Do you work for Stadia? How is Cyberpunk doing on that system? I'm hesitating buying it there instead of on console.
I'm so sorry to hear a bunch of gamers on Reddit are having issues getting this thing to run well on their systems. There appears to be an older Nvidia driver issue that's limiting utilization to low tens causing weird glitches in the rendering for people. But I tested it on my aging AMD card in an eGPU on my MBP i9 at 1080p with all the settings turned to Ultra. Even there it runs well for the complexity and liveliness of the city; about 30-40fps.
Comparing the GeForce NOW remote rendering with ray tracing against my locally AMD rendering, I much prefer the GeForce NOW version with ray tracing. The game makes really good use of lighting and seeing subtle reflections throughout the game as they would be in real life makes me prefer the GeForce NOW version.
NOTE: I went with GeForce NOW because it supports ray tracing. Stadia does not, so just be aware of that.
The only downside I see is that there is no Linux client (or a browser one, which they promised) and I need to do a strange setup of:
1. Starting game on Android
2. Connecting bluetooth mouse there (so it won't kick me out because I'm not doing anything on the phone)
3. Starting Steam and using Steam Remote Play
(Thank you a anonymous user on reddit for letting know that Steam Remote Play works there)
(with each step cursing Google for not enabling video out on Pixel 4 USB-C)
It is a bit of PITA, but I'm glad it works (other option of using a VM was even worse).
The downside is that if you have a non 16:9 resolution you will have to change your desktop resolution to support fullscreen with black borders, otherwise the content renders off the bottom of the screen.
I tried it just now (with 16:9) and unfortunately mouse doesn't work in game and I see a window bar at the top (half of it actually, I can double click on it and then I see full bar + game inside this window).
I'll need to experiment with it more, I'll try to make it work in Firefox as it has better codes under linux.
A couple months ago though (if that), they did say Linux support was coming in the form of a browser client, though that's already a thing, you can already use GFN on Linux w/ a chromium-based browser.
Pro tip: I thought my Stadia stream was having issues, turns out that motion blur and lens flare just make the game look like ass. Turn those off and it's gorgeous.
I'm an absolute Stadia fanboy. I wasn't really interested in Cyberpunk, but they offered a free controller/chromecast if you preordered, so it's kinda hard to say no. Let me know if you have any questions.
I'm horrified of Stadia. Google does not need to be in the games business.
I'm a twice-burned Google Play Music user with thousands of dollars in music purchases.
Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I'd be willing to bet money that Stadia is going to be shut down and all of your purchases, saves, etc. will be deleted.
They were also transferred over to YouTube Music (and I think can be downloaded from there also), and I believe are/were accessible through Takeout as well.
I’m expected to pay retail for the games i want but in effect i only get to rent them. Nah, no thanks.
All that said, sure it could be shut down. But so could PS5, or XBOX. Sure it's probably less likely, but I've come to expect nothing is forever and to enjoy what's here while it's here. And personally speaking, this is probably easier for me since the number of times I go back to play an old game is essentially zero. I'd imagine most console folks are similar.
From speaking to devs who engage with Google on Stadia, it appears to be a tire fire, in that the Google people don't appear to care about how much work the gamedevs need to put in to keep up with their API changes (much like lots of Google services, actually).
Because of the poor devrel, I will be incredibly shocked if Stadia survives another two years.
Without a financial incentive, I'm not sure Stadia would have any games, and financial incentives don't fix the extra work needed when google change things for no reason (or not for a reason that gamedevs are likely to accept).
> What I can tell you is that we’ve built a roadmap of about 400 games in development right now from 200 developers. So when those games land, whether it’s in the calendar year of 2021 or beyond, is something that you’ll hear more from us in the future. Will there be more developers and more games on the platform? Absolutely. But frankly speaking, my team is almost done with 2021. We’re thinking about 2022 right now — that’s our focus. 2023 is really kind of where we’re aiming our sights. 2021 is in incredible shape. Hopefully, that gives you a sense of the scale of where we’re moving.
https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/11/19/google-stadia-jack-buser-...
And Stadia Games and Entertainment, the publisher arm, mentioned "special bonuses" for RPGs coming in 2023 and beyond.
https://9to5google.com/2020/11/16/stadia-games-entertainment...
And they are charging. I have no idea how many Stadia users exist, but let's use 1 million since I've seen that number thrown around. If even a quarter of those are paying for pro, that's >25 million a year in revenue. A drop in the bucket to Google, but not something you'd just throw away. I expect this number to at least quadruple next year, based on their recent uptick in advertising and hardware giveaways.
$25mn is probably a small(er) advertising client. And note that the Stadia revenue mostly gets sent to game developers, and developers only build for Stadia because they are paid a lot of money by Google.
I actually think the purpose of Stadia is to demonstrate that this can be done, and it will be dropped by the end of 2023.
Come back and prove me wrong then :)
I don't get the appeal of Stadia and I'm wondering what am I missing.
So it doesn't fit either side in your analogy since it cherry-picks the bad parts of both alternatives.
I have no doubt they will redeem themselves, but right now, I'm not excited about supporting them.
(Yes, my $10 a month doesn't have an effect, but meh)
.. in theory. In practice, I like most other people don't have access to most of the games I ever bought, or no convenient way to access them, or no desire to.
This goes for almost all of what I consume to be honest with the exception of some LPs I actually take very good care of.
I think that offer is still active for a bit. I'm tempted to buy it at 60€ and then sell off at least the Chromecast to offset my Stadia rental. Google has a data center in southern Finland (about 150 km away), so maybe I won't even suffer that bad of a latency.
If you make sure you’re using vp9 hardware decoding then you shouldn’t notice it- I didn’t (and I’m right in the middle of the two main European DCs and nowhere near a google PoP)