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> "...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.

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.

> 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.

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 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.

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

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

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.