6 ms·

This is totally the right move. I am a (very happy) user of Stadia. If you haven't tried it, you really should...it's an amazing piece of tech. I can find myse

This is totally the right move. I am a (very happy) user of Stadia. If you haven't tried it, you really should...it's an amazing piece of tech. I can find myself with 20-30 minutes worth of downtime during the day, fire up Cyberpunk 2077 or Hitman or Assassin's Creed in moments from my browser *on a macbook* and play at high settings with no noticeable lag. Obviously you need a strong, steady internet connection for Stadia to shine, but I'd guess that the HN crowd skews towards that. If you're an old gamer who wants to play newer games but doesn't have a ton of time and don't want to drop $1k+ on a gaming rig, check out Stadia. The game library does leave a lot to be desired, no question about that. But this decision seems to be the right move to mitigate that by giving developers better access to getting their games on Stadia rather than Google trying to be both the platform and the content.

muppetman 6y ago
Great that it works where you are, I assume the US. Here in New Zealand of course it's not launched. So while I can pick one of any other consoles/devices to play games on, Stadia isn't one of them. If you can't reach more than one country, why would anyone want to develop for it?
- cheeze 6y ago
  Stadia is supported in 21 countries though. A majority of NA and EU. Totally feel for you, but similar to anything that requires a decent internet connection, NZ and AUS get left in the dust
  - mdoms 6y ago
    NZ has excellent internet speeds.
    - jankeymeulen 6y ago
      Stadia needs low latency to a Google DC. There are plenty of such DCs in the US and Europe, but not in NZ.
      - mdoms 6y ago
        Yes it's a shame DCs are immutable and impossible to add to.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- rco8786 6y ago
  > If you can't reach more than one country, why would anyone want to develop for it? Stadia is in a bunch of countries and rolling out to more. It's almost as though it's a new product and didn't immediately launch at global scale.
  - fuzxi 6y ago
    >It's almost as though The sarcasm does not add anything to your comment. >Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
mdoms 6y ago
It's not in my country so as far as I'm concerned it doesn't exist. I expect Google will kill the product entirely before it ever gets here.
FridgeSeal 6y ago
> Obviously you need a strong, steady internet connection for Stadia to shine, but I'd guess that the HN crowd skews towards that. Sad Australian internet noises. > don't want to drop $1k+ on a gaming rig, check out Stadia. Or, or, do buy the gaming rig, because it will still work and you’ll still have the games 3 years after Google inevitably shuts down stadia and you’re left with nothing.
- rco8786 6y ago
  The amount of times in my life that I've gone back to play an old game I've already played is like...three. I'm not a curator or collector, I just want to play some games here and there. If owning games forever is important for you, then buy the hardcopy. For me, being able to play games now on the devices I already own is a huge win.
  - AWildC182 6y ago
    That opinion is going to vary drastically from person to person. I mostly play the same three or four games and have for about a decade. Stuff like KSP and ARMA where save state and modding are extremely important.
  - root_axis 6y ago
    You're a tiny minority among the people who spend money on games. Every single gamer I have ever known has at least a few high replay value games that they come back to every few years or games that they don't finish and revisit later. Beyond that, it's not about "owning games forever" it's about owning what you purchase on your own terms not on the basis of a capricious corporation's disposable business model.
    - vanadium 6y ago
      And, importantly, I can resell the hardware and recoup a significant amount of my base costs when a new generation of hardware comes out.
    - rco8786 6y ago
anonymousab 6y ago
I can't imagine anyone seeing it as a good sign of confidence if Sony or Microsoft abandoned all first party game development for their platforms. Not even just exclusives development. Not just selling off or divesting their studios, but shuttering them altogether. Stadia being good tech is just another sign that Stadia deserved better than Google.
- rco8786 6y ago
  > I can't imagine anyone seeing it as a good sign of confidence if Sony or Microsoft abandoned all first party game development for their platforms. Apples to Oranges IMO. Stadia is a PC game streaming service, not a physical game console. Google doesn't own the PC game platform, they're just facilitating it. If Google had never attempted a game studio and launched Stadia as a standalone platform (as it will now be), no one would have said "ok but it's a bad sign that Google isn't getting into the game development business" > Stadia being good tech is just another sign that Stadia deserved better than Google. Probably true. I wish it were a standalone company also, but it's not.
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    > If Google had never attempted a game studio and launched Stadia as a standalone platform (as it will now be), no one would have said "ok but it's a bad sign that Google isn't getting into the game development business" Throwing money at a first party studio was a sign of investment and dedication, though. Had they thrown the money at something else - like developer outreach - sure, that would have been fine. I don't see that as the likely alternate reality had they chosen not to open a studio.
speby 6y ago
I am with you. I think the actual use case for a casual gamer is absolutely there, running and playing decent games from many different devices, without having to invest in and own a more expensive PC equipped with higher end internals (graphics, etc.). I am worried about Google's ability to actually execute and make this successful, however (And that does give me hesitancy to buying some of the games that are on there, because they aren't transferrable to somewhere else if Stadia is shut down). For one, with this in-house studio model, they haven't even shipped a single game yet and they're pulling the plug on the approach. That just seems like giving up before they've even tried. But Ok... As others have said, the single biggest issue with Stadia is not that it doesn't work wonderfully (it does), it is the extremely limited catalog of games available that needs to be addressed. If they can successfully address that, then they really do have a pretty sweet offering that will be tough to beat.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  They shipped Outcasters and just today Journey to Savage Planet. Admittedly I believe both those games may have been in development before the studios were acquired, but they are both first party exclusive Stadia games.
  - ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
    Journey to Savage Planet is neither first party nor exclusive. It has Switch and PS4 ports. You'd be on the mark for Outcasters though.
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      Journey to Savage Planet was made by the studio they had acquired (Typhoon studios) which they are now letting go again. You are right that it's not exclusive, though I still think it would count as first party (or maybe second party?).
adambard 6y ago
The gameplay experience is extremely impressive. I expected input lag and streaming quality to be problematic, but I've been a frequent stadia player ever since my (free) premium bundle arrived around Christmas and issues have been rare. The only thing stopping me from spending more money on games is the fact that I expect it to just evaporate one day and take the games I "bought" with it. Moving to a licensing arrangement to let me play the games I already own/could retain even if Stadia goes away, would help a lot in this regard.
Timpy 6y ago
I thought I had to buy Stadia to Pro to play any game. This isn't the case. There was a game I wanted to play, it doesn't run on Linux, I bought it 50% off on Stadia and I'm a happy user. I'm not going all in on Stadia of course; I realize that there's a good chance Stadia will disappear eventually. For the convenience and quality I'm getting now I don't mind buying this game on Steam again later if it happens that Stadia is gone and I want to play it again. For the right use case I recommend Stadia.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  I honestly don't see how Stadia could go away without refunding users for their games. So yes the worst case if you just have to buy it on Steam with the refund you get.
  - camel_Snake 6y ago
    what do you mean? why would they? Does it indicate anywhere in the ToS that refunds will be made if your account is disabled? I'm a happy Stadia user and I'd love for this to be the case, but I think it's incredibly unrealistic. If Stadia shuts down we'll be lucky to get 3 months warning, let alone refunds.
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      There aren't many precedents to work from, the closest is GPM but that's not quite a match and there your purchases were mostly transferred to YTM and you could also download your MP3s. On Microsoft side, they closed their eBook store and refunded everyone's books, as well as extra credit for people who had annotations which were lost. While Google does deprecate products, almost all of them were free / small experimental services, so while we don't know how they would handle this case, I still just don't see how they can shut it down without either transfering your licenses to another service or refunding you. Do you have any examples of them leaving people completely high and dry on something people had paid for? Or any other tech company for that matter?
stiltzkin 6y ago
As someone who has tested GeForce Now, Stadia and Shadow PC. I would advice see first what games are available on Stadia before jumping in. Being honest here Stadia library is really limited compared to Gamepass were with a beta xCloud included at least you get free to play games. Shadow PC play anything from any store like Steam or Gamepass on PC or any Android device. Stadia is a cool tech but lacks the backbone.
zajio1am 6y ago
> If you're an old gamer who wants to play newer games but doesn't have a ton of time and don't want to drop $1k+ Or just pay $150 for a second-hand graphics card that is one or two generations behind current models but was top-end at its age, and put it to a basic desktop PC.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Assuming you have a basic desktop PC, otherwise that will be more than $500, at which point you may as well just get a last gen console... Or you can pay 0$ and just play on Stadia within 5 minutes and not go through the trouble of buying and setting up hardware for a week.
- rco8786 6y ago
  I don’t have a desktop PC. Even if I did, $150 is ~16 months of Stadia Pro.
Lopiolis 6y ago
> This is totally the right move. I am a (very happy) user of Stadia. If you haven't tried it, you really should...it's an amazing piece of tech. I can find myself with 20-30 minutes worth of downtime during the day, fire up Cyberpunk 2077 or Hitman or Assassin's Creed in moments from my browser on a macbook and play at high settings with no noticeable lag. There's zero chance I'm ever going to give Google any support in trying to take over the gaming industry. The best thing they can do is kill Stadia, considering how anti-consumer it is. > The company plans to begin offering its Stadia tech to publishers, opening up the possibility for Stadia to become the streaming tech for other video game companies. This alone scares the fuck out of me.
kllrnohj 6y ago
I tried it and was far less impressed. It was a novelty that quickly grew stale playing on my phone, that aspect seemed questionable at best. If I wanted to actually do some gaming on the TV, it was quite inferior to the (now quite old) PS4 Pro. That leaves it in an awkward middle ground. Where I'm both on my laptop, but I also happen to have better input devices handy. Since if I'm going to get up to go fetch a controller or a mouse, I'm just gonna plop in front of the TV anyway. Travelling would have been an interesting use (although not interesting enough to buy games a second time), but, well, not a great past year for that.
- rco8786 6y ago
  > on my phone Yea, I can't imagine that playing AAA (or even indie) games designed for full sized screens is going to translate well on a phone sized screen.
Epskampie 6y ago
This is the problem for Stadia, it’s target audience is gamers who don’t have a lot of time to game. That is not a fruitful market.
- smt88 6y ago
  > That is not a fruitful market. Source? I know a lot of people, some with children, who have enough income to drop $60 on a game every month without batting an eyelash. Busy people are often a great target market. These people are mostly Switch players, so Stadia is a perfect upgrade for them.
  - vasachi 6y ago
    How is stadia an upgrade to Switch? Stadia is an upgrade to nothing, as in having Stadia is better than having no way to play games. But an upgrade to a dedicated games console?
    - smt88 6y ago
      Playing hi-res, current-gen games on a smartphone is a technical upgrade to playing Switch games. It's also more convenient to just use the screen in front of me (TV, phone, tablet, laptop) than to find my Switch and boot it up.
    - ThatPlayer 6y ago
      Stadia is also an upgrade to a last-gen dedicated games console, a PS4 or an Xbox One. Just look at the recent Cyberpunk 2077 release which ran fine in Stadia, but struggled on those consoles. With the current-gen just releases, plenty of people have not yet upgraded. Strictly console-wise Stadia is an upgrade to those last-gen consoles. But they really need to get more games on the service because that's what people are there for.
  - Epskampie 6y ago
    No source, it just seems like basic logic to me that people who don't spend a lot of time on your product are very prone to cancelling. The linked article seems to confirm that Stadia is not doing so great. Busy people are a great market if you have a product that can save them time. Stadia is not that.

muppetman 6y ago

Great that it works where you are, I assume the US. Here in New Zealand of course it's not launched. So while I can pick one of any other consoles/devices to play games on, Stadia isn't one of them. If you can't reach more than one country, why would anyone want to develop for it?

cheeze 6y ago
Stadia is supported in 21 countries though. A majority of NA and EU. Totally feel for you, but similar to anything that requires a decent internet connection, NZ and AUS get left in the dust
- mdoms 6y ago
  NZ has excellent internet speeds.
  - jankeymeulen 6y ago
    Stadia needs low latency to a Google DC. There are plenty of such DCs in the US and Europe, but not in NZ.
    - mdoms 6y ago
      Yes it's a shame DCs are immutable and impossible to add to.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
rco8786 6y ago
> If you can't reach more than one country, why would anyone want to develop for it? Stadia is in a bunch of countries and rolling out to more. It's almost as though it's a new product and didn't immediately launch at global scale.
- fuzxi 6y ago
  >It's almost as though The sarcasm does not add anything to your comment. >Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mdoms 6y ago

It's not in my country so as far as I'm concerned it doesn't exist. I expect Google will kill the product entirely before it ever gets here.

FridgeSeal 6y ago

> Obviously you need a strong, steady internet connection for Stadia to shine, but I'd guess that the HN crowd skews towards that. Sad Australian internet noises. > don't want to drop $1k+ on a gaming rig, check out Stadia. Or, or, do buy the gaming rig, because it will still work and you’ll still have the games 3 years after Google inevitably shuts down stadia and you’re left with nothing.

rco8786 6y ago
The amount of times in my life that I've gone back to play an old game I've already played is like...three. I'm not a curator or collector, I just want to play some games here and there. If owning games forever is important for you, then buy the hardcopy. For me, being able to play games now on the devices I already own is a huge win.
- AWildC182 6y ago
  That opinion is going to vary drastically from person to person. I mostly play the same three or four games and have for about a decade. Stuff like KSP and ARMA where save state and modding are extremely important.
- root_axis 6y ago
  You're a tiny minority among the people who spend money on games. Every single gamer I have ever known has at least a few high replay value games that they come back to every few years or games that they don't finish and revisit later. Beyond that, it's not about "owning games forever" it's about owning what you purchase on your own terms not on the basis of a capricious corporation's disposable business model.
  - vanadium 6y ago
    And, importantly, I can resell the hardware and recoup a significant amount of my base costs when a new generation of hardware comes out.
  - rco8786 6y ago

anonymousab 6y ago

I can't imagine anyone seeing it as a good sign of confidence if Sony or Microsoft abandoned all first party game development for their platforms. Not even just exclusives development. Not just selling off or divesting their studios, but shuttering them altogether. Stadia being good tech is just another sign that Stadia deserved better than Google.

rco8786 6y ago
> I can't imagine anyone seeing it as a good sign of confidence if Sony or Microsoft abandoned all first party game development for their platforms. Apples to Oranges IMO. Stadia is a PC game streaming service, not a physical game console. Google doesn't own the PC game platform, they're just facilitating it. If Google had never attempted a game studio and launched Stadia as a standalone platform (as it will now be), no one would have said "ok but it's a bad sign that Google isn't getting into the game development business" > Stadia being good tech is just another sign that Stadia deserved better than Google. Probably true. I wish it were a standalone company also, but it's not.
- anonymousab 6y ago
  > If Google had never attempted a game studio and launched Stadia as a standalone platform (as it will now be), no one would have said "ok but it's a bad sign that Google isn't getting into the game development business" Throwing money at a first party studio was a sign of investment and dedication, though. Had they thrown the money at something else - like developer outreach - sure, that would have been fine. I don't see that as the likely alternate reality had they chosen not to open a studio.

speby 6y ago

I am with you. I think the actual use case for a casual gamer is absolutely there, running and playing decent games from many different devices, without having to invest in and own a more expensive PC equipped with higher end internals (graphics, etc.). I am worried about Google's ability to actually execute and make this successful, however (And that does give me hesitancy to buying some of the games that are on there, because they aren't transferrable to somewhere else if Stadia is shut down). For one, with this in-house studio model, they haven't even shipped a single game yet and they're pulling the plug on the approach. That just seems like giving up before they've even tried. But Ok... As others have said, the single biggest issue with Stadia is not that it doesn't work wonderfully (it does), it is the extremely limited catalog of games available that needs to be addressed. If they can successfully address that, then they really do have a pretty sweet offering that will be tough to beat.

ehsankia 6y ago
They shipped Outcasters and just today Journey to Savage Planet. Admittedly I believe both those games may have been in development before the studios were acquired, but they are both first party exclusive Stadia games.
- ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
  Journey to Savage Planet is neither first party nor exclusive. It has Switch and PS4 ports. You'd be on the mark for Outcasters though.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    Journey to Savage Planet was made by the studio they had acquired (Typhoon studios) which they are now letting go again. You are right that it's not exclusive, though I still think it would count as first party (or maybe second party?).

adambard 6y ago

The gameplay experience is extremely impressive. I expected input lag and streaming quality to be problematic, but I've been a frequent stadia player ever since my (free) premium bundle arrived around Christmas and issues have been rare. The only thing stopping me from spending more money on games is the fact that I expect it to just evaporate one day and take the games I "bought" with it. Moving to a licensing arrangement to let me play the games I already own/could retain even if Stadia goes away, would help a lot in this regard.

Timpy 6y ago

I thought I had to buy Stadia to Pro to play any game. This isn't the case. There was a game I wanted to play, it doesn't run on Linux, I bought it 50% off on Stadia and I'm a happy user. I'm not going all in on Stadia of course; I realize that there's a good chance Stadia will disappear eventually. For the convenience and quality I'm getting now I don't mind buying this game on Steam again later if it happens that Stadia is gone and I want to play it again. For the right use case I recommend Stadia.

ehsankia 6y ago
I honestly don't see how Stadia could go away without refunding users for their games. So yes the worst case if you just have to buy it on Steam with the refund you get.
- camel_Snake 6y ago
  what do you mean? why would they? Does it indicate anywhere in the ToS that refunds will be made if your account is disabled? I'm a happy Stadia user and I'd love for this to be the case, but I think it's incredibly unrealistic. If Stadia shuts down we'll be lucky to get 3 months warning, let alone refunds.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    There aren't many precedents to work from, the closest is GPM but that's not quite a match and there your purchases were mostly transferred to YTM and you could also download your MP3s. On Microsoft side, they closed their eBook store and refunded everyone's books, as well as extra credit for people who had annotations which were lost. While Google does deprecate products, almost all of them were free / small experimental services, so while we don't know how they would handle this case, I still just don't see how they can shut it down without either transfering your licenses to another service or refunding you. Do you have any examples of them leaving people completely high and dry on something people had paid for? Or any other tech company for that matter?

stiltzkin 6y ago

As someone who has tested GeForce Now, Stadia and Shadow PC. I would advice see first what games are available on Stadia before jumping in. Being honest here Stadia library is really limited compared to Gamepass were with a beta xCloud included at least you get free to play games. Shadow PC play anything from any store like Steam or Gamepass on PC or any Android device. Stadia is a cool tech but lacks the backbone.

zajio1am 6y ago

> If you're an old gamer who wants to play newer games but doesn't have a ton of time and don't want to drop $1k+ Or just pay $150 for a second-hand graphics card that is one or two generations behind current models but was top-end at its age, and put it to a basic desktop PC.

ehsankia 6y ago
Assuming you have a basic desktop PC, otherwise that will be more than $500, at which point you may as well just get a last gen console... Or you can pay 0$ and just play on Stadia within 5 minutes and not go through the trouble of buying and setting up hardware for a week.
rco8786 6y ago
I don’t have a desktop PC. Even if I did, $150 is ~16 months of Stadia Pro.

Lopiolis 6y ago

> This is totally the right move. I am a (very happy) user of Stadia. If you haven't tried it, you really should...it's an amazing piece of tech. I can find myself with 20-30 minutes worth of downtime during the day, fire up Cyberpunk 2077 or Hitman or Assassin's Creed in moments from my browser on a macbook and play at high settings with no noticeable lag. There's zero chance I'm ever going to give Google any support in trying to take over the gaming industry. The best thing they can do is kill Stadia, considering how anti-consumer it is. > The company plans to begin offering its Stadia tech to publishers, opening up the possibility for Stadia to become the streaming tech for other video game companies. This alone scares the fuck out of me.

kllrnohj 6y ago

I tried it and was far less impressed. It was a novelty that quickly grew stale playing on my phone, that aspect seemed questionable at best. If I wanted to actually do some gaming on the TV, it was quite inferior to the (now quite old) PS4 Pro. That leaves it in an awkward middle ground. Where I'm both on my laptop, but I also happen to have better input devices handy. Since if I'm going to get up to go fetch a controller or a mouse, I'm just gonna plop in front of the TV anyway. Travelling would have been an interesting use (although not interesting enough to buy games a second time), but, well, not a great past year for that.

rco8786 6y ago
> on my phone Yea, I can't imagine that playing AAA (or even indie) games designed for full sized screens is going to translate well on a phone sized screen.

Epskampie 6y ago

This is the problem for Stadia, it’s target audience is gamers who don’t have a lot of time to game. That is not a fruitful market.

smt88 6y ago
> That is not a fruitful market. Source? I know a lot of people, some with children, who have enough income to drop $60 on a game every month without batting an eyelash. Busy people are often a great target market. These people are mostly Switch players, so Stadia is a perfect upgrade for them.
- vasachi 6y ago
  How is stadia an upgrade to Switch? Stadia is an upgrade to nothing, as in having Stadia is better than having no way to play games. But an upgrade to a dedicated games console?
  - smt88 6y ago
    Playing hi-res, current-gen games on a smartphone is a technical upgrade to playing Switch games. It's also more convenient to just use the screen in front of me (TV, phone, tablet, laptop) than to find my Switch and boot it up.
  - ThatPlayer 6y ago
    Stadia is also an upgrade to a last-gen dedicated games console, a PS4 or an Xbox One. Just look at the recent Cyberpunk 2077 release which ran fine in Stadia, but struggled on those consoles. With the current-gen just releases, plenty of people have not yet upgraded. Strictly console-wise Stadia is an upgrade to those last-gen consoles. But they really need to get more games on the service because that's what people are there for.
- Epskampie 6y ago
  No source, it just seems like basic logic to me that people who don't spend a lot of time on your product are very prone to cancelling. The linked article seems to confirm that Stadia is not doing so great. Busy people are a great market if you have a product that can save them time. Stadia is not that.