Hacker News Reader

Comment by axaxs | Hacker News Reader

Not OP but Stadia user. Played only a few minutes, but it ran well. There's a few people over at r/stadia claiming to be stuck, but I didn't read to much into whether it's true...might be worth it to check out.

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.

View on HN

> I'm an absolute Stadia fanboy.

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.

Google Play Music purchases couldn't be exported?

Play Music purchases could be downloaded directly through the service when it was still running.

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.

That sounds pretty fine then. I have zero expectations of any Stadia user getting anything once the service goes down.

Yeah, I wouldn't expect users to be able to get anything "out" of Stadia.

At best I can see Google throwing like a year or two worth of some Google One tier service as compensation if they kill it.

Stadia as an idea appeals to me but i just can’t see myself signing up for those exact reasons.

I’m expected to pay retail for the games i want but in effect i only get to rent them. Nah, no thanks.

I like Stadia despite Google, not because of, sadly. I don't like having so many eggs in one basket, but it really is by far the best streaming experience. I gave GFN and Luna a fair shot. I wanted to love Luna before it was even released.

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.

There's no way Stadia will succeed. Sure, Google care now, but they are gonna drop this like a hot potato once the promotions come through.

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).

It sounds like Google has plenty of plans for Stadia in the years to come.

> 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...

Sorry, this just seems unrealistic. This isn't some half-arsed software project that would be used for promotions and out. This required real, big, physical investment.

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.

Alphabet made 38bn dollars in revenue in Q2 2020.

$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 :)

Whenever Stadia conversation comes, I always wonder if I'm missing something. Why subscribe to Stadia and risk losing your games when you can subscribe to GeforceNow and play your own games in the cloud. If GeforceNow goes under ... fine, you still have your games.

I don't get the appeal of Stadia and I'm wondering what am I missing.

It's the same argument as buying digital copies of your Music via iTunes or something vs Spotify. And we all know who won. The convenience of streaming games is too hard to give up

I don't think Spotify will actually sell you music that you will still need Spotify's servers to keep running in order to access.

The difference is that Google has a well-known reputation for killing products.

The problem is that Stadia is streaming only, so no downloads or offline play, but you still have to buy each individual games.

So it doesn't fit either side in your analogy since it cherry-picks the bad parts of both alternatives.

That sounds like an argument against Stadia, which forces you to rebuy all your games instead of just paying for the service like with GeForce Now.

Yeah I mean the cost can be argued about but buying individual games is going to be a thing of the past is what I am saying.

Geforce Now, due to developer/studio backlash, removed the ability to play most AAA titles. No Rockstar, Bethesda, etc. The only big name I can think of that remains is Ubisoft.

IMHO, nVidia has fallen into the very definition of a monopoly - They have instituted practices where they've cornered the industry in a variety of ways through..strategies that have made them a monopoly. I choose not to give them my money for this reason right now.

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)

Google is 10x worse though.

Geforce Now free tier has limitations that make it near unusable without the subscription service. Mostly the one hour session limits, but the queue is inconvenient too. Stadia's free tier limitations is 1080p.

I'm almost 100% convinced that sooner or later Google will start to turn the thumbscrews on the free tier as well, they are not a charity. Either by annoying you with an increasing number of ads or otherwise mining your data, or by technical restrictions that make it almost impossible to enjoy without upgrading to a paid tier. The most likely end game I see is to apply the YouTube model to Stadia as well. So the question is if and for how long Stadia will have that advantage...

> fine, you still have your games.

.. 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.

But if I understand correctly, it seems like the added bonus of Geforce Now is that you can still access that content in the same way as Stadia. The difference is you also get to own the games and have a potential way of playing them on your own computer if the service ever goes down, no?

I don't get it. I am still regularly re-installing my favorite more than a decade old games from optical disks...

Didn't Google play music allow you to download the music you purchased there? Because I had to option to download mine and I did.

I think this is a very valid concern. I've bought 2 games on Stadia so far, and the solace for me is I don't ever really re-play games I've finished like I relisten to albums. Same with books, tv, movies, etc. It's just not my style, so the potential for Stadia to go poof in a year or two is fine by me, assuming it was a good value while it was still going.

>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.

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.

The latency is actually affected more by the codec you’re using. (Surprisingly).

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)

I want to play it on a Mac so I don't think VP9 hardware decoding is an option for me.

I play on mac, I just installed the Stadia+ chrome extension and it told me I was using vp9, though maybe not hardware decoded? I don't really have a way to verify that for you though.

I don't think hardware VP9 decoding, and therefore 4K, is available on a Mac.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com