on it. Isn't the whole premise that you don't need dedicated hardware to play games?

shinteao 7y ago
>all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. I think most people who like playing video games would have some sort of video game playing hardware, yes. So, they might have opinions on what a good gaming experience is. And, if they have issues with Stadia (incl latency, graphical fidelity, and library), then it might be coming from an informed place.
- vvanders 7y ago
  Yup, also if you look at people who write or have written netcode for a living, it's been pretty obvious where Stadia was heading for a while. You need to be able to reliably hide ~100-200ms of latency for any number of reasons. If you're talking about something that runs over wifi you're fighting against the laws of physics and no back-end infrastructure is going to save you. The way you do that is with client side dead-reckoning and/or lock-step simulation with a pre-shared seed. Streaming video eliminates any opportunity to do that and you don't get to buffer frames ahead like Netflix can. There's a reason OnLive folded and I wouldn't be surprised if you see Stadia EoL'd in the next year or two.
  - thrownblown 7y ago
    I lost a lot of games when OnLive folded (LA Noir, Sleeping Dogs, Darksiders 2, London Olympics 2012, Deus Ex Human Revolution.....)
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    I think Stadia could work in big cities. If Google has servers in the city and you're using a wired connection then it should work fine for a large portion of games. It probably won't give a good experience for first person shooters though.
  - vel0city 7y ago
    100-200ms latency seems a little extreme to me. Its an 8ms ping from my home to the nearest Google edge node (supposedly where Stadia nodes will live), 9-11ms on my WiFi. Compression and decompression of the video stream with hardware acceleration and tuned for speed over quality should only add maybe another ms or two. Where is the extra 80+ms coming from?
    - vvanders 7y ago
      All it takes is someone turning on a microwave down the block from you to drop 4-5 packets in a row and you get close to the 100ms number. Channel congestion in dense urban areas approaches the same limit, heck Ars was just talking about a technique today[1] that because it doesn't respect channel slots drops throughput of any router within 60m by 20%. 100-200ms is an upper bound, however they were reliably doing client-side latency prediction back in '96[2] over 300-400ms dial up connections with little fidelity loss including servers supporting 200+ concurrent players. I'm sure there's a niche of people for which streaming is usable, however we would design games with latency in mind(and how we'd deal with it) as a part of fundamental mechanics of the game. Here they're just slapping them on a video stream and hoping it works. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/where-the-wi-fi-sucks-is-where-a-new-wireless-protocol-does-its-magic/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/where-the-wi-fi-suck... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game)
      - jfim 7y ago
        To be fair, network connections have significantly improved since the 90s. Your point still stands though, on a wireless network, it only takes some interference from other devices to cause latency spikes that make latency sensitive games frustrating to play, even if the actual upstream connection is of high quality. I've had quite a bit of issues with playing games on wireless networks in urban areas that go away magically by using an ethernet cable; the stuttering that happens when ping spikes from 30ms to 400ms is very jarring. If Stadia is used for games that are not latency sensitive, such as deckbuilding games or turn based strategy games, it's fine. Using it for competitive first person shooters is likely to be very frustrating on anything but a wired network with good upstream connectivity or a wireless network with no major noise sources.
  - benhurmarcel 7y ago
    > You need to be able to reliably hide ~100-200ms of latency for any number of reasons. If you're talking about something that runs over wifi you're fighting against the laws of physics and no back-end infrastructure is going to save you. There's margin no? I mean, right now I get 3ms ping to Google from my wired computer, and 10~15ms from my phone on wifi. Wifi doesn't add that much. And I'm in a large European city, not in Silicon Valley.
  - FooHentai 7y ago
    I agree with your overall point but not so sure on this specific piece: >If you're talking about something that runs over WiFi you're fighting against the laws of physics and no back-end infrastructure is going to save you. Signal propagation speed (velocity factor) over air is only a bit slower than cat7 copper, and on-par with fiber optic. From memory: In a vacuum: VF = 1 (equal to speed of light) Over copper: VF = .75 (one quarter speed of light) Over air or fiber: VF = .66 (one third speed of light) Wi-Fi is measurably slower than wired copper cable for a few reasons but I don't understand physics to be one of them. With the distances relevant to last-mile connectivity like we're discussing here, that difference in VF appears to be immaterial. Then again, you could argue that the air being a contended medium is by it's very nature a physics problem, and that does seem to be the root of most of the drawbacks of running low-latency workloads over wireless. Not necessarily an insurmountable physics limit though, with spectrum allocation, code division, and beam forming already doing a lot to mitigate the issue, there's the potential for further developments that might bring things to parity. Still, you're not going to get past the VF limit I described above but again, if we're only talking about in-home WiFi rather than across the entire service-to-consumer run, it doesn't play a large part.
- turtlebits 7y ago
  > I think most people who like playing video games would have some sort of video game playing hardware, yes. I disagree, in this age of phones/tablets, I'm pretty sure total amount of time played on these devices is greater than consoles/PCs. That said, I don't need 4K HDR 60fps <10ms ping (nor should any reasonable person expect this from a streaming service). The fact is that Stadia makes it possible to play games on devices where it previously was impossible is pretty compelling. (even if it's at 720p).
  - hakfoo 7y ago
    >The fact is that Stadia makes it possible to play games on devices where it previously was impossible is pretty compelling. (even if it's at 720p). It makes it possible to play modern AAA games on devices where it previously was impossible. That's a dramatic difference. There are plenty of incredible gaming experiences you can have on low-powered hardware, without needing a clunky streaming-as-a-service infrastructure to back them up. They just won't be the latest FIFA/Elder Scrolls/Call of Battlefield: Modern Duty. Honestly, I tend to think that having environments that don't have full fat AAA games available is good for the gaming market as a whole. It opens up markets for indie developers and new formats. I'm thinking of the Wii and Switch for comparison-- if they had been built with the same spec hardware as their competitors, they would have been flooded with ports of the big multi-platform franchises, rather than the unique experiences they're known for. Sonme of my favourite gaming experiences include playing Zangband on an already-obsolete Pentium II in 2003, and Cave Story on a pre-Atom netbook starring a 900MHz Celeron-M.
    - xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
      I think this is truly the crux of the product's potential. Triple A FPS games are never going to hit it big on a streaming service, especially in any sort of competitive circle. The real opportunity is for games where latency isn't really important. Beautiful turn based games, cinematic choose-your-own adventures. The second path is for games to be developed with appropriate tolerances & latency-forgiving mechanics. Take a modern platformer like Super Meat Boy or Celeste, where you are given a window of frames in which you can jump/react before failure. Even modern games like Mario Odyssey accommodate input latency of wireless controllers/HDMI displays. Similar accomodations can and will be made for games targeting streaming services.
- autoexec 7y ago
  I think anyone who has interest in video games should be concerned with what we give up by games a service model. It means all of your games can now be censored or deleted at any time without any notice to you. It means you can't mod your games as you please. It means you can't resell the games you've bought or share them with friends and family. It means you can't play without internet access. Beyond the overpriced hardware and monthly fee there's a lot being sacrificed for the ability to game anywhere. Another thing you give up is your privacy as this will simply be one more way to track you, your location, what you're playing, when and how long you play, who you're talking with online and what you're saying. All of that will be tracked and logged and analyzed by google.
- nhumrich 7y ago
  > I think most people who like playing video games would have some sort of video game playing hardware, yes. False. Almost everyone who owns a smartphone plays videogames now. The mobile game market is huge. A lot of people dont own hardware specifically for video games, but still like to game. Its very possible stadia will work on android soon . Xbox has a similar service in brta that already works on phones.
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    The context here is obviously PC/console gamers. No one is clamouring for Candy Crush to be brought to Stadia. There may be overlap, but the mediums are completely different.
krzyk 7y ago
Controller and chromecast is for console guys, we laptop owners can use mouse+keyboard + chrome browser to play. But this will be available later, unless you want o throw $130 for just 3 months of Stadia Pro (and a controller+chromecast that will gather dust).
- turtlebits 7y ago
  You need both to play at launch. Seems more like an early adopter tax - they could have just provided an update to the existing Chromecast Ultra and let you use a Bluetooth controller. Heck, I'd shell out the $130 if was in the form of prepaid credit or something else. I don't want 2 more devices - and I'm not interested in playing on my TV.
gamblor956 7y ago
Good luck finding public WiFi with sufficient bandwidth and latency to let you play Stadia out and about...
- tus88 7y ago
  It's actually neither bandwidth nor latency (alone). Its variability - the reason you can play a 4k video on YouTube smoothly is because of buffering, which smooths out dips in mbps. Stadia can't buffer for obvious reasons, meaning every frame has to be delivered with minimal latency.
  - gowld 7y ago
    I don't know what Stadia does, but it could * downsample when connection is poor * extrapolate future frames from past frames, either locally or by sending bonus frames from server.
    - acchow 7y ago
      What about latency to inputting some command on your controller? Like "move to here".
- turtlebits 7y ago
  I guess I should have clarified. My only devices are a Pixelbook and my work MBP - no desktop. Playing at home (or work) are totally fine for me. Playing games like Hearthstone (where latency isn't breaking factor) is fine with me as well.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    FWIW Hearthstone calibre games are already playable on any moderately recent smartphone. Not much gain from Stadia in that regard.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      To add to that: I've played Hearthstone itself on a Oneplus One (phone from 2014).
mrep 7y ago
> The only part that stumps me is why you need pay $130 for a controller and a Chromecast with "special" software on it. Isn't the whole premise that you don't need dedicated hardware to play games? That is for the premier founders edition. The free one is coming next year [0]. [0 ctr-f base]: https://store.google.com/product/stadia_learn https://store.google.com/product/stadia_learn
nkrisc 7y ago
If this is true, I'm genuinely curious to see how big the cross section is of people who don't have a gaming-capable PC nor console and people who are willing to pay full value for AAA games.
- ProZsolt 7y ago
  This exactly! I'm playing 4-5 games a year. Currently, I buy a few year old games from Steam that can run on my laptop. there is tons of great games out there for a less than $10 https://xkcd.com/606/ https://xkcd.com/606/ This would be a perfect solution for me if I didn't have to play full price
jandrese 7y ago
So the target market is people who want to play video games but don't have a gaming system? Maybe their catalog should be more casual/indie oriented? It's hard to imagine too many people who want to play a loud shooty game like Red Dead Redemption 2 but don't have a console or PC already. On the other hand, the price point seems kind of high for someone who wants to play card games or Words With Friends style games.
- gowld 7y ago
  casual/indie games don't require a powerful GPU in the cloud, they work on your local device.
- larnmar 7y ago
  I want to play RDR2 but don’t have a console, because dealing with consoles is just too much trouble these days. Mind you I’ve also heard that RDR2 is about eight hours of slog before you even get to the point where you can just dick around, so I guess modern games just aren’t designed for people with any other time commitments these days.
drusepth 7y ago
I'm a gamer with a heavy Xbox One that I lugged across 15 countries over 2 years and I cannot wait to replace it with Stadia. 90% of the time my Xbox is just a YouTube/Netflix machine, but that means it wins out the TV's HDMI port over the Chromecast for the 10% of time someone wants to play a game. Adding "gaming" to Chromecast makes a $300 console vs a $60-70 controller a no-brainer, especially when you throw travel into the mix. If my Switch supported Netflix, it would have filled this niche but... it can't. >The only part that stumps me is why you need pay $130 for a controller and a Chromecast with "special" software on it. Isn't the whole premise that you don't need dedicated hardware to play games? I might be wrong on this, but $130 was for the controller and a Chromecast Ultra (which retails $70), so I'd assume controllers will run $60-70 after launch.
dzhiurgis 7y ago
Plus the cost of the game, purchased outright doesn't make sense to me either. I wanna be able to pay by the hour. Make barrier of entry like $20 with subsidised controller and then millions will jump in.
corodra 7y ago
I'm seeing this a lot and don't understand... where the hell are you people travelling where bringing a console/game system is a concern? I travel for work or for vacation. If for work, I'm there hitting "Spit money out for me" at an ATM. Not gaming. I'm not home so I can make much better money in a short timespan to enjoy home time more. End of days is visiting restaurants/bars and either socializing or schmoozing clients. If none of that, I read a book, do work on the laptop or enjoy a movie. Vacation... I mean... seriously, I can game at home. I go somewhere to do NOT home stuff. Why would I travel somewhere and spend money to... play video games like I would at home? Even not vacation, I go to the beach on the weekend to... hear me out... walk on the sand, sun bathe and go in water. These excuses for a subpar games as a service are pretty ridiculous. It's an obvious "We found a solution to a problem that doesn't exist". That and the controller looks so bottom barrel generic. It's like the knock-off to a knock-off of an Xbox controller until they realized it was for a ps3 instead and did a late night change to it. Edit: I get it, everyone vacations differently. But playing video games while out on vacation is like bringing a Subway sandwich to a 3-star steakhouse restaurant. You are there to not-home. But I also don't get the japanese restaurants where they expect you to cook your own food. Mofo, if I'm going to cook, I'll cook at home. I go somewhere to pay a premium for food, it's so I don't have to cook it. I'm 32, stop making me feel like the old man yelling to stay off my lawn!
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Your post makes sense if the only travel you do is your 2-week vacation you get every year while always returning to a permanent living fixture, like a house you own. Or if you just don't mind owning a bunch of appliances. I'm someone who lives abroad and doesn't like hunkering down with any equipment, not even a bookcase. I don't like staying in one apartment for a long time. The only cooking appliance I own is a single cast iron skillet. Something like Stadia interests me if it can deliver. Also, even when you're at the beach all day every day, you still come back to a place to sleep where you might enjoy some gaming or Netflix. And if you are living there for weeks, you'll find that you don't need to visit the beach every single day to enjoy your time there. It's nice to merely do something you love in a place you love. :) I'm generally happy with the few games I have on my Macbook Pro. But even on a $2000 two-year-old machine, I have to play almost everything at minimal gfx settings and I have limited SSD space. Even a game like Civilization 5 becomes a stuttering mess. I don't see the need to dismiss Stadia without trying it.
summerlight 7y ago
Yeah, the status quo is a bit disappointing. In a technical point of view, it's pretty nice. But for UX, there are simply too many moving parts (Stadia App + Chromecast + Stadia Controller + monthly subscription), which defeats its own purpose. Hopefully, most of this artificial requirements will be gone in a coming year, but it's still far from its true vision. Clicking a "Play now" on Youtube does make a lot of sense, but the important question is "when".
tootie 7y ago
I still think they're not really getting to any sort of market fit. There's avid gamers who will buy a serious console or gaming PC and is likely spending quite a bit on games. Then there's casual gamers who getting their fix by playing Candy Crush on the subway. Google seems to be aiming for some middle ground of people willing to dedicate time and money, but just not that much. I'm not sure that market even exists or if their product is hitting it effectively. It seems like yet another technology-driven product launch.
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  I'm a casual gamer that likes PC/console games. You don't have to be a serious gamer to like something else than Candy Crush.
  - buboard 7y ago
    but then you've probably already invested in some game pc/console. not one of the mythical people referenced here
    - benhurmarcel 7y ago
      Yes, but I can see myself considering streaming services when it's time to replace it. I don't need a €2k+ machine most of the time. I could buy quite a few years of streaming service with the saved cash.
      - p1necone 7y ago
        If you spent €2k+ on a gaming PC you're definitely not in the casual crowd. (Or you've got a lot of disposable income I guess)
        HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
        Or I want to be able to handle Chromium? Really though, my "gaming computer" winds up getting used more for CAD than gaming (by me) at this point. I'm probably a casual gamer.
BinaryIdiot 7y ago
> The only part that stumps me is why you need pay $130 for a controller and a Chromecast with "special" software on it. Isn't the whole premise that you don't need dedicated hardware to play games? It's only for early adopters. They said they want to limit availability until a wider release in early 2020 (where you won't have to pay for anything at all except the game if you want).
- gowld 7y ago
  I know economics says "raise the price to lower demand when supply is limited", but marketing says "don't tarnish your brand by charging a high price and setting high expectations for an experimental prototype". Remember the $1200 Glass?
on_and_off 7y ago
$130 does not really shock me for controller + chromecast, it sounds in the right ballpark if I bought both of these separately. I already own a ps4 and a switch so I guess I count as a gamer. I still preordered Stadia because the tech demo was on point and it sounds like a good way to run games with high requirements. It is probably not going to happen (at least not in the first years) but the ability to handle mods would be the killer feature for me. It is currently not possible on consoles, and I just don't want to invest the time/space to build a pc.
- catalogia 7y ago
  > "$130 does not really shock me for controller + chromecast, it sounds in the right ballpark if I bought both of these separately." A chromecast and a PS4 controller purchased separately today would be closer to half that much.
  - on_and_off 7y ago
    dualshock 4 = 66 dollars (I know you can find it for cheaper, but that's the price on playstation.com) chromecast ultra = 70 dollars so I am going to stand by my original comment ;)
    - catalogia 7y ago
      I think most people would just buy it at walmart who's selling it for $44, or amazon where it's also being sold for $44 ("by Playstation".) 3rd gen chromecast (is that not sufficient to stream video?) is $35. So $79 vs $130/136. That's quite a lot to many people. You can pick the more expensive options to make a point I guess, though I'm not sure what that point would be.
      - on_and_off 7y ago
        except that stadia requires an ultra You can pick the options that won't work to make a point I guess, though I'm not sure what that point would be.
ahartmetz 7y ago
I see most SaaS the same way. Often (I'd go as far as saying usually) it is not what customers want, it is what vendors can push on them to get recurring revenue. Also it's not gonna work for fast-paced games without turning those games into the stupidest skinnerboxes at some level behind the scenes. In order to make it possible to send precalculated results for latency hiding, a lot of freedom needs to go.
krlx 7y ago
The additional hardware would also block me. For a 4 months trip in Europe I used a service similar to Stadia: Shadow.tech that runs on your regular pc. Made able to rank up on For Honor quite nicely, even if it was not as nice as my too expensive gaming PC. You definetly should have a look at it.
manigandham 7y ago
What about paying full price to rent (and never own) old AAA games?

shinteao 7y ago

>all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. I think most people who like playing video games would have some sort of video game playing hardware, yes. So, they might have opinions on what a good gaming experience is. And, if they have issues with Stadia (incl latency, graphical fidelity, and library), then it might be coming from an informed place.

vvanders 7y ago
Yup, also if you look at people who write or have written netcode for a living, it's been pretty obvious where Stadia was heading for a while. You need to be able to reliably hide ~100-200ms of latency for any number of reasons. If you're talking about something that runs over wifi you're fighting against the laws of physics and no back-end infrastructure is going to save you. The way you do that is with client side dead-reckoning and/or lock-step simulation with a pre-shared seed. Streaming video eliminates any opportunity to do that and you don't get to buffer frames ahead like Netflix can. There's a reason OnLive folded and I wouldn't be surprised if you see Stadia EoL'd in the next year or two.
- thrownblown 7y ago
  I lost a lot of games when OnLive folded (LA Noir, Sleeping Dogs, Darksiders 2, London Olympics 2012, Deus Ex Human Revolution.....)
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I think Stadia could work in big cities. If Google has servers in the city and you're using a wired connection then it should work fine for a large portion of games. It probably won't give a good experience for first person shooters though.
- vel0city 7y ago
  100-200ms latency seems a little extreme to me. Its an 8ms ping from my home to the nearest Google edge node (supposedly where Stadia nodes will live), 9-11ms on my WiFi. Compression and decompression of the video stream with hardware acceleration and tuned for speed over quality should only add maybe another ms or two. Where is the extra 80+ms coming from?
  - vvanders 7y ago
    All it takes is someone turning on a microwave down the block from you to drop 4-5 packets in a row and you get close to the 100ms number. Channel congestion in dense urban areas approaches the same limit, heck Ars was just talking about a technique today[1] that because it doesn't respect channel slots drops throughput of any router within 60m by 20%. 100-200ms is an upper bound, however they were reliably doing client-side latency prediction back in '96[2] over 300-400ms dial up connections with little fidelity loss including servers supporting 200+ concurrent players. I'm sure there's a niche of people for which streaming is usable, however we would design games with latency in mind(and how we'd deal with it) as a part of fundamental mechanics of the game. Here they're just slapping them on a video stream and hoping it works. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/where-the-wi-fi-sucks-is-where-a-new-wireless-protocol-does-its-magic/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/where-the-wi-fi-suck... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game)
    - jfim 7y ago
      To be fair, network connections have significantly improved since the 90s. Your point still stands though, on a wireless network, it only takes some interference from other devices to cause latency spikes that make latency sensitive games frustrating to play, even if the actual upstream connection is of high quality. I've had quite a bit of issues with playing games on wireless networks in urban areas that go away magically by using an ethernet cable; the stuttering that happens when ping spikes from 30ms to 400ms is very jarring. If Stadia is used for games that are not latency sensitive, such as deckbuilding games or turn based strategy games, it's fine. Using it for competitive first person shooters is likely to be very frustrating on anything but a wired network with good upstream connectivity or a wireless network with no major noise sources.
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  > You need to be able to reliably hide ~100-200ms of latency for any number of reasons. If you're talking about something that runs over wifi you're fighting against the laws of physics and no back-end infrastructure is going to save you. There's margin no? I mean, right now I get 3ms ping to Google from my wired computer, and 10~15ms from my phone on wifi. Wifi doesn't add that much. And I'm in a large European city, not in Silicon Valley.
- FooHentai 7y ago
  I agree with your overall point but not so sure on this specific piece: >If you're talking about something that runs over WiFi you're fighting against the laws of physics and no back-end infrastructure is going to save you. Signal propagation speed (velocity factor) over air is only a bit slower than cat7 copper, and on-par with fiber optic. From memory: In a vacuum: VF = 1 (equal to speed of light) Over copper: VF = .75 (one quarter speed of light) Over air or fiber: VF = .66 (one third speed of light) Wi-Fi is measurably slower than wired copper cable for a few reasons but I don't understand physics to be one of them. With the distances relevant to last-mile connectivity like we're discussing here, that difference in VF appears to be immaterial. Then again, you could argue that the air being a contended medium is by it's very nature a physics problem, and that does seem to be the root of most of the drawbacks of running low-latency workloads over wireless. Not necessarily an insurmountable physics limit though, with spectrum allocation, code division, and beam forming already doing a lot to mitigate the issue, there's the potential for further developments that might bring things to parity. Still, you're not going to get past the VF limit I described above but again, if we're only talking about in-home WiFi rather than across the entire service-to-consumer run, it doesn't play a large part.
turtlebits 7y ago
> I think most people who like playing video games would have some sort of video game playing hardware, yes. I disagree, in this age of phones/tablets, I'm pretty sure total amount of time played on these devices is greater than consoles/PCs. That said, I don't need 4K HDR 60fps <10ms ping (nor should any reasonable person expect this from a streaming service). The fact is that Stadia makes it possible to play games on devices where it previously was impossible is pretty compelling. (even if it's at 720p).
- hakfoo 7y ago
  >The fact is that Stadia makes it possible to play games on devices where it previously was impossible is pretty compelling. (even if it's at 720p). It makes it possible to play modern AAA games on devices where it previously was impossible. That's a dramatic difference. There are plenty of incredible gaming experiences you can have on low-powered hardware, without needing a clunky streaming-as-a-service infrastructure to back them up. They just won't be the latest FIFA/Elder Scrolls/Call of Battlefield: Modern Duty. Honestly, I tend to think that having environments that don't have full fat AAA games available is good for the gaming market as a whole. It opens up markets for indie developers and new formats. I'm thinking of the Wii and Switch for comparison-- if they had been built with the same spec hardware as their competitors, they would have been flooded with ports of the big multi-platform franchises, rather than the unique experiences they're known for. Sonme of my favourite gaming experiences include playing Zangband on an already-obsolete Pentium II in 2003, and Cave Story on a pre-Atom netbook starring a 900MHz Celeron-M.
  - xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
    I think this is truly the crux of the product's potential. Triple A FPS games are never going to hit it big on a streaming service, especially in any sort of competitive circle. The real opportunity is for games where latency isn't really important. Beautiful turn based games, cinematic choose-your-own adventures. The second path is for games to be developed with appropriate tolerances & latency-forgiving mechanics. Take a modern platformer like Super Meat Boy or Celeste, where you are given a window of frames in which you can jump/react before failure. Even modern games like Mario Odyssey accommodate input latency of wireless controllers/HDMI displays. Similar accomodations can and will be made for games targeting streaming services.
autoexec 7y ago
I think anyone who has interest in video games should be concerned with what we give up by games a service model. It means all of your games can now be censored or deleted at any time without any notice to you. It means you can't mod your games as you please. It means you can't resell the games you've bought or share them with friends and family. It means you can't play without internet access. Beyond the overpriced hardware and monthly fee there's a lot being sacrificed for the ability to game anywhere. Another thing you give up is your privacy as this will simply be one more way to track you, your location, what you're playing, when and how long you play, who you're talking with online and what you're saying. All of that will be tracked and logged and analyzed by google.
nhumrich 7y ago
> I think most people who like playing video games would have some sort of video game playing hardware, yes. False. Almost everyone who owns a smartphone plays videogames now. The mobile game market is huge. A lot of people dont own hardware specifically for video games, but still like to game. Its very possible stadia will work on android soon . Xbox has a similar service in brta that already works on phones.
- EpicEng 7y ago
  The context here is obviously PC/console gamers. No one is clamouring for Candy Crush to be brought to Stadia. There may be overlap, but the mediums are completely different.

krzyk 7y ago

Controller and chromecast is for console guys, we laptop owners can use mouse+keyboard + chrome browser to play. But this will be available later, unless you want o throw $130 for just 3 months of Stadia Pro (and a controller+chromecast that will gather dust).

turtlebits 7y ago
You need both to play at launch. Seems more like an early adopter tax - they could have just provided an update to the existing Chromecast Ultra and let you use a Bluetooth controller. Heck, I'd shell out the $130 if was in the form of prepaid credit or something else. I don't want 2 more devices - and I'm not interested in playing on my TV.

gamblor956 7y ago

Good luck finding public WiFi with sufficient bandwidth and latency to let you play Stadia out and about...

tus88 7y ago
It's actually neither bandwidth nor latency (alone). Its variability - the reason you can play a 4k video on YouTube smoothly is because of buffering, which smooths out dips in mbps. Stadia can't buffer for obvious reasons, meaning every frame has to be delivered with minimal latency.
- gowld 7y ago
  I don't know what Stadia does, but it could * downsample when connection is poor * extrapolate future frames from past frames, either locally or by sending bonus frames from server.
  - acchow 7y ago
    What about latency to inputting some command on your controller? Like "move to here".
turtlebits 7y ago
I guess I should have clarified. My only devices are a Pixelbook and my work MBP - no desktop. Playing at home (or work) are totally fine for me. Playing games like Hearthstone (where latency isn't breaking factor) is fine with me as well.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  FWIW Hearthstone calibre games are already playable on any moderately recent smartphone. Not much gain from Stadia in that regard.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    To add to that: I've played Hearthstone itself on a Oneplus One (phone from 2014).

mrep 7y ago

> The only part that stumps me is why you need pay $130 for a controller and a Chromecast with "special" software on it. Isn't the whole premise that you don't need dedicated hardware to play games? That is for the premier founders edition. The free one is coming next year [0]. [0 ctr-f base]: https://store.google.com/product/stadia_learn https://store.google.com/product/stadia_learn

nkrisc 7y ago

If this is true, I'm genuinely curious to see how big the cross section is of people who don't have a gaming-capable PC nor console and people who are willing to pay full value for AAA games.

ProZsolt 7y ago
This exactly! I'm playing 4-5 games a year. Currently, I buy a few year old games from Steam that can run on my laptop. there is tons of great games out there for a less than $10 https://xkcd.com/606/ https://xkcd.com/606/ This would be a perfect solution for me if I didn't have to play full price

jandrese 7y ago

So the target market is people who want to play video games but don't have a gaming system? Maybe their catalog should be more casual/indie oriented? It's hard to imagine too many people who want to play a loud shooty game like Red Dead Redemption 2 but don't have a console or PC already. On the other hand, the price point seems kind of high for someone who wants to play card games or Words With Friends style games.

gowld 7y ago
casual/indie games don't require a powerful GPU in the cloud, they work on your local device.
larnmar 7y ago
I want to play RDR2 but don’t have a console, because dealing with consoles is just too much trouble these days. Mind you I’ve also heard that RDR2 is about eight hours of slog before you even get to the point where you can just dick around, so I guess modern games just aren’t designed for people with any other time commitments these days.

drusepth 7y ago

I'm a gamer with a heavy Xbox One that I lugged across 15 countries over 2 years and I cannot wait to replace it with Stadia. 90% of the time my Xbox is just a YouTube/Netflix machine, but that means it wins out the TV's HDMI port over the Chromecast for the 10% of time someone wants to play a game. Adding "gaming" to Chromecast makes a $300 console vs a $60-70 controller a no-brainer, especially when you throw travel into the mix. If my Switch supported Netflix, it would have filled this niche but... it can't. >The only part that stumps me is why you need pay $130 for a controller and a Chromecast with "special" software on it. Isn't the whole premise that you don't need dedicated hardware to play games? I might be wrong on this, but $130 was for the controller and a Chromecast Ultra (which retails $70), so I'd assume controllers will run $60-70 after launch.

dzhiurgis 7y ago

Plus the cost of the game, purchased outright doesn't make sense to me either. I wanna be able to pay by the hour. Make barrier of entry like $20 with subsidised controller and then millions will jump in.

corodra 7y ago

I'm seeing this a lot and don't understand... where the hell are you people travelling where bringing a console/game system is a concern? I travel for work or for vacation. If for work, I'm there hitting "Spit money out for me" at an ATM. Not gaming. I'm not home so I can make much better money in a short timespan to enjoy home time more. End of days is visiting restaurants/bars and either socializing or schmoozing clients. If none of that, I read a book, do work on the laptop or enjoy a movie. Vacation... I mean... seriously, I can game at home. I go somewhere to do NOT home stuff. Why would I travel somewhere and spend money to... play video games like I would at home? Even not vacation, I go to the beach on the weekend to... hear me out... walk on the sand, sun bathe and go in water. These excuses for a subpar games as a service are pretty ridiculous. It's an obvious "We found a solution to a problem that doesn't exist". That and the controller looks so bottom barrel generic. It's like the knock-off to a knock-off of an Xbox controller until they realized it was for a ps3 instead and did a late night change to it. Edit: I get it, everyone vacations differently. But playing video games while out on vacation is like bringing a Subway sandwich to a 3-star steakhouse restaurant. You are there to not-home. But I also don't get the japanese restaurants where they expect you to cook your own food. Mofo, if I'm going to cook, I'll cook at home. I go somewhere to pay a premium for food, it's so I don't have to cook it. I'm 32, stop making me feel like the old man yelling to stay off my lawn!

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Your post makes sense if the only travel you do is your 2-week vacation you get every year while always returning to a permanent living fixture, like a house you own. Or if you just don't mind owning a bunch of appliances. I'm someone who lives abroad and doesn't like hunkering down with any equipment, not even a bookcase. I don't like staying in one apartment for a long time. The only cooking appliance I own is a single cast iron skillet. Something like Stadia interests me if it can deliver. Also, even when you're at the beach all day every day, you still come back to a place to sleep where you might enjoy some gaming or Netflix. And if you are living there for weeks, you'll find that you don't need to visit the beach every single day to enjoy your time there. It's nice to merely do something you love in a place you love. :) I'm generally happy with the few games I have on my Macbook Pro. But even on a $2000 two-year-old machine, I have to play almost everything at minimal gfx settings and I have limited SSD space. Even a game like Civilization 5 becomes a stuttering mess. I don't see the need to dismiss Stadia without trying it.

summerlight 7y ago

Yeah, the status quo is a bit disappointing. In a technical point of view, it's pretty nice. But for UX, there are simply too many moving parts (Stadia App + Chromecast + Stadia Controller + monthly subscription), which defeats its own purpose. Hopefully, most of this artificial requirements will be gone in a coming year, but it's still far from its true vision. Clicking a "Play now" on Youtube does make a lot of sense, but the important question is "when".

tootie 7y ago

I still think they're not really getting to any sort of market fit. There's avid gamers who will buy a serious console or gaming PC and is likely spending quite a bit on games. Then there's casual gamers who getting their fix by playing Candy Crush on the subway. Google seems to be aiming for some middle ground of people willing to dedicate time and money, but just not that much. I'm not sure that market even exists or if their product is hitting it effectively. It seems like yet another technology-driven product launch.

benhurmarcel 7y ago
I'm a casual gamer that likes PC/console games. You don't have to be a serious gamer to like something else than Candy Crush.
- buboard 7y ago
  but then you've probably already invested in some game pc/console. not one of the mythical people referenced here
  - benhurmarcel 7y ago
    Yes, but I can see myself considering streaming services when it's time to replace it. I don't need a €2k+ machine most of the time. I could buy quite a few years of streaming service with the saved cash.
    - p1necone 7y ago
      If you spent €2k+ on a gaming PC you're definitely not in the casual crowd. (Or you've got a lot of disposable income I guess)
      - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
        Or I want to be able to handle Chromium? Really though, my "gaming computer" winds up getting used more for CAD than gaming (by me) at this point. I'm probably a casual gamer.

BinaryIdiot 7y ago

> The only part that stumps me is why you need pay $130 for a controller and a Chromecast with "special" software on it. Isn't the whole premise that you don't need dedicated hardware to play games? It's only for early adopters. They said they want to limit availability until a wider release in early 2020 (where you won't have to pay for anything at all except the game if you want).

gowld 7y ago
I know economics says "raise the price to lower demand when supply is limited", but marketing says "don't tarnish your brand by charging a high price and setting high expectations for an experimental prototype". Remember the $1200 Glass?

on_and_off 7y ago

$130 does not really shock me for controller + chromecast, it sounds in the right ballpark if I bought both of these separately. I already own a ps4 and a switch so I guess I count as a gamer. I still preordered Stadia because the tech demo was on point and it sounds like a good way to run games with high requirements. It is probably not going to happen (at least not in the first years) but the ability to handle mods would be the killer feature for me. It is currently not possible on consoles, and I just don't want to invest the time/space to build a pc.

catalogia 7y ago
> "$130 does not really shock me for controller + chromecast, it sounds in the right ballpark if I bought both of these separately." A chromecast and a PS4 controller purchased separately today would be closer to half that much.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  dualshock 4 = 66 dollars (I know you can find it for cheaper, but that's the price on playstation.com) chromecast ultra = 70 dollars so I am going to stand by my original comment ;)
  - catalogia 7y ago
    I think most people would just buy it at walmart who's selling it for $44, or amazon where it's also being sold for $44 ("by Playstation".) 3rd gen chromecast (is that not sufficient to stream video?) is $35. So $79 vs $130/136. That's quite a lot to many people. You can pick the more expensive options to make a point I guess, though I'm not sure what that point would be.
    - on_and_off 7y ago
      except that stadia requires an ultra You can pick the options that won't work to make a point I guess, though I'm not sure what that point would be.

ahartmetz 7y ago

I see most SaaS the same way. Often (I'd go as far as saying usually) it is not what customers want, it is what vendors can push on them to get recurring revenue. Also it's not gonna work for fast-paced games without turning those games into the stupidest skinnerboxes at some level behind the scenes. In order to make it possible to send precalculated results for latency hiding, a lot of freedom needs to go.

krlx 7y ago

The additional hardware would also block me. For a 4 months trip in Europe I used a service similar to Stadia: Shadow.tech that runs on your regular pc. Made able to rank up on For Honor quite nicely, even if it was not as nice as my too expensive gaming PC. You definetly should have a look at it.

manigandham 7y ago

What about paying full price to rent (and never own) old AAA games?