Is streamed gaming dead, again?
If you are a user, what has your experience been in the last few months?
Mainly because after spending ~60$ on a game, to keep having access to it, you have to keep paying a subscription. Even if you only play in solo mode.
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Edit: it appears that you "only" need a subscription if you want to play @4K, this is was communicated so badly it stuck in my mind since the lunch.
The point still stands that when google eventually shuts down the platform, your games will evaporate and you don't own anything.
If indeed this is the case (maybe I’m wrong?) and there’s a “lot of other people” that aren’t interested in Stadia for this reason, that seems like a big failure in communication. The fact that I can’t answer the question with a few minutes of Googling is alarming.
(usually people bring up Steam here, but with Steam you do get to download the game and while often it is tied on Steam, most of the time it is trivial to remove that dependency and many games do not even have it - though Steam isn't the only place to get games, personally i buy all my new games from GOG where i have about 660 games and all of them are stored on my own external HDD... which btw also contains games from services that are now defunct)
it's also, much of the time, practically impossible to remove the dependency.
Most online-tied steam games do some form of verification of the game files. Most steam work-arounds are modified executables or DLLs. Many (most) of the steam work-arounds carry the caveat 'offline only'.
If you're lucky enough to buy from a developer that cares enough to avoid using the steam tie-ins, great -- but it shouldn't at all be expected. It's uncommon for games from any decently large developer.
Kudos to Paradox for avoiding most of the steam tie-in stuff. A few others, but it's not an attribute I really considered recording -- one should avoid Steam all together if DRM-avoidance is the goal.
It was quite an eye opening experience when i noticed several complains at an online forum years ago about a game not coming out of the box with dedicated servers and only allowing P2P connections - essentially people were asking for a game to be tied on a company's servers that would inevitable shut down when the game ceased to be profitable.
But at least for single player games things are much better. Personally i do not care about online gaming so i tend to forget this :-P.
And yeah some games (though it is far from the majority) aren't easy to remove the steam dependencies from (btw all you need are some open source tools, no need to rely on shady alternative DLLs or EXEs). This is why i only buy games on Steam when the price is very low, like less than $10 (and that for games i really like, for other games i might not buy them unless they're less than $5), so that if i cant remove the dependency it wont be that much of a loss to me and i'd still get to play the game in short term. Lately i usually just wait for a GOG or itch.io release though, unless it is some weird indie game that most likely wont appear on GOG or itch.io anyway.
Stadia Pro gets you free games (which also remain "yours" even after canceling your subscription), discounts on other games, 4K streaming on the games you've purchased, and supports surround sound.
Stadia Base (free) lets you play your games in 60fps 1080p. This is the tier you play your purchased games on if you don't keep a subscription up.
translation: the tier that lets you play the games you paid retail price to rent for no additional fee for the next 18 months until google kills stadia too.
No thanks.
On the other hand, it's still up in the air how long-lived Stadia would be. If you compare it against Google's free services it's not a good track record, but if you compare it against content bought in Google Play, it's trustable.
Stadia meant I could buy the game I really wanted to play (Red Dead 2), and not worry at all about how to play it. I’m currently on the free trial of the Pro subscription (which enables 4K streaming), but I probably won’t renew. I can keep playing for FREE, capped at 1080p, which I would expect will be just fine. Lag has been non-existent, video quality could be a little better but it’s phenomenal for live streaming IMO.
Edit for context: My internet connection typically hovers around 60Mbps, and I play with an ethernet connection (which I got for remote work, not for gaming, but it's been great).
As a user, I'm extremely happy. I recently moved from Google Fiber (Kansas City) to Portland (Xfinity) so I was a little worried that Stadia only worked so well because I was on fiber + Google, but it's worked amazingly well out here as well.
I briefly tried GeForce Now since it's cheaper and it was fine, but I had some input stuttering and graphics downscaling that was an immediate dealbreaker for me compared to the flawless experience I had on Stadia.
To me, it seems like Stadia has the tech down solid, and the biggest downside is the game library. However, they also seem to be picking up the pace they release new games at, and there's way more games per month free on Pro now than there was months ago, so that's really exciting to me.
I play Stadia on the same TV I have a gaming PC (mostly for VR, but occasionally for RPGs with an Xbox controller), a Nintendo Switch, and an Xbox One -- and I've found myself pretty exclusively using the Switch and Stadia for the past few months.
I doubt I'll buy another game in the future outside of Stadia, unless it's something for the Switch. The Xbox is pretty dead to me now (and I don't think I'll upgrade to a next-gen console) and I much prefer Stadia over my gaming PC since I can also play games on other devices now.
I'm excited for Amazon's Project Tempo and Microsoft's xCloud, because they might be better at getting the licensing needed for massive amounts of games at once. In the meantime, Stadia seems like a clear leader in streamed gaming to me.
I've been on Google Fiber for years and I worry it spoiled me. I wish there were more tenable options than Xfinity-which-definitely-isn't-Comcast.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/4qWViL3.png (this pains me to see)
My xbox one x and a 4k screen in the office room, but I can't be bothered to sit in the chair and wait until everything boots to play for an hour on a Tuesday night.
The video artifacts can make the picture a bit muddy (esp. darker levels or games) but all in all, it runs smoothly, I can't notice any input lag that's longer than on my xbox.
Games start quickly, run smoothly, and there are some bangers that will take me months to exhaust, so I am not that worried about the library.
The issues start when someone in your house starts streaming HD videos, than stuttering begins. I have 100 mbit copper, I am pretty close to google data centers it seems, in Western Europe.
I bought Stadia controller and a few games. The controller feels great and pairs quickly. I mostly game either on my Windows PC through chrome (4k) or my macbook (1080).
I really love it!
I got three months free so I will continue to play and see then if I will renew
I bought a couple games already and those are always in your library. So just add all the free ones. If you cancel those games are still available to you
I'm hooking it up in my room when I go in for surgery.
I'm a new dad, so jumping in and out of games is important. Sadia makes that easy, unlike the huge updates on my Switch (nevermind the filled SD card). I also love that I can move room to room without needing additional docks - just a multi purpose chromecast.
There is so much fear/noise in this thread about Google shutting it down, and I gotta say, I'm just not worried about that. If it happens, so be it, I'll have gotten plenty of value out of the platform. Are you not going to see a movie in a movie theater because you don't own it after and the theater might go out of business someday? Are you all still buying Blu-ray? Everything dies, live a little, go stream Doom Eternal.
I think since November I've paid the monthly subs twice, due to the "free" months from the Founder's Edition and then Google offering another three months free.
I've bought a handful of games, the most expensive was Grid for £55 and Division 2 (£8) and the WoNY expansion (£25).
I have a fairly standard connection, 40Mbps down and 18 up.
Overall it has vastly exceeded by expectations. As a causal gamer I find it perfect to dip in and out of, without the need to layout £500 on a console or wait for huge Gb updates.
It constantly gave me the laggyness that you get on a console, but on a PC, but worse!
Yes, you get used to it, until you play something locally again and are reminded it's not good. (maybe it was my setup to blame in this case.)
Its also often how internal cost centers within a company justify their existence, by charging the teams that use their services. I've worked in places where it is not possible to get anyone not on your team to do anything unless you can provide an internal cost code to charge to.
As for Stadia, I play games from time to time but it wouldn't have those I like most and I also like to own media, so it isn't really too interesting. I still think it will be a niche product.
Enthusiasts probably won't switch and for the casual market you probably go with a reduced palette of games. Although that might depend on contracts Google can make with developers.
There is an entire category of software dedicated to this activity, which happens to be my area of expertise.
Imagine being the ads team and being told “you must run these ads for free. Oh, by the way, your revenue targets are the same.” You’d be upset to say the least! Reduce revenue targets? By how much? That sounds like a complicated way to get the same result.
Also, paying for intra company services simplifies RoI calculations. Instead of having to work out “how much ad revenue could I have made?” and trying to guess the opportunity cost, you have clear numbers. Stadia spent X on marketing and made Y revenue. Your ad team process is unchanged and Stadia have the freedom to market the product however they please.
Where things get dicey can be when you’re forced to use your own company. A real life example is a company that sells parts and also has a repair division. The repair division MUST buy from distribution at market rates and MUST add a markup on. The result is the customer gets double markup charged on a part AND pays for labour on top. You can guess how competitive this company is on bids where alternative suppliers can offer parts cheaper.
This in my view is the biggest problem.
The drastically reduced catalog makes it currently unattractive to a heavy gamer. Granted that this is very subjective.
My taste is very complicated, so it's of course my own problem, but the number of titles is indeed very restricted.
Right now I do think it's clear that the rave reviews are coming from casual gamers.
If you do a side-to-side comparison between Stadia and a console or PC you can notice some graphics artifacts and there can be input lag.
Then, the reviews have not been favourable enough for people to become interested. Favourable reviews have been always an important factor in games.
I have used Steam Link for streaming games locally, here at home, and it's not the same as playing it directly on my PC. With Stadia perhaps it's similar.
The best part is that it just works. I can, simultaneously, stream the game to my TV, and stream input from my Bluetooth connected Dualshock 4 from my phone to the PC, running a game through Proton/Wine. There are so many moving parts at play and yet they all work perfectly, with zero fiddling.
I might jump into Stadia for trying Cyberpunk because I’m not interested in getting a big loud box anytime soon (depends on pricing though).
I do not expect to see Nintendo games on the Stadia.
People who aren’t “gamer” enough to invest into a base platform, but are curious about games. That’s Stadias market. Such people don’t give a f*ck about those play-find-the-difference videos on YouTube.