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People kept trying to convince me that Stadia is fantastic with its supposedly amazing tech. I live in a larger city and I am in the privileged position to hav

People kept trying to convince me that Stadia is fantastic with its supposedly amazing tech. I live in a larger city and I am in the privileged position to have access to a top shelf internet connection, so I gave it a try. It was not "fantastic", I would describe it as barely ok. Latency was surprisengly good I admit, but absolutely noticeable and annoying. If this is some kind of "future of gaming", I have to say it feels like a massive step backwards to me. Fans will of course tell me that I am not the target audience given that I highly value these aspects, but I still have to wonder who is (good internet, short distance to data centers, at the same time not owning consoles or a PC). Many people worldwide do not have the luxury of access to fast internet.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nickelcitymario 6y ago
So, they're YouTube circa 2007?
- zepto 6y ago
  Latency is not an issue with YouTube. And of course in 2007 there was no better alternative to youtube, whereas all alternatives to Stadia are better.
  - nickelcitymario 6y ago
    There are streaming gaming services that don't deal with latency issues? (Not being sarcastic. To my knowledge, no one has cracked this yet.) My overall point in comparing to YouTube is that the internet WILL get faster. More and more people will have the kind of broadband needed to make this a good experience. I'm sure it sucks today. But what about 10 years from now? Streaming video used to suck. Now it doesn't. Streaming games currently sucks. Tomorrow it won't, and for the same reason: The infrastructure will catch up.
    - zepto 6y ago
      > There are streaming gaming services that don’t deal with latency issues? No, but those aren’t the only alternatives - consoles, PCs etc, are. Youtube had no established, better alternative to compete with. You may be right that streaming games won’t suck in the future. I’m just pointing out that this is not like the YouTube situation at all. Also YouTube didn’t suck even at the beginning.
      - jhbadger 6y ago
        Perhaps a better analogy would be Netflix streaming. A lot of people thought it was nuts given how many people were still on low-bandwith DSL connections that couldn't reliably stream even in standard definition. There was already an existing solution that worked well -- DVDs by mail (Netflix's original business model). That still exists, but is a small fraction of Netflix's business today.
        nickelcitymario 6y ago
        Netflix is definitely the better analogy.
      - nickelcitymario 6y ago
        > Youtube had no established, better alternative to compete with. If you're comparing game streaming to consoles, then the fair comparison is to every other source of video entertainment that predates YouTube. Like: DVD, VHS, network TV, cable TV, bootlegs, etc. They had EVERY alternative to compete with, and almost all of them were better in some way or another. YouTube was (and is) simply better in ways that matter even more. That being said, maybe latency will never improve. Maybe no matter how much pipe you have, the fundamental speed limit of light is enough to ruin this whole concept for gaming. Maybe. But I doubt it, personally. I'm willing to bet that this is an idea that simply needs technology to catch up to it.
        zepto 6y ago
        > If you're comparing game streaming to consoles, then the fair comparison is to every other source of video entertainment that predates YouTube. Like: DVD, VHS, network TV, cable TV, bootlegs, etc. No, this is simply not correct. YouTube was a new type of content that simply wasn’t available on any of those channels. If you wanted to see peer-produced video, which turns out to be very compelling, youtube was the only option. The games you can play on stadia are the same games you can play on other platforms only worse. Again - streaming may end up catching up, but the comparison to youtube simply is not informative, because they aren’t similar.
cashewchoo 6y ago
I think perhaps a bigger issue is that, presumably their audience is "people who currently like AAA games with huge graphics requirements", which are going to be "core gamers". Which are perhaps some of the most notoriously hard to please people in the world (I say this with some amount of love). And they take tremendous pride in their hardware (see: pc building subreddits, pcmasterrace, etc) and companies (nvidia, alienware, evga, msi, asus, etc) take great pains to market to them because they can sell to them at great markups just for making build quality a bit better than the usual dreck you find at Best Buy and slap on a bunch of alien heads and LEDs (again, I say this with some amount of love). So I think the existing market is going to be really hard to crack for a lot harder-to-unseat reasons than just "it's a better experience" (which they can't provide anyway!). These people aren't cost-sensitive (generally) and will generally have pretty decent, dedicated hardware. So I can only conclude that they're hoping to create a market of people who don't currently play AAA games due to cost or space constraints. Which is consoles. So yeah, I really don't know where they're going with this.
- brundolf 6y ago
  Not to mention: for the people who don't want to play AAA games, they almost certainly already have a local device in their pocket that can handle anything they might want to play, without latency or even a subscription

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nickelcitymario 6y ago

So, they're YouTube circa 2007?

zepto 6y ago
Latency is not an issue with YouTube. And of course in 2007 there was no better alternative to youtube, whereas all alternatives to Stadia are better.
- nickelcitymario 6y ago
  There are streaming gaming services that don't deal with latency issues? (Not being sarcastic. To my knowledge, no one has cracked this yet.) My overall point in comparing to YouTube is that the internet WILL get faster. More and more people will have the kind of broadband needed to make this a good experience. I'm sure it sucks today. But what about 10 years from now? Streaming video used to suck. Now it doesn't. Streaming games currently sucks. Tomorrow it won't, and for the same reason: The infrastructure will catch up.
  - zepto 6y ago
    > There are streaming gaming services that don’t deal with latency issues? No, but those aren’t the only alternatives - consoles, PCs etc, are. Youtube had no established, better alternative to compete with. You may be right that streaming games won’t suck in the future. I’m just pointing out that this is not like the YouTube situation at all. Also YouTube didn’t suck even at the beginning.
    - jhbadger 6y ago
      Perhaps a better analogy would be Netflix streaming. A lot of people thought it was nuts given how many people were still on low-bandwith DSL connections that couldn't reliably stream even in standard definition. There was already an existing solution that worked well -- DVDs by mail (Netflix's original business model). That still exists, but is a small fraction of Netflix's business today.
      - nickelcitymario 6y ago
        Netflix is definitely the better analogy.
    - nickelcitymario 6y ago
      > Youtube had no established, better alternative to compete with. If you're comparing game streaming to consoles, then the fair comparison is to every other source of video entertainment that predates YouTube. Like: DVD, VHS, network TV, cable TV, bootlegs, etc. They had EVERY alternative to compete with, and almost all of them were better in some way or another. YouTube was (and is) simply better in ways that matter even more. That being said, maybe latency will never improve. Maybe no matter how much pipe you have, the fundamental speed limit of light is enough to ruin this whole concept for gaming. Maybe. But I doubt it, personally. I'm willing to bet that this is an idea that simply needs technology to catch up to it.
      - zepto 6y ago
        > If you're comparing game streaming to consoles, then the fair comparison is to every other source of video entertainment that predates YouTube. Like: DVD, VHS, network TV, cable TV, bootlegs, etc. No, this is simply not correct. YouTube was a new type of content that simply wasn’t available on any of those channels. If you wanted to see peer-produced video, which turns out to be very compelling, youtube was the only option. The games you can play on stadia are the same games you can play on other platforms only worse. Again - streaming may end up catching up, but the comparison to youtube simply is not informative, because they aren’t similar.

cashewchoo 6y ago

I think perhaps a bigger issue is that, presumably their audience is "people who currently like AAA games with huge graphics requirements", which are going to be "core gamers". Which are perhaps some of the most notoriously hard to please people in the world (I say this with some amount of love). And they take tremendous pride in their hardware (see: pc building subreddits, pcmasterrace, etc) and companies (nvidia, alienware, evga, msi, asus, etc) take great pains to market to them because they can sell to them at great markups just for making build quality a bit better than the usual dreck you find at Best Buy and slap on a bunch of alien heads and LEDs (again, I say this with some amount of love). So I think the existing market is going to be really hard to crack for a lot harder-to-unseat reasons than just "it's a better experience" (which they can't provide anyway!). These people aren't cost-sensitive (generally) and will generally have pretty decent, dedicated hardware. So I can only conclude that they're hoping to create a market of people who don't currently play AAA games due to cost or space constraints. Which is consoles. So yeah, I really don't know where they're going with this.

brundolf 6y ago
Not to mention: for the people who don't want to play AAA games, they almost certainly already have a local device in their pocket that can handle anything they might want to play, without latency or even a subscription