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> They didn't think "what do people want?", or even go Apple and think "what COULD people want, if we showed them why they wanted it?". Precisely - as Steve Jo

> They didn't think "what do people want?", or even go Apple and think "what COULD people want, if we showed them why they wanted it?". Precisely - as Steve Jobs observed, sometimes people don't know what they want until you show it to them. Stadia does seem like a solution in search of a problem. For Microsoft a relevant problem is "How can we enable smartphone (or other non-console, non-PC computing device) gamers to play (and rent/pay for) Xbox games without porting them to/shrinking them onto Android or iOS and without cannibalizing the sales of Xbox consoles or Windows PCs?" But Google doesn't exactly have that problem. Stadia does solve the problem of "how can I play (some) PC games on my phone/smart TV/PC without a great graphics card." So it does provide some clear user benefit, but it doesn't have compelling advantages over other cloud gaming services, and it doesn't seem to align directly with Google's business interests.

TillE 4y ago
> without a great graphics card You can buy a pretty great console for $500, and it'll last 5+ years. Well under $10/month, even if you buy a little late in the cycle. I just don't see where any cloud gaming service has room to compete with that and actually turn a profit.
mike_hearn 4y ago
It could in theory have solved the Xbox problem of: every time I want to play a game the console insists on downloading 20GB of updates from Xbox Live, which appears to be capped at 50MBit/sec on a good day, thus wasting all the time I had available for actually playing something. Technologically, the model of subsidizing consoles to put great hardware in your living room for not much money is a good one. You get ultra-low latency, games can work offline if need be, the experience is predictable and robust once installed and you can actually own the games. In practice it requires a willingness to commit to big expensive CDNs, download optimization, and smooth updates that Microsoft just don't seem willing to make. Streaming would appear to fix that regardless of other merits. That said, I never looked at Stadia. We (me+fiancé) just don't play enough games to warrant changing anything right now, and we tend to pick the platform based on the game not the other way around.
- nerdix 4y ago
  This is partially solved on PS5 by background updates that can happen while the console is in rest mode. For most updates, they'll just happen while you sleep, eat, work, etc. There are times when the console loses power or if you shut it down rather than use rest mode where you'll have long updates after powering it on. You can also purchase games on your phone and send a request to your console to download and install it so that it's ready when you want to play.

TillE 4y ago

> without a great graphics card You can buy a pretty great console for $500, and it'll last 5+ years. Well under $10/month, even if you buy a little late in the cycle. I just don't see where any cloud gaming service has room to compete with that and actually turn a profit.

mike_hearn 4y ago

It could in theory have solved the Xbox problem of: every time I want to play a game the console insists on downloading 20GB of updates from Xbox Live, which appears to be capped at 50MBit/sec on a good day, thus wasting all the time I had available for actually playing something. Technologically, the model of subsidizing consoles to put great hardware in your living room for not much money is a good one. You get ultra-low latency, games can work offline if need be, the experience is predictable and robust once installed and you can actually own the games. In practice it requires a willingness to commit to big expensive CDNs, download optimization, and smooth updates that Microsoft just don't seem willing to make. Streaming would appear to fix that regardless of other merits. That said, I never looked at Stadia. We (me+fiancé) just don't play enough games to warrant changing anything right now, and we tend to pick the platform based on the game not the other way around.

nerdix 4y ago
This is partially solved on PS5 by background updates that can happen while the console is in rest mode. For most updates, they'll just happen while you sleep, eat, work, etc. There are times when the console loses power or if you shut it down rather than use rest mode where you'll have long updates after powering it on. You can also purchase games on your phone and send a request to your console to download and install it so that it's ready when you want to play.