It’s a big bait and switch as far as I’m concerned. Those triple-A titles might be available some day, but who knows when that day will be. I left very unsatisfied and didn’t even try streaming anything.
You pay the subscription to stream in 4k, and to get a small selection of games included (yes, not the AAA games you want).
It's free hardware if you play in HD.
Overall very disappointed in Stadia.
FWIW I consider Stadia and the ilk oversold to the mass market akin to VR. There may be a market for people who want to play AAA games, will pay several hundreds per year and yet have never bothered to pay ~$300 for a game console (tail end of last gen). I'm just skeptical it's actually as huge as it's hyped to be.
Well, I can't even go back and look at the original marketing now because when I do I get a warning that Stadia must be played on Chrome and to download that. Obviously I could go in private viewing or something but why would I even bother with that? It's so user-hostile.
But the marketing that I do remember that enticed me to check it out was that I thought that it was for streaming games. When I checked out the site they had this big list of games that it looked like I could stream. If I could only stream, say, 15 games as it appears to be why not just show those? Hmm.
I do think there's a market for those (like myself) who have a few games they'd like to play. Cyberpunk 2077 looks cool - I'll pay $10 or $15 or even $20/month to stream that (among other games) because my alternative is buying it for $50 and not having it run at ultra-max settings on my MacBook Air. Not desirable.
To your point that this was a knock against it at launch, well, yea. They have all this marketing copy that makes it look so cool and then I have to pay retail price for a new game. Why wouldn't I just buy a Playstation or use Xbox or Sony's online services? Like what value is $9.99/month for some lame games that I don't care to play? Pass.
This service doesn't address any market that I can see.
Streaming doesn't mean it's free, or even all included in a subscription. It means it's running on a server and you receive the video.
The market for this is basically the same as consoles, except you don't pay for the hardware initially.
If you want 4k and a bunch of free games every month, you can buy Stadia Pro. But you don't have to.