I just bought a new PC, and it’s great, but it sits under my TV, unused, for 90-whatever percent of its life. If you can deliver cloud gaming as a complete product that actually offers value, the potential efficiency is staggering.
While playing Destiny 2 and Hitman on a laptop running Ubuntu and over wifi with a controller, it felt ok-ish. Almost on par with playing on a Xbox Series X but not quite there.
However, when I tried the same games on my gaming rig, on a 1 Gbit fiber connection with a mouse and keyboard it was completely unplayable for me. The input lag is just too high for me to enjoy the experience. On top of that the picture quality is pretty bad compared to running the same game on your own machine at 4K.
My conclusion is that Stadia will not replace a high end gaming rig for the type of gamer with higher demands. I even doubt it will replace xbox or playstation for the console players.
That's pretty low bar to clear
I still think it’s a good idea, with a lot of people falling into the “who is this for” camp, and very well could eventually be very successful.
My impression is that it just needs more time to mature. If we were talking about some saas product, those rough edges and missing features wouldn’t be a big deal. Everyone here would be saying “yeah, it’s an MVP that they needed to get into market to test things out. It’s improving incrementally.” But because it’s video game related, people’s expectations are that it finished and perfect the day it launches.
That’s what people are lamenting, you can’t role out a competitive gaming platform with such a small catalog of titles.
>I bought an Xbox to play Red Dead Redemption 2 . . . lots of people falling into the “who this is for” camp
Those people appear to be “casual/occasional gamers”? I am very doubtful that this group will really turn into a cash cow. $10.00/month is enough that few are going to keep a subscription after they are done playing. If you amortize a console over a lifetime of 4 years it would be considerably cheaper than paying for stadia if you consider the current $75 upfront cost.
So the way I see it, for stadia to be viable there would have to be a steady stream of AAA titles(because otherwise the need for cloud compute is questionable) produced by 3rd party studios...this just doesn’t exist, titles like RDR2 & CP2077 are an exception. We only saw a handful of titles that demanding and hyped come from a non-Microsoft, non-Sony published studio in the last decade. I’m not in the game dev world, but producing these types of titles seems to be exceptionally difficult, and the trend seems to be less and less AAA titles per year as the complexity compounds.
Combined with stadia’s limited selection, Google’s history of product abandonment, and that you often have to purchase stadia specific versions of titles to play them on the platform. It’s a difficult pill to swallow. Nvidia’s product, GeForce Now, where titles are portable seems like a much more viable product to me.
I can go on the store and buy Cyberpunk 2077 and start playing on my phone if I wanted to.
And the 75$ upfront cost does exist, you need a controller. You could get a controller for cheaper, but it wouldn't be as easy to use or be usable with the chromecast ultra, which seems to be where the best experience is. Nonetheless you still need a controller and most people wouldn't settle for something that is terrible to use, so the cost is still a consideration.
Especially in the 'casual/occasional' gamer market, where they don't care enough about the difference between 1080p and 4K. Most are probably just interested in being able to play the latest hot game. That's exactly the same market Microsoft is targeting with the Xbox Series S.
Last time I signed up the Stadia Pro upsell was mandatory (you had to provide a CC). This was annoying because I was interested just in Destiny 2, which is free.
COVID sucks, but at least vadym909's kid has been able to make the most of it by investing in a usable setup and gaining some valuable hands-on experience with computers.