Or an area that is simply not that close to Stadia's servers. Or an area on a bad backbone - like much of the world, like much of north america (maybe north ame

Or an area that is simply not that close to Stadia's servers. Or an area on a bad backbone - like much of the world, like much of north america (maybe north america isn't Google's target audience though? ;) Or - and this is the kicker - in an area that has lots of Stadia users. Which makes sense - more load, more demand = service gets worse. But that means that you end up with a messed up "regional playability" curve, where the best experience - if not the only good experience - is had by people in areas close enough to the servers, but where Stadia is not too popular as to be overloaded. That particular caveat has gotten better over time, from what I understand. Throw more hardware at the problem, open more datacenters in the same region, and that helps deal with load. But it certainly left a well-deserved poor first-impression for many people.