5 ms·

Stadia was terribly implemented -- almost nothing appealed to gamers from the pricing to the games -- I can't think of a single killer game. I recall it being o

by s_dev 5y ago

Stadia was terribly implemented -- almost nothing appealed to gamers from the pricing to the games -- I can't think of a single killer game. I recall it being originally annouced thinking Google -- like Apple -- don't get gaming and probably never will. It's classic -- we're big -- so we have a chance thinking we just need time to make it work. Stadia would have been much better implemented by startups. Google simply can't do "small" anymore. To be fair they're just too big. Microsoft is the only FANG that remotely gets gaming.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mhh__ 5y ago
Cyberpunk probably should've been that game, in the sense that it ran like shit, in the middle of a huge GPU drought, but it wasn't very good.
- KingOfSheepX 5y ago
  Stadia and Geforce now were the only platforms that Cyberpunk ran great on when the game launched. Geforce customers had to wait in queue for a server so Stadia came out on top. Unfortunately, very few people know about it and Stadia didn't capitalize on marketing on the situation.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- caconym_ 5y ago
  I want to know what games the "cyberpunk wasn't good" crowd is playing instead that scratch the same itch. At this point it just seems like a throwaway line from people who don't like the kind of game it is, and haven't played it for any meaningful amount of time. It has significant flaws, but there is also a lot to like about it.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Well what kind of game is it then? The world feels totally dead, so it doesn't scratch any itch of mine like a GTA game does. The world is pretty, yes, but it doesn't feel alive, and the poor mechanics make it hard to cover that gap. If they'd nailed the gameplay loop I would at very least approach it like the way I approach most Assassin's creed games, basically a historical-experience to wander around in. The actual story, meh, not great not terrible. I already didn't rate Keanu Reeves very highly, in this game I thought he sounded positively comatose, which further put me off what I thought was a fairly uninspired experience. I was excited at the beginnings of the story, specifically I was interested in a depiction of the corpo side of things, but this was not to be. As an RPG? Fallout New Vegas set the bar 11 years ago now. All in all, I didn't like it very much, however I wouldn't have bothered to write this if I didn't want it to be good. There are so many little details and niggles, that are half-done that could've made it a masterpiece.
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      > The world feels totally dead, so it doesn't scratch any itch of mine like a GTA game does. The world is pretty, yes, but it doesn't feel alive, and the poor mechanics make it hard to cover that gap. If they'd nailed the gameplay loop I would at very least approach it like the way I approach most Assassin's creed games, basically a historical-experience to wander around in. I must have missed the GTA game where the world "feels alive" in a way CP77's doesn't. They obviously have more fleshed-out systems (more interesting NPC drivers, wanted levels, etc.)—and they'd better, since they've been making open-world city games for over two decades IIRC—but for me those worlds always failed to feel lived-in. I actually remember remarking to a friend how much more alive and lived-in the CP77 world felt to me than GTA games, which I put down to the level of detail in the art. I guess I'm over being impressed by scripted NPC activities (e.g. coach robberies in RDR) because they don't do anything for me narratively and in interacting with them they tend to draw attention to just how shallow the game world is compared to the real thing. CP77 is definitely light on this sort of thing, and that's a fair criticism, but it's also not one everybody is going to care about. It also helps if you don't constantly butt your head up against the limitations of the game. I can't read the incessant whining about the wanted system being underdeveloped without rolling my eyes and thinking dude, it is what it is, enjoy the game for its strengths or put it down and walk away. This is, of course, subjective. Different people like different things about games. But I see these same complaints echoed ad nauseam in pretty much the exact same form that I can't help but think there's an echo chamber effect at work. > I was excited at the beginnings of the story, specifically I was interested in a depiction of the corpo side of things, but this was not to be. See also: not being interested in the kind of game it is. Given the general standards of modern AAA video game storytelling, I don't really know how else to read this. I didn't go in with any particular expectations, but I wasn't disappointed. > As an RPG? Fallout New Vegas set the bar 11 years ago now. Yes, 11 years ago, and I think people look back on it with rose-tinted glasses. It is not the next-gen paradigm shift people seem to have been expecting out of CP77. CDPR was obviously trying to balance a lot of competing ambitions, and the result of that is a game that's necessarily quite different from New Vegas. People who want to play New Vegas forever should go play New Vegas forever. I hear it has an active modding community.
chaostheory 5y ago
I think Facebook gets gaming too
- 0xy 5y ago
  They probably do, but I wouldn't use a Facebook VR/AR headset if they paid me to take it due to massive privacy concerns, and the company's appalling security record.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    I remember when Facebook bought Oculus, some joked that they'll have to login to FB to use it, and hardcore VR fans scoffed at it and called them paranoid. And then FB did exactly that couple years later...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
symlinkk 5y ago
In what way does Microsoft get gaming? They have tried to shoehorn their “Live” service into games for years and have utterly failed at that. The only reason gaming is big on Windows is because everyone has Windows, it’s a chicken and egg situation, it’s not due to some genius move by Microsoft.
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  Their ‘live’ service was something they have been working on for over a decade with the Xbox. It’s finally all coming together now with the digital only consoles. MS gets gaming believe it or not. Windows has no competitors on PC, sure, but MS has competitors in the console and platform space that they are doing well against.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    I don't know if I'd call the Microsoft competing "well" against Sony when the PS4 outsold the Xbox One more than 2:1. I think it was this that MS finally realized they need to leverage PC gaming (after neglecting it for years) if they want to rule gaming. I do believe they now are poised to win this generation though with the unification of Xbox and PC.
    - runawaybottle 5y ago
      I think that anecdote evens out with the fact that both the 360 and Wii sold as well or better than the PS3. The successor of the PS2 can’t fumble like that. In the grand scheme of things, the console wars have left all the companies involved within striking distance of each other.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    What does digital only mean?
    - runawaybottle 5y ago
      It means, there is no Xbox. There is only a box that logs you into Microsoft’s platform, and you will pay them for everything.
godtoldmetodoit 5y ago
I've been playing with both Stadia and Xcloud. Stadia definitely has Xcloud beat on technical merits - load times, streaming quality etc. BUT, their pricing is too high and the library is tiny. The value you get from the Xbox Gamepass Ultimate is absurd for $15 a month - the library is huge, including stuff like the EA Sports games. And you have the choice of installing locally if you want instead of streaming. I just hope Microsoft is taking some notes on the streaming performance and load times of Stadia, because it really does make a huge difference in my ability to just pick up and play.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  In my experience, GeForceNow was even better image quality than Stadia. I'm a paid subscriber and I enjoy the heck out of it. It also works with your existing games from Steam and other major digital storefronts.
  - leetrout 5y ago
    As I understand it there are several publishers not allowing games to work on GFN (but I too love the service when I trialed it)
- smileybarry 5y ago
  Maybe Stadia is just extremely location-dependent, but when I tried both services via a (very stable) VPN, xCloud felt a lot smoother and with less latency (when comparing the same geo region). Both were worse than GeForce Now though (which doesn't require a VPN but around the same latency). They're also adding xCloud support for your purchased games at some point[1], a bit like Geforce Experience's Steam-linking but for Xbox owners. 1: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/11/14/expanding-project-xcloud-more-games-more-ways-to-play/ https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/11/14/expanding-project-xcl...
dageshi 5y ago
yeah, it's a weird complete lack of ambition from google which I kinda didn't expect. Like, can they not see the potential of building this type of gaming tech into youtube? Maybe even behind youtube premium to begin with. There's a ton of fascinating things they could've done with it that they certainly have the money to do but instead they launched what they did which was compelling to no one at all?
koheripbal 5y ago
My impression was that it was conceptually flawed. It made commitments on performance that seemed naive, and did not solve a significant problem many gamers were having. As a gamer, I enjoy having a high-performant system, and am ok paying for it. If, as a kid, I couldn't afford it, I would just play on console. The idea behind centralized GPU rendering was just a recipe for lag, high data usage, and content lock-in. It just never made sense to me.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  Have you tried it? After seeing how well it works, I don’t know why I would buy a $600 console or $1000 gaming PC anymore.
paulpan 5y ago
100% squandered the opportunity. The question is, it is too late to pivot or push through? Back when Project Stream was announced (late 2018), Google was the lone player. COVID19 essentially gave a perfect opportunity to gain market share. But somehow they failed to capitalize and today, it's become a crowded playing field with XCloud, GeForce Now, Luna; not to mention a new gen of gaming consoles. The streaming tech is no longer a unique advantage for Stadia and unfortunately it's gaming library is just an also-ran. Perhaps this resignation/firing is an attempt to refocus the business rather than the "boiling the ocean" approach of game development, 1st class integration to other Google services (e.g. YouTube live streaming), etc. Who's next on the chopping block? Phil Harrison or even his boss, Rick Osterloh?

by s_dev 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mhh__ 5y ago

Cyberpunk probably should've been that game, in the sense that it ran like shit, in the middle of a huge GPU drought, but it wasn't very good.

KingOfSheepX 5y ago
Stadia and Geforce now were the only platforms that Cyberpunk ran great on when the game launched. Geforce customers had to wait in queue for a server so Stadia came out on top. Unfortunately, very few people know about it and Stadia didn't capitalize on marketing on the situation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
caconym_ 5y ago
I want to know what games the "cyberpunk wasn't good" crowd is playing instead that scratch the same itch. At this point it just seems like a throwaway line from people who don't like the kind of game it is, and haven't played it for any meaningful amount of time. It has significant flaws, but there is also a lot to like about it.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Well what kind of game is it then? The world feels totally dead, so it doesn't scratch any itch of mine like a GTA game does. The world is pretty, yes, but it doesn't feel alive, and the poor mechanics make it hard to cover that gap. If they'd nailed the gameplay loop I would at very least approach it like the way I approach most Assassin's creed games, basically a historical-experience to wander around in. The actual story, meh, not great not terrible. I already didn't rate Keanu Reeves very highly, in this game I thought he sounded positively comatose, which further put me off what I thought was a fairly uninspired experience. I was excited at the beginnings of the story, specifically I was interested in a depiction of the corpo side of things, but this was not to be. As an RPG? Fallout New Vegas set the bar 11 years ago now. All in all, I didn't like it very much, however I wouldn't have bothered to write this if I didn't want it to be good. There are so many little details and niggles, that are half-done that could've made it a masterpiece.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    > The world feels totally dead, so it doesn't scratch any itch of mine like a GTA game does. The world is pretty, yes, but it doesn't feel alive, and the poor mechanics make it hard to cover that gap. If they'd nailed the gameplay loop I would at very least approach it like the way I approach most Assassin's creed games, basically a historical-experience to wander around in. I must have missed the GTA game where the world "feels alive" in a way CP77's doesn't. They obviously have more fleshed-out systems (more interesting NPC drivers, wanted levels, etc.)—and they'd better, since they've been making open-world city games for over two decades IIRC—but for me those worlds always failed to feel lived-in. I actually remember remarking to a friend how much more alive and lived-in the CP77 world felt to me than GTA games, which I put down to the level of detail in the art. I guess I'm over being impressed by scripted NPC activities (e.g. coach robberies in RDR) because they don't do anything for me narratively and in interacting with them they tend to draw attention to just how shallow the game world is compared to the real thing. CP77 is definitely light on this sort of thing, and that's a fair criticism, but it's also not one everybody is going to care about. It also helps if you don't constantly butt your head up against the limitations of the game. I can't read the incessant whining about the wanted system being underdeveloped without rolling my eyes and thinking dude, it is what it is, enjoy the game for its strengths or put it down and walk away. This is, of course, subjective. Different people like different things about games. But I see these same complaints echoed ad nauseam in pretty much the exact same form that I can't help but think there's an echo chamber effect at work. > I was excited at the beginnings of the story, specifically I was interested in a depiction of the corpo side of things, but this was not to be. See also: not being interested in the kind of game it is. Given the general standards of modern AAA video game storytelling, I don't really know how else to read this. I didn't go in with any particular expectations, but I wasn't disappointed. > As an RPG? Fallout New Vegas set the bar 11 years ago now. Yes, 11 years ago, and I think people look back on it with rose-tinted glasses. It is not the next-gen paradigm shift people seem to have been expecting out of CP77. CDPR was obviously trying to balance a lot of competing ambitions, and the result of that is a game that's necessarily quite different from New Vegas. People who want to play New Vegas forever should go play New Vegas forever. I hear it has an active modding community.

chaostheory 5y ago

I think Facebook gets gaming too

0xy 5y ago
They probably do, but I wouldn't use a Facebook VR/AR headset if they paid me to take it due to massive privacy concerns, and the company's appalling security record.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  I remember when Facebook bought Oculus, some joked that they'll have to login to FB to use it, and hardcore VR fans scoffed at it and called them paranoid. And then FB did exactly that couple years later...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

symlinkk 5y ago

In what way does Microsoft get gaming? They have tried to shoehorn their “Live” service into games for years and have utterly failed at that. The only reason gaming is big on Windows is because everyone has Windows, it’s a chicken and egg situation, it’s not due to some genius move by Microsoft.

runawaybottle 5y ago
Their ‘live’ service was something they have been working on for over a decade with the Xbox. It’s finally all coming together now with the digital only consoles. MS gets gaming believe it or not. Windows has no competitors on PC, sure, but MS has competitors in the console and platform space that they are doing well against.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  I don't know if I'd call the Microsoft competing "well" against Sony when the PS4 outsold the Xbox One more than 2:1. I think it was this that MS finally realized they need to leverage PC gaming (after neglecting it for years) if they want to rule gaming. I do believe they now are poised to win this generation though with the unification of Xbox and PC.
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    I think that anecdote evens out with the fact that both the 360 and Wii sold as well or better than the PS3. The successor of the PS2 can’t fumble like that. In the grand scheme of things, the console wars have left all the companies involved within striking distance of each other.
- the-dude 5y ago
  What does digital only mean?
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    It means, there is no Xbox. There is only a box that logs you into Microsoft’s platform, and you will pay them for everything.

godtoldmetodoit 5y ago

I've been playing with both Stadia and Xcloud. Stadia definitely has Xcloud beat on technical merits - load times, streaming quality etc. BUT, their pricing is too high and the library is tiny. The value you get from the Xbox Gamepass Ultimate is absurd for $15 a month - the library is huge, including stuff like the EA Sports games. And you have the choice of installing locally if you want instead of streaming. I just hope Microsoft is taking some notes on the streaming performance and load times of Stadia, because it really does make a huge difference in my ability to just pick up and play.

dougmwne 5y ago
In my experience, GeForceNow was even better image quality than Stadia. I'm a paid subscriber and I enjoy the heck out of it. It also works with your existing games from Steam and other major digital storefronts.
- leetrout 5y ago
  As I understand it there are several publishers not allowing games to work on GFN (but I too love the service when I trialed it)
smileybarry 5y ago
Maybe Stadia is just extremely location-dependent, but when I tried both services via a (very stable) VPN, xCloud felt a lot smoother and with less latency (when comparing the same geo region). Both were worse than GeForce Now though (which doesn't require a VPN but around the same latency). They're also adding xCloud support for your purchased games at some point[1], a bit like Geforce Experience's Steam-linking but for Xbox owners. 1: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/11/14/expanding-project-xcloud-more-games-more-ways-to-play/ https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/11/14/expanding-project-xcl...

dageshi 5y ago

yeah, it's a weird complete lack of ambition from google which I kinda didn't expect. Like, can they not see the potential of building this type of gaming tech into youtube? Maybe even behind youtube premium to begin with. There's a ton of fascinating things they could've done with it that they certainly have the money to do but instead they launched what they did which was compelling to no one at all?

koheripbal 5y ago

My impression was that it was conceptually flawed. It made commitments on performance that seemed naive, and did not solve a significant problem many gamers were having. As a gamer, I enjoy having a high-performant system, and am ok paying for it. If, as a kid, I couldn't afford it, I would just play on console. The idea behind centralized GPU rendering was just a recipe for lag, high data usage, and content lock-in. It just never made sense to me.

benhurmarcel 5y ago
Have you tried it? After seeing how well it works, I don’t know why I would buy a $600 console or $1000 gaming PC anymore.

paulpan 5y ago

100% squandered the opportunity. The question is, it is too late to pivot or push through? Back when Project Stream was announced (late 2018), Google was the lone player. COVID19 essentially gave a perfect opportunity to gain market share. But somehow they failed to capitalize and today, it's become a crowded playing field with XCloud, GeForce Now, Luna; not to mention a new gen of gaming consoles. The streaming tech is no longer a unique advantage for Stadia and unfortunately it's gaming library is just an also-ran. Perhaps this resignation/firing is an attempt to refocus the business rather than the "boiling the ocean" approach of game development, 1st class integration to other Google services (e.g. YouTube live streaming), etc. Who's next on the chopping block? Phil Harrison or even his boss, Rick Osterloh?