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>Yet it's been shown multiple times that the games running on Stadia are running at less than promised quality, with techniques like upscaling being used for 4K instead of native 4K

I remember having tons of fun playing Portal and Left 4 Dead with buddies in my dorm room when 720p was pretty high end. Is 4K really that necessary to have a good time with a video game?

Or perhaps I'm... officially old :(

I don't really care for 4K personally. I just want "native" because I can't stand looking at blurry interfaces. I can definitely tell when I'm running a 1080p game on a 1440p native monitor and everything is being stretched up. I would take lower settings just to have a clear UI, but I can't do that.

In terms of raw quality with streaming game services, bitrate matters much more than resolution. 4K mandates higher bitrate to deliver the pixels in a timely fashion. All of the services have some upper cap on bitrate, and if you can drive that up (can downstream clients support it?) then you can increase the streamed game quality to be closer to what's actually being output. This is most noticeable in areas where it's extremely dark or shadow detail is important, less so in light settings.

But either way, quality is a combination of the game settings (what is being output to the card), the output resolution (the scale of things you see), and the bitrate (what is being sent down for you to actually view). If these three components are mis-tuned, the quality of the image you're looking at will be lower due to one of those components.

I agree with Linus from LTT where he said it's because the TV and Phone industry have effectively ignored 1440p as a resolution. Movies are either HD (1080p) or 4k and so TV and phone panels are made in those resolutions. Monitors may be 1440p (which I find most useful) but only native PC games actually output at that resolution.

This really goes to show that Stadia is a video streaming platform (i.e. something to help compete with Twitch) rather than a game playing platform.

If they didn't advertise 4K in the first place, then turn out to lie about it by upscaling, probably would remove a lot of these complaints.

Sure, but why would you pay Google for that same experience when you can already get it at a very low cost?

Stadia and other streaming/remote services like this big selling point is giving customers access to higher fidelity content, without having to pay for the hardware to render that high fidelity content, and marketing has made a big deal about that supposed feature. It's why they take so much flak for not being able to deliver that fidelity.

4k on a 27" screen at desk-sitting distance is worth whatever trouble you've been avoiding.

Text is indistinguishable from print type. You're able to see an enormous amount of information without panning. With a good mouse you can pick and rubber-band much larger groups.

I had stadia too. Some more impressions :

- the tech is on point ! Playing on my 4k tv, it looks pretty incredible and plays just fine.

- the launch catalog is ... disappointing. I played a little bit with the releases games. There was nothing of interest to me. There are some great games on the platform .. but I have already played them. I have zero interest in Destiny 2 (one of the free launch games for pro subscribers).

- nit : I might be very tempted to try stadia again IF I could play doom eternal with a mouse and keyboard on my tv (with the expectation that the game will be worth playing).

Some of this could have been solved by shoving tons of money in the direction of some studios so that stadia got some big exclusive games at launch.

Even the "orc must die" games that will come later this year might have been enough for me to keep the "founder" edition past the 2 weeks return period. That's not a big license like Zelda that will get people to buy just because of the brand name but at least a game where I have some fond memories (and the orcs catapulting physics could use stadia's backend.

> I'm not a Fortnite person, but they don't have that, nor Apex.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't yet really have cross-platform support? Without that these games wouldn't be very fun. Also, I don't think Stadias current model is really designed to work with F2P games. Maybe if you have a Pro subscription that can pay for it.

Really though, what we have right now feels like an early access, and it's unfortunate how poorly they marketed it. Like, it makes no sense why I can't even use the controller with PC/Mobile wirelessly yet. The issues you mentioned too, all those things sound like they will be eventually fixed, but right now what we have is clearly unfinished.

Those games were all fun. before they added cross platform support. I would say that has helped hose games spread but not their fun.

Fortnite has cross-platform, Apex Legends does not. Personally, I only see negativity around the way cross-platform was implemented into Fortnite.

You didn't mention latency once which is by far my biggest technical concern. The Battle Royale games you mentioned in particular wouldn't work well with any noticeable latency.

I've seen some people mention that latency makes some FPS games unplayable on the game streaming platforms they've tried. Which is fine if it's a physical limitation, there are other genres to enjoy, we should just be aware of what it's good for.

I've been playing Red Dead 2 on it and never had any latency issues at all.

Technically, Stadia is perfect.

It's just the poor handling of the launch and the current lack of games that is disappointing.

Although tbh by the time I've finished Red Dead I guess there will be more games.

I'm more scared of Google just killing the platform.

Red Dead 2 probably isn't the best game to test latency with, considering how much latency is added by the game itself for the sake of more realistic animations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqMqeuwxwVg

What pissed me off is that I purchased a second chromecast ultra so I could game on my TV in one room and projector in another room. But it only worked with the specific chromecast that came with my controller for like months.

> However, both Shadow and GeForce Now leverage existing game libraries, look better, and are generally more approachable than Stadia's "rebuy everything, run at lower quality, and lack significant features" plan.

The old joke when you read a fortune cookie out loud, is to say "in bed" afterwards - "Things will look up soon... in bed." When talking about the performance of game streaming services you need a similar qualifier at the end... "for me". "<x> streaming services performs better than <y>.... for me"

That's because experiences with the various streaming services can't be generalized so easily. GeForce now is an absolutely miserable experience... for me. However, Stadia is fantastic... for me.

The "for me" caveat applies to some of GP's statements, but not all. In particular, leveraging game existing libraries and improved approachability are true for everyone.

That being said, it does feel that GeForce is having a hard time keeping games on their platform. Anecdotically, ever since they launched the paid service, there's been lots of games pulled from their platform, which is a real shame.

They also don't have a transparent way of discovering new games on their platform which is a huge issue.

GeForce now is a pretty poor user experience compared with Stadia, IMHO - it is definitely not universally more approachable at all. And only PC gamers with existing steam libraries have existing content to play on GF Now. But the thing is... I'm not likely to already own a game in steam, that I can't play on my own hardware. So the fact that my existing library is available to play, isn't much of a draw, in and of itself. I keep looking for excuses to play one of my games on GF now, but I keep finding I have no reason to prefer it over my PC.

I don't want to be pedantic, but leveraging existing game libraries doesn't really matter to people who don't have existing game libraries (or existing game libraries that overlap with the games on the service). It seems like a "for me" qualifier should apply there when talking about how important that aspect is to users for a new service.