4 ms·

Feels like the writing was on the wall almost as soon as they launched. It seems telling to me that Stadia couldn't get any traction even during one of the most

by faefox 4y ago

Feels like the writing was on the wall almost as soon as they launched. It seems telling to me that Stadia couldn't get any traction even during one of the most protracted GPU shortages/crypto manias in history; connectivity requirements and lag issues aside, I think a lot of gamers just aren't interested in outsourcing the hardware side of things the way these corporations might expect. Building and maintaining your "rig" is a big part of the appeal for the PC gaming crowd that renting time on an anonymous server in a datacenter somewhere just can't match.

foepys 4y ago
My personal problem with Stadia was the lock-in. You were required to buy a game at full price on Stadia and were only allowed to play it on Stadia, a service for which you would've eventually had to pay a subscription fee. One can tell people that a PC is much more expensive upfront and that you could play for years on Stadia for the same money but the risk of it being shut down and losing access to all the full price games just wasn't worth it. Plus real-time multiplayer games like shooters and MOBAs were just impossible to play competitively, so you needed a PC anyways if you played even only one of such games.
- p1necone 4y ago
  Yeah, and people will shout about Steam being the same level of vendor lockin but they're ignoring the trust factor. Steam has been around for decades and rightly or wrongly people mostly consider it a given that their Steam games will never disappear. Google needed to acknowledge that and actually provide an appealing alternative. Instead they tried to charge full retail price on games from a tiny library on a product that nobody believed they weren't going to sunset in a couple of years time. I suspect if they'd gone with a subscription cost only model they probably would have been a lot more successful.
- wruza 4y ago
  real-time multiplayer games like shooters and MOBAs were just impossible to play competitively I understand that everyone has different tolerances, but I can’t stand even slightest lags (ms range), irregularities and visual bugs in games. Had to fight my way through hardware settings on a real PC at last update, now it’s smooth and immersive. I don’t play multiplayer games at all, but have a hard time understanding why someone would think “ah, I’m playing single player anyway, so enormous input lags are okay”. How do you play parrying (witcher, souls), shooting 2+ targets quickly (hitman, ghost recon), tight racing with such delays?
pie_flavor 4y ago
I will happily pay Nvidia to be able to play my Steam games in the cloud when I am out of state with no access to a gaming PC. But Google wanted me to buy a separate copy [!] at full market price [!!] while also paying them a subscription service [!!!]. And then there's no games, because they thought they could impose a specific graphics API instead of just porting D3D like Steam did, and in reality ports take time and nobody wants spend just as much money as any other console port takes in order to sell to a platform with a fiftieth of the users.
- camel_Snake 4y ago
  The subscription is optional. I loved Stadia because I only really play one game, Destiny, and I could play it year round for just the annual season pass and 0 hardware investment. Came to ~$100 a year for all my gaming needs and it was perfect.
  - drusepth 4y ago
    Yeah, I mostly just bought games outright on Stadia rather than subscribing for the Netflix-y pool of games everyone said they wanted, which worked out really well for me in the end: I played for years and hundreds of hours and it was basically all for free.
  - odessacubbage 4y ago
    i love ps streaming and chiaki because it lets me play visual novels and super robot wars on my ipad (with occasional lag spikes and drops in fidelity) but that is an incredibly niche use. game streaming has thousands of niche uses that make it a nice value-add to integrate onto existing products. currently game streaming does not have a mass-market use, especially not one that is google-scale. i am personally sad that stadia was not introduced as some weird side project like deep dream that could develop in perpetual beta until it was really and truly cooked.
polytely 4y ago
I think they might have made it if they went with a gamepass style service, pay a fee per month, get access to the full catalogue of games, you could even bundle it with youtube premium.
Rapzid 4y ago
Just look at the popularity of 144-240hz displays and eSports. The fact the 5800x3d even exists to eek you out 20 extra fps at 1080p to get you from 150 to 175.. Cloud gaming with its latency? Some people not noticing isn't going to cut it. PS5 is hugely popular and perpetually sold old. So the console market is not hurting either.. The market has spoken and it's not interested in cloud gaming services with its downsides.

by faefox 4y ago

foepys 4y ago

My personal problem with Stadia was the lock-in. You were required to buy a game at full price on Stadia and were only allowed to play it on Stadia, a service for which you would've eventually had to pay a subscription fee. One can tell people that a PC is much more expensive upfront and that you could play for years on Stadia for the same money but the risk of it being shut down and losing access to all the full price games just wasn't worth it. Plus real-time multiplayer games like shooters and MOBAs were just impossible to play competitively, so you needed a PC anyways if you played even only one of such games.

p1necone 4y ago
Yeah, and people will shout about Steam being the same level of vendor lockin but they're ignoring the trust factor. Steam has been around for decades and rightly or wrongly people mostly consider it a given that their Steam games will never disappear. Google needed to acknowledge that and actually provide an appealing alternative. Instead they tried to charge full retail price on games from a tiny library on a product that nobody believed they weren't going to sunset in a couple of years time. I suspect if they'd gone with a subscription cost only model they probably would have been a lot more successful.
wruza 4y ago
real-time multiplayer games like shooters and MOBAs were just impossible to play competitively I understand that everyone has different tolerances, but I can’t stand even slightest lags (ms range), irregularities and visual bugs in games. Had to fight my way through hardware settings on a real PC at last update, now it’s smooth and immersive. I don’t play multiplayer games at all, but have a hard time understanding why someone would think “ah, I’m playing single player anyway, so enormous input lags are okay”. How do you play parrying (witcher, souls), shooting 2+ targets quickly (hitman, ghost recon), tight racing with such delays?

pie_flavor 4y ago

I will happily pay Nvidia to be able to play my Steam games in the cloud when I am out of state with no access to a gaming PC. But Google wanted me to buy a separate copy [!] at full market price [!!] while also paying them a subscription service [!!!]. And then there's no games, because they thought they could impose a specific graphics API instead of just porting D3D like Steam did, and in reality ports take time and nobody wants spend just as much money as any other console port takes in order to sell to a platform with a fiftieth of the users.

camel_Snake 4y ago
The subscription is optional. I loved Stadia because I only really play one game, Destiny, and I could play it year round for just the annual season pass and 0 hardware investment. Came to ~$100 a year for all my gaming needs and it was perfect.
- drusepth 4y ago
  Yeah, I mostly just bought games outright on Stadia rather than subscribing for the Netflix-y pool of games everyone said they wanted, which worked out really well for me in the end: I played for years and hundreds of hours and it was basically all for free.
- odessacubbage 4y ago
  i love ps streaming and chiaki because it lets me play visual novels and super robot wars on my ipad (with occasional lag spikes and drops in fidelity) but that is an incredibly niche use. game streaming has thousands of niche uses that make it a nice value-add to integrate onto existing products. currently game streaming does not have a mass-market use, especially not one that is google-scale. i am personally sad that stadia was not introduced as some weird side project like deep dream that could develop in perpetual beta until it was really and truly cooked.

polytely 4y ago

I think they might have made it if they went with a gamepass style service, pay a fee per month, get access to the full catalogue of games, you could even bundle it with youtube premium.

Rapzid 4y ago

Just look at the popularity of 144-240hz displays and eSports. The fact the 5800x3d even exists to eek you out 20 extra fps at 1080p to get you from 150 to 175.. Cloud gaming with its latency? Some people not noticing isn't going to cut it. PS5 is hugely popular and perpetually sold old. So the console market is not hurting either.. The market has spoken and it's not interested in cloud gaming services with its downsides.