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I think the industry is quite keen on the idea, as there are many similar services entering the space. I think the problem is stadia's model: the best value for

I think the industry is quite keen on the idea, as there are many similar services entering the space. I think the problem is stadia's model: the best value for players can be found in platforms like geforce now or the various smaller players where it's basically just renting a windows VM with a low latency connection, so they can just play their existing library (and which can be transferred to another service or played on your own PC), or in the offerings from Sony and Microsoft where you pay a monthly fee but get access to a huge library. The fact that stadia wants you to pay again for your games, which are locked into that service, have a smaller selection of games, and pay a monthly subscription is probably not worth the ability to play on a chromecast or a maybe slightly better latency, especially when there's unforced errors like some games becoming unplayable on the service for months due to bugs.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Agree. The problem is that Google didn't make any effort understand what people want. It's not just the payment/ownership model, it's also true of the technical decisions. They aimed for 4K out of the gate, but the sorts of people who care about 4K gaming are going to own their own high-end hardware. Stadia's potential customers don't care about 4K, they care about 1080P working really well. Here, Stadia loses to the competition. 1080P gaming from GeForce Now looks a good deal better than 1080P gaming from Stadia. The graphics settings can be adjusted to be higher than those of Stadia (where the settings cannot be adjusted), and there are fewer compression artifacts, especially in dark scenes which look awful in Stadia. To return to the payment/ownership model, GeForce Now is better not only in that it doesn't ask the customer to buy the games a second time, it's also better in that the customer can freely switch between GeForce Now and their own hardware, through the magic of cloud saves. Constrained to your laptop for a while? No problem, use GeForce Now. Stadia, on the other hand, has made a conscious effort to separate itself from the PC gaming platform. Cloud saves won't sync between Stadia and your own machine, as Stadia tries to present itself as a whole new platform, separate from PC gaming and from the various consoles. > geforce now or the various smaller players where it's basically just renting a windows VM with a low latency connection, so they can just play their existing library Not quite, as GeForce Now will only run officially supported games. > or a maybe slightly better latency Not in my experience. I've found GeForce Now and Stadia to both be very good in terms of latency.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

Agree. The problem is that Google didn't make any effort understand what people want. It's not just the payment/ownership model, it's also true of the technical decisions. They aimed for 4K out of the gate, but the sorts of people who care about 4K gaming are going to own their own high-end hardware. Stadia's potential customers don't care about 4K, they care about 1080P working really well. Here, Stadia loses to the competition. 1080P gaming from GeForce Now looks a good deal better than 1080P gaming from Stadia. The graphics settings can be adjusted to be higher than those of Stadia (where the settings cannot be adjusted), and there are fewer compression artifacts, especially in dark scenes which look awful in Stadia. To return to the payment/ownership model, GeForce Now is better not only in that it doesn't ask the customer to buy the games a second time, it's also better in that the customer can freely switch between GeForce Now and their own hardware, through the magic of cloud saves. Constrained to your laptop for a while? No problem, use GeForce Now. Stadia, on the other hand, has made a conscious effort to separate itself from the PC gaming platform. Cloud saves won't sync between Stadia and your own machine, as Stadia tries to present itself as a whole new platform, separate from PC gaming and from the various consoles. > geforce now or the various smaller players where it's basically just renting a windows VM with a low latency connection, so they can just play their existing library Not quite, as GeForce Now will only run officially supported games. > or a maybe slightly better latency Not in my experience. I've found GeForce Now and Stadia to both be very good in terms of latency.