Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

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Funny story. Two years ago they gave away "Stadia Premiere Edition" kits for free, which was a Chromecast Ultra and a Stadia controller which I believe retailed for USD 100. I wasn't particularly interested, but I figured it would be worth a try.

But when I got the hardware I tried signing up and realized that apparently I had signed up for the Stadia free trial 6 months earlier. I vaguely remember trying for literally a few minutes on my laptop. This means that the $100 of promotional hardware they sent me is completely useless for its intended purpose.

It's genuinely sad that some manager or team went to all the trouble of getting the budget for this hardware promotion, but couldn't or didn't reset the free trial for the Google accounts of the recipients. But it might be a clear sign of the general level of competence with which the entire Stadia project was executed.

On the bright side, the Chromecast is still quite useful, although I'm not personally using it and haven't found someone to give mine to. Last I checked there wasn't any way to use the Stadia controller for anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if people could figure out how to "jailbreak" it and make it useful.

It works over its standard USB-C interface with a computer.

I got the same deal you did and use my Stadia controller with ROMs on my laptop when traveling. Works great. Excellent controller, too.

The wireless interface is actually WiFi and some form of Bluetooth and not easily jailbroken last time I checked.

That's good to know. I think the WiFi and/or Bluetooth was what I had looked for and found nothing. I'd want to use it for games on my Apple TV or Nintendo Switch.

Yea they should definitely open source the firmware or at least do one last update to make it Bluetooth compatible. I as well got the promo deal.

I use the Stadia controller which I got for being a YouTube Premium subscriber to play Xbox Cloud games. Works flawlessly!

I finally find some use for stadia controller then

This whole sub thread reminds me of the reuse of the :CueCat

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

I had one of these too!

Assuming it's possible, they should really patch the controllers to be used like a typical bluetooth controller.

I also got a premier kit, got the nice hardware, then got an error saying the workspace I signed up for the promotional offer with is not eligible for using stadia.

I got the same bundle and had the same issue (already used the trial for like a minute just to see if it worked)

I had a secondary Google account for app publishing, and I was able to switch to that and start another trial there. Not that this information is really any use to you now!

For what it's worth, my experience was pretty bad. Had tons of lag spikes on my 50/5 down/up internet.

It's been a while, but I seem to remember using my OnLive controller for a good while after system shutdown as a Bluetooth media controller. I'll bet someone will figure something out.

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