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Comment by 40acres | Hacker News Reader

I understand the cynicism of this community to Stadia but implore you all to think a little broader.

Stadia is different, with this product Google is trying something really innovative. For one, the fact that Stadia actually costs money should be a signal of Google's long term ambition here. Yes, Fiber also cost money but was bogged down by the hell that is infrastructure development.

Stadia will require a substantial engineering effort from Google to make this work. The latency and network requirements are a great test to gauge network requirements as we move into 5g, AR, and self driving cars.

Gaming is huge and if Google can be the first to provide (viable) steaming as a service they can really threaten some of the incumbents like Twitch, Sony, Microsoft, etc.

Obviously Google doesn't have the best track record here but I'm excited to see them tackle this challenge.

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Glass cost money, more than 10x what this cost, and that was not a signal of their long term ambition.

The problem with Stadia is that it costs money, the service costs a monthly fee, and on top of it you have to buy the games. What happens to those games if you stop paying the fee? If you stop using Stadia? If Google deprecates Stadia like many are worried. I'll tell you: you lose the game.

If I, conversely, buy the same $60 game on Steam, I know it'll be there years down the road, that I'll be able to play it on any PC I build, and I don't have to maintain a monthly fee for it.

What Google is trying has been tried many times before, by people who had more permissive game ownership structures.

Do not tell us we shouldn't be worried about using such a product from Google given their track record -- especially when the costs to them are enormous in terms of computing power and the reception has been very tepid (meaning those costs are larger per-user than they likely anticipated).

Honestly, glass simply seems too early. We know that Apple is also working on AR glasses, even Intel came out with a AR glasses platform but quickly had to kill it because the market is simply not mature.

I think Google is betting that cloud steaming is now viable and are going to put as much resources as possible to make it work.

I am not doubting that there are issues with the product and concerns about Google, I obviously have reservations but don't believe that it hinders me from being excited about the prospect itself

It’s not the market that wasn’t mature, it’s the technology/product —- although the latter is what you need to grow a market.

I love new technology and gadgets. I bought an Oculus DK2 and Vive and they were both mind blowing when I first tried them, although I don’t still use them. Trying Google Glass, on the other hand, was beyond underwhelming. Holo Lens and Magic Leap, while slightly better, were also extremely underwhelming. Other than niche industrial applications, these products are far far too early for any consumer product.

I feel like "X was too early/ahead of its time" is kind of a red herring.

What it's basically saying is "this failed until it succeeded", because the alternative option, that of being able to accurately predict the exact point the technology is 'good enough', has proven effectively impossible to do (given how so many companies that manage it occasionally also fail at it most of the time; it's a crapshoot).

To that end, given Stadia is here, does anyone think the tech is ready? No. In fact, people seem to think the opposite, that Stadia is Google's attempt to get the tech to a specific point, or to offset the cost of the tech serving another use case.

The only way Stadia has a shot is if Google stays viewing it as a way to profit from having unused GPUs sitting around within its cloud offerings.

> it costs money, the service costs a monthly fee, and on top of it you have to buy the games

While this is true now, you'll later be able to play games by only paying a monthly fee or only buying the game for the normal <=$60 price. The subscription isn't necessary to play games at all.

The problem you have with the service potentially going away also applies to Steam, to a lesser degree. I acknowledge that they have a proven track record now and also require much less to continue serving games though.

If Steam says "We're shutting down" , I would be able to download the games to my computer and manage my own backups. If Stadia shuts down, the games I've bought will vanish. In that case, I hope Google would make a deal with a company like Steam to transfer already purchased games. Actually, If I buy a game, I'd like to be able to download it just in case if I wanna play with low settings on my laptop while I'm on holiday with crappy internet connection. PS Now gives you option to download and/or stream PS4 games.

> "...it costs money, the service costs a monthly fee, and on top of it you have to buy the games."

WHAT? I've been under a rock and I assumed that it was a service where you buy a controller, already own a streaming device (or maybe the controller has the device in it), and pay monthly for the whole service. You have to buy the games too?

That is an immediate about-face for me. If they shut down the service then I just stop paying the monthly fee. This is perfectly comfortable for any service. But if I have to buy-in to every game...

The OP is incorrect, but in the opposite direction than you are thinking. The monthly subscription is optional (it gets you 4k streaming, instead of 1080p, and discounts / free games similar to Playstation Plus or similar). You do have to buy the games.

So yeah, if they discontinue Stadia it is an open question what happens to the games you purchased on it. They have avoided questions on it, unsurprisingly.

Subscription gets you "up to" 4k, right now none of the titles is true 4k, they are upscaled from lower resolution 1080p or 1440p.

Upscaled on the device you already paid for, yet somehow need a subscription to use the upscaling.

No, it is upscaled on the google side, before it is sent over the net.

Yeah, that part is pretty crazy. I wonder if that is just up to the game developers, or if they were given a limited compute budget and the current 1080p / 1440p base resolutions were the best they could get? Maybe Stadia can't deliver the needed latencies at full native 4k?

Unless I am misunderstanding, the 4k up-res is happening on Google's side, so it's not like they are skimping on bandwidth.

Don't be all negative. At the very least Google would pay engineers like us a decent salary to enhance the technology to keep CPU away from Keyboard/Mouse/Screen. By the time Google is done with this and decommission their service, we would be walking around with the new "Mac 2025" which is scuba diving water proof with CPU and OS hosted on iCloud available for a $1000/year subscription.

I agree, if they had launched a subscription service to a large catalog of games that would have been really something -- like how Netflix created an alternative to the buy/rent single titles model.

I suspect they didn't have enough clout with development studios to create that pricing structure.

As an example, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is $59.99 on Stadia ($39.99 with subscription for 4K). On Steam it's currently $59.99 too, but at 4K without the extra subscription.

Game distribution is a hyper-competitive market right now, with Epic Games in particular giving away high quality games for free every week on their Steam competitor and paying developers up front to get timed exclusives.

I think Google's going to have to re-visit its pricing and customer acquisition model on this one.

It's entirely possible this is just a licensing thing. The early days of legal movie and music downloads were an expensive mess too.

I'd expect after a few years of game streaming competition someone will try to undercut the market with a Netflix model.

Microsoft is curenlty alpha testing its xcloud service by the looks of it, which encompasses exactly that. There is also the Nvidia streaming service too.

> On Steam it's currently $59.99 too, but at 4K without the extra subscription.

But with a requirement for a $400-$1300 graphics card, depending on the FPS and quality you want. And no hope of running it at 4K on most laptops.

Perhaps. But I just decided to look at Google Play Movies for the first time in years, and to watching some Avengers movie on there is 18 SGD (approx. 12 EUR). For one movie.

I'm not saying their Games strategy will mirror the one taken for Movies, but I'd advice waiting to see what will happen.

Stadia does not have a monthly required. It has a monthly fee only for the highest quality streaming tier (4k@60). If you stop paying that fee, you will keep games you purchased (with the exception of those given away for free with the subscription).

There is certainly room to be concerned with what happens to purchases if Google eventually pulls the plug on the whole service.

I don’t disagree with your main point about losing games, but the fee is strictly for Stadia Pro, which permits 4K and 5.1 surround sound. Stadia Base is free and will launch in February, but only permits up to 1080p and stereo sound. You still obviously also need to buy the games though (except F2P). They’re using the “Founder’s Edition” almost like Early Access. If you have Stadia Pro and you stop paying, you lose access to the free games that are included with Pro, which right now are Destiny 2 and Samurai Showdown. This is the same as Xbox Live Gold and the Free Games with Gold. You don’t lose access to the games you purchased if you stop paying for Pro.

> If you have Stadia Pro and you stop paying, you lose access to the free games that are included with Pro, which right now are Destiny 2 and Samurai Showdown. This is the same as Xbox Live Gold and the Free Games with Gold.

Games With Gold are actually free. You need the Gold membership to get them, but you can unsubscribe - they're yours.

Edit: You may be thinking of Game Pass, which behaves in the way you describe.

Yes on the 360 because its Store was never built with Memberships in mind. No on the Xbox One (and PC where applicable) where a lapse in your Gold status will make those games unplayable until you rejoin.

Nope. I’m not mistaken. What you’re talking about only applies to Xbox 360. For Xbox One, you lose access to your claimed Free Games with Gold when your subscription lapses until you resubscribe. The same is true for the free games to PlayStation Plus subscribers.

Destiny 2 is free on Steam, no gold needed.

If I could play high-end complex modern AAA games like RDR2 on my iPad Pro while traveling, I think there's a valuable proposition there. But ironically that's exactly the area where Stadia falls flat: internet connections are weak or nonexistent while traveling, and currently it's not even usable from an iPad.

This is the thing I don't get.

Who precisely is this concept even marketable to? People with high speed internet, that also can't afford a gaming console?

But can afford a device capable of handling all of the inputs & playback of the video.

So lets low ball and say a $140 chromebook.

+ the cost of the games.

How many people is this? Genuinely.

Well I bought stadia. With 3 young kids and a busy job i don't have a lot of time to game so I want something where I can just sit down and game. No wasting time downloading/installing games. No patches. Just games ready to play.

A second point, sometimes i play coop games with my wife. Its nice not needing 2 consoles or gaming pc's. One can play on the TV and the other on a tablet or cheap laptop.

> A second point, sometimes i play coop games with my wife. Its nice not needing 2 consoles or gaming pc's. One can play on the TV and the other on a tablet or cheap laptop.

Unless you have (particularly good) fiber, this probably won't happen. The bandwidth requirements are too high.

> No wasting time downloading/installing games. No patches. Just games ready to play.

FWIW, all of the current generation consoles (even the Switch) have a standby mode that will let them patch your games while you're not playing, meaning that in most cases when you go to play, you can immediately play. They'll even download pre-ordered games without your input.

The only time you would need to be concerned about download times is when you're purchasing a new game for the first time. That's typically a one-time event per game.

I do have gigabit fiber.

On my Xbox I often don't get around to pre-ordering games and there is limited disk space so if I want to play a old game I have to wait again.

There are many simple solutions for that which cost less than the founder's edition.

And, if I'm a little bit snarky, you can't exactly play those old games on Stadia either.

Hey me too (albeit 100mbit) and I've gotten my Stadia and been playing tomb raider with it and it works great so I wouldn't worry about it.

A bigger harddrive for your xBox would cost less than the Stadia controller.

Only if you dont factor in the cost of the xbox. If buying from scratch stadia would be cheaper.

I bought a 2TB SSD for my XBox One and I never looked back.

I don't doubt your motivation here and am not going to sit her and debunk your thought process - but I do wonder how many people match your template, which seems to be "people who want to play AAA games but not very much".

I game on PC, my kids use PC and consoles, and I can't say that "downloading/installing games" is a significant time sink - and if your network isn't good, Stadia isn't going to work either.

The other thing that I think will break the Stadia business model is that the free access costs Google money unless it recoups the spending on the games. So while we're hearing about reasonably competitive Day 1 prices for games, will we see the pattern of discounting that all other games go through? Second-hand console games?

It just feels like it's aiming at a niche while building out a huge system that's only going to be viable if it achieves mass adoption.

I think it has it can have its uses, even if it's not great for every single situation.

For example, say you want to play a particular new game but don't have the hardware for it. Stadia could be a good option to quickly get to play without having to buy new hardware.

Say I have a decent PC for most days and small games, but I'd like to try the new Forza Horizon because it looks fun. I could very well get it on Stadia. I'm not worried about losing access in 10 years, it's just to have some fun for a few months.

Actually for games with pretty high requirements such as the future Microsoft Flight Simulator, streaming could be the best option for most people.

Microsoft thinks there is an audience here too, given Project xCloud.

Maybe there isn't enough high speed internet deployed in the world, but there certainly are a lot of devices capable of streaming given how many people already have an Android or iOS device on them at all times. Both of which support Bluetooth and most modern game controllers. Some of which have better screens than most people have at home. Some of which have better specs than, as just one interesting example, Nintendo's Switch.

It's not entirely about cost. I don't want a gaming console or a gaming PC because they take up space and require maintenance. But I'd still like to play modern AAA games occasionally. If I can do that from my MacBook, I'm interested.

I'm not sure if this is a big enough market, but system exclusive games would be a reasonable cause.

For example, a gamer playing on PC and/or XBox might want to play Horizon Zero Dawn for some time, but not buy a PS4 just for one game. Or some Nintendo exclusive game.

Most people don't have all gaming consoles available, and exclusives are (IMHO sadly) a thing, and this might be a reasonable workaround to provide compatibility.

How would a Sony or Nintendo exclusive be on Stadia?

part of the problem with that market is that there are very few true console exclusives left and that trend seems to only be going one way. sony made sure to have their mark all over death stranding and it's still gonna be on pc in a few months.

Well, as a desktop Mac user, I'd be very interested.

Of course its not available for Mac (yet).

Yes it is, you just need a Chrome browser!

Get a PS, take the dual shock with you, sync it with your iPad and enjoy streaming games from back home, using the free app.

PC's don't generally need a subscription service to access games or multiplayer, but your upfront hardware costs to play modern AAA games are huge.

And existing consoles require you to:

* pay a large upfront fee for the hardware

* purchase games at full price

* buy a recurring subscription service for access to updates and essentials, like multiplayer.

Stadia doesn't seem unreasonable at all by comparison.

The biggest problem I see with this right now is that Stadia appears to be sub-console quality and really nowhere close to PC gaming. The Pro service that is supposed to be 4K@60 is not at all 4K.

I do agree that if it reaches the point where Stadia allows you to effectively rent a $3k - $4k high end gaming PC for just $10/month, it will become an interesting proposition.

$400 amortized over a lifetime of 5 years (10, at the outside). ~$6 a month. You can also buy a console used for less than half the price at this point in the console lifecycle.

The game purchase story is identical.

The multiplayer subscription is approximately another ~$4 a month, and includes an average of two new, free, games per month. It's also not required outside of multiplayer.

So, the deal is virtually identical to (or better than) Stadia, but with much more stability in poor internet zones, and the chances of Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo turning off their entire ecosystem are much lower than Google's (they have a positive track record spanning decades on this topic).

So cost of ownership over time is similar and competitive for the non-free Stadia. But I'm not sure I really care about that, or that most people think of money that way. Its just easier to part with a few bucks every month for most people, than it is to part with $400 at one time.

You can look at the cost another way: Buying a console is like buying a 5-year pre-paid plan for a subscription service. That puts it in clearer terms, to me.

Anyhow, once Stadia's free version is released, unless its drastically limited in someway, it will be cheaper than everything. Honestly, I don't know why they didn't advertise as a primarily free service. People think of it as a paid service first, that has a crappy free tier, rather than a free service that has a value-add pro tier.

7 years later, Glass is still a successful product for its users.

Yes, all 7 of them are very happy with it.

This could be solved in theory by a streaming service that didn't try to lock you in. Alas, almost every streaming service of every kind does want to lock you in, and often the licensing agreements necessary to offer competitive pricing require it.

But having a pricier option where you can save your content offline would be a way to satisfy both audiences.

Although in this case, I personally think a pure subscription model should replace the fee + pay-per-game model as the basic streaming option.

> Stadia is different, with this product Google is trying something really innovative.

Genuine question: What is innovative here? There are at least a dozen attempts at 'cloud gaming' that I'm aware of dating back about a decade.

Now you can play games at lower quality and higher latency than ever before, and pay Google for the privilege of renting them! Plus, Google can control what games you play! Innovation!

I think I can help answer your question, but just watching the keynote will be best. https://youtu.be/hl-Y1QVhmcM. The tl;dr of the whole keynote is what's different about Google's attempt at 'Cloud Gaming' is their ability to leverage their infrastructure. Outside of Amazon and Microsoft I don't know of another company that will be able to match the latency and computation requirements to make this all work as marketed. What really stood out to me from their keynote this year was the number of edge nodes that Google has on top of their datacenter infrastructure. https://youtu.be/hl-Y1QVhmcM?t=1360

> What is different with Google's attempt at 'Cloud Gaming' is their ability to leverage their infrastructure.

That's not innovation, it's just having a bigger stick than the other guy.

Yes,we know, nothing remotely similar to anything else is innovation. Airplanes are just bicycles with bolted on wings.

Okay, but that's hardly what most would consider innovative. Applying their large scale is more of an evolution of or improvement to the established cloud gaming idea.

That's what the word "innovation" means.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation

Google Suggest is low latency, and required a huge effort, driven from the top.

Cloud gaming needs even lower latency. I don't think it's possible, but if google is doing the serious datacenter work, it must be a testbed for something else, because gaming isn't worth it anyway.

"gaming isn't worth it anyway"

> By 2018, the United States video game industry had matched that of the Unites States film industry on basis of revenue, with both industries having made around US$43 billion that year.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_industry

Google's revenue in 2018 was $137B... but you're right, a slice of $43B may be worth it to them.

All that compute and network power and yet GeForceNow performs better for me than Stadia.

I'm just one datapoint, I know, but that's also just a keynote.

AFAIK, there is a big difference in the backend. Something like the Playstation 'cloud gaming' gave you remote access to a playstation console. Others gave you access to a VM running the game. I think Microsoft was talking about giving you access to your own XBox running at home?

The games were not re-engineered / ported specifically to run 'in the cloud' as Stadia is attempting. There are some interesting things that could allow, if a developer ever decides to utilize it.

My mental model is that Stadia is just like owning a PS/Xbox, but the hardware is in Google's datacentres.

You pay the one-off cost to buy the console, you then maybe pay for the Pro subscription, but you have to buy your games and those games are locked to that platform - just like with PS/Xbox.

All the other stuff about having games that deliver something unseen before because of "the cloud" are mostly promises and theoretical features at this stage, so I wouldn't bank too much on that.

> Google is trying something really innovative

This kind of thing has been around for nearly 10 years.

Where? Who else is doing this type of cloud gaming?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnLive

>The OnLive Game Service was launched in the United States on June 17, 2010. The service was launched in the United Kingdom on September 22, 2011.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Now

"PlayStation Now (PS Now) is a cloud gaming subscription service developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment."

Onlive (deceased).

Microsoft (xCloud). Free until it’s stable.

Nvidia (GeForce NOW). Free until it’s stable.

Sony (PlayStation Now).

.. Seriously dude where’ve you been?

And you can add others like Shadow, or you could roll your own using Parsec or Moonlight + a cloud provider like Paperspace or AWS (or even Google cloud).

What is important in case of Shadow, GeForce Now and roll you own, that you buy a PC game that you can access on any PC, not just using a single service (like Stadia, or xCloud).

Yup. OnLive tried it with similar results. There are many markets where 10ms - 20ms latency doesn't matter that much, but realtime gaming isn't one of them. It's extremely disorienting to play a game with even the slightest framebuffer lag.

I think Stadia could be super cool for simulation games like Cities: Skylines. The lag isn't nearly as much of a problem and the ability to have an extremely powerful computer simulate many more "agents" would be fantastic.

Surprisingly, OnLive found lag was an even greater problem for applications with a cursor than for games.

Plus your suggestion can be implemented with cloud compute (a backend behind the UI) - it doesn't need to be cloud streaming.

No problem. Just reinvent X11 and let the display server render the cursor.

Your phrasing is dismissive but yes having a game not render its own cursor is pretty common and works quite well.

Really? I played Witcher 3 with ping (to Paperspace machine) of about 40ms, the latency wasn't noticeable at all.

After playing it for about 5-8 hours in the last 2 days, I'd say for a casual gamer like me, there is no perceptible latency. Even in an FPS like Destiny. But again, yesterday was the first time I played a AAA game after two years so maybe I'm just a bit rusty.

You don't know what you're missing until you have tried lower latency.

My regular gaming setup is a 144 Hz monitor with a PC. Everytime I try gaming on a console with a 60 Hz TV I feel like I'm completely drunk because of the noticeable input lag. And that's not even cloud gaming. That's just the Console + TV input lag...

I think the experience will vary quite significantly, the surface is quite large. For Stadia launch, I created a crowdsourcing reports site and am hoping that we can get a better understanding through others' experiences.

https://www.cloudgamingdb.com/

My concern for Stadia revolves around Microsoft's upcoming offering.

Apparently, Microsoft is simply going to rack-mount XBox hardware and stream it that way, which means the entire XBox library is instantly compatible.

For Stadia, games have to be modified specifically for it and their Linux configuration, which limits what games are announced for the platform, and requires engineering effort.

If that MS approach works, why hasn't Netflix or Gog or someone already done it for any games?

They don't have the game dev experience or the library. Seems obvious. They can stream the games for the same reason Netflix can't buy a single DVD and stream that movie to everyone on the planet.

Netflix has been trying to introduce interactive content to their platform for years. The latest attempt is Minecraft: Story Mode [0]. Netflix's architecture is designed around streaming static video files, on platforms without great latency guarantees. There can be gaps of up to a second when loading the next video file. Interactive UI and choicepoints are quite limited.

Streaming live and streaming offline media require very different infrastructure.

[0] https://www.netflix.com/title/80227995

There was also that choose-your-own-adventure Black Mirror thing.

>Stadia is different, with this product Google is trying something really innovative.

Google is not the one being innovative here. This has been done before, to no real success. Google was first to the finish line (kinda, seems more like a beta in implementation), but other offerings are coming down the pipe shortly.

I don't see Google winning this one. MS is in a much better position here, and NVidia also has one in the works.

I would short Google on this in an instant if someone would take my money.

> I would short Google on this in an instant if someone would take my money.

I'm sure there are many people who would be happy to take your money to bet against Google.

Ok, well let me know. Google fails far more often than they succeed, and they're out of their depth with this one.

I'm not a Google advocate. But Google (well Alphabet) is a public stock - there are many ways to short it.

Cool. Can I short stadia specifically? I'm pretty sure you understood what I was saying.

I honestly thought you meant what you said - that you wanted to short Google.

Fair enough. That's why I threw the "on this" bit in.

I would argue that there are a couple of innovations here that haven't been tried (to my knowledge) by the previous attempts. One is the wifi directly connected controller (so it bypasses the display device for lowering input latency), the other is, supposedly, advance algorithms to estimate inputs to reduce lag. The latter, of course, is something that FPS servers have been doing for a while but I don't believe this has been tried before in terms of cloud game streaming.

Remember, for years, Xbox One has allowed for local streaming from Xbox One consoles to Windows 10 PCs via the Xbox app over LAN, which gives Microsoft's Project xCloud the benefits of: * significant experience with the fundamental technology, * no new special hardware required (they can tweak existing Xbox One hardware), * a much larger library of games currently available for download (for consumers who want to switch to a local console), and * an existing Netflix-of-games program via Game Pass (for consumers interested in pure subscriptions)

As-is, Google just happens to be first-to-market in the current generation of on-demand game streaming options. But we've seen this technology before, and I could get the same results with a high quality VPN set-up to connect to a Xbox at home.

> I could get the same results with a high quality VPN set-up to connect to a Xbox at home. Has anyone actually done that, or are you speculating?

> Has anyone actually done that, or are you speculating?

There are videos on YouTube of people using Xbox game streaming, but it requires setting up a VPN at home which presumably few people do.

Edit: with the Stadia launch, I'm currently working on setting up a Raspberry PI as a VPN server to try this myself.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/products/geforce-now/

Has been a product for a long time and actually works really well.

Moving every last thing people do with computers into the cloud so their activities can be thoroughly data mined is innovative?

its initial purchase price is only slightly less than a full console, the games cost more, the visual quality is worse, it is way way more subject to packet loss, the input lag is orders of magnitude worse and it (along with my purchases) have a high probability of disappearing in 3 years time

where do I sign up?

You forgot that stadia also lacks nearly all of the nice-to-gave features already provided on consoles. You don't even get a notification when you unlock a trophy.

It's not just all of the products they've dropped in the past, it's also the cumulative day-to-day experience I've had with them overall. When their stuff works, it's great, but if anything goes wrong, one faces the impervious silent wall of Google's tech support, or rather complete lack thereof. The idea of trusting their compute cloud for a business service that truly has to be reliable seems insane.

They make great free toys that mostly work and make a lot of money doing so. I'm glad to use those toys for free, but I'm under no allusions that what often works will always work. That's not their forte.

*illusions. (good grief)

Could you explain to me what is innovative about Google offering you fields to enter your social details on your Stadia profile for AIM, MSN, YIM, etc... And could you explain why they won't put fields for Google Talk, Google Wave, Buzz, Huddle, Google+ Messenger, Google Hangouts, Messenger, Google Allo, Google Duo or Google Spaces?

Google can only succeed with their own low-latency internet --- Fiber, Loon etc.

BTW Twitch is a different kind of game streaming.

With the huge, hideous and costly mistakes Google has been making with Fiber, and Loon being still nothing more than a pie-in-the-sky fantasy?

Good point, also remember they have their own internet cable ruin through the globe.

The question is not how innovative or useful Stadia is but how reliable Google is. If all Google produced was boring useless garbage, no one would care that they shut it down.

I'm pretty happy with the PlayStation Now experience for games that don't require fast response times; I would say it is "viable".

You do realize that streaming games is an old idea and has been tried many times and Google's competitors do or will have similar services. Google isn't doing anything new here. They don't have any first-move advantage. The only advantage they have is infrastructure and scale. Whether that is enough, we shall see.

I do understand that this is an old idea. My TV actually has a steaming service for games built in but I have never used it because I doubt the performance would be up to standard.

The innovation is not necessarily in the product but in the engineering required to make the product feasible. There is a long history of tech that simply is too early for the current environment. Google is betting the cloud gaming has reached a point of viability and it's very exciting to see them tackle the challenge.

Obviously there are concerns with the products. Specifically paying for games, the games itself, etc. But generally I'm excited for this effort.

There is ZERO innovation here. This is simply google trying to lock more people in to a service they will later try to pivot, which will then be canceled. I'm glad you are excited for this, and I hope to be proven wrong, but like all others I see a google service and wonder how long until EOL

>The innovation is not necessarily in the product but in the engineering required to make the product feasible.

Yet their launch has been plauged by issues and latency is still a massive problem. They didn't crack the nut, so again, what's innovative here?

> My TV actually has a steaming service

Nice Freudian slip there. We have a "smart" TV here that's never been connected to the Internet. They seem to just universally suck.

For extra credit, our TV is a Roku TV, and from the CEOs comments, I doubt I'll ever connect it to the Internet. At least until they start coming with 4G connectivity built-in...(!)

On the original rumors about Stadia I did think Google was going to revolutionize the industry, particularly in social/massively-multiple games. Starting with the development stack that would leverage a coherent, synchronized world that is massively malleable -- huge banks of systems connected in the microsecond latency range with virtually unlimited throughput, massive neural engines, etc. Destructables, enormous player counts, a completely dynamic environment, virtually eliminating cheating, etc -- it would change everything.

But then they come out with some hosted older games. Eh. Maybe the big reveal will come out eventually, but this far it's pretty disappointing.

So what? Products improve. This one will too. Imagine seeing an ad on Youtube and immediately being able to play the game on your chromebook. I don't know that's what is going to happen and it can't work today, but maybe in a few years.

That's such a slippery argument. You can always underdeliver as long as you promise that 'products improve. This one will too'.

How about I don't pay the monthly subscription/for the controller and tell Google that "payments improve. Mine will too"?

I'm obviously salty because I preordered Stadia (against my better judgement) and it's terrible.

What’s terrible about it?

Latency is pretty bad (GFN by comparison works fine for me). Samurai Shodown, a brawler game, is mostly unplayable.

The overall quality is very beta (black screen in Stadia unless you disable hardware acceleration, which I have to do every time, Stadia can't easily handle multiple Google accounts, I have to change accounts every single time).

Probably worst thing is very Google-like support. Super long queues for "Customer Care", phonelines are closed at 10:30 AM because they're "Out of hours".

Except if you stepped out of the hn bubble you'll know MS has had something similar in works for a long time so no, Google can't win here

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