SoupyDolphin

Good points. I think the value of each offering greatly depends on whether you already have a Steam (or similar) library of games.

No the games stream from Nvidia's servers, no LAN and no computer needed.

Exactly. I moved coasts and sold my gaming PC, bought a Shield in the meantime, and haven't felt the need to shell out for another PC build because the Shield does it all for me.

These days I'm mostly a couch/casual gamer, and I don't play latency critical games so much anymore. That being said, I've played many PVP matches on Destiny 2 and the experience has been fine.

I'll try some more latency critical games tonight and see how it is, but your assumption that single player and coop games run well is correct. You do get some resolution drops every now and then, but I would imagine this to be the case with any game streaming service.

This. You don't need a PC at all, I don't have one, just a TV and a Shield, and GeForce Now works great for me. I just buy Steam games through their website and it works perfectly.

Discussions around Stadia always fail to mention the alternatives.

I've been using GeForce Now with a Nvidia Shield for over a year now and it's been a great experience. The hardware costs are the same as the Stadia ($130), it's free to use while the beta period lasts, and you can play all the games you've already purchased on Steam, BattleNet, Epic etc. in 4k.

Why would I buy all the games AGAIN on Stadia when I can access them on GeForce now? The social/streaming aspect of Stadia is not a big draw for me either, so I really don't see the advantage from my perspective.

Services like this are already in operation, see Shadow and GeForce Now. Developers don't need to do anything to have their games supported on these platforms either, so I don't understand what Google are bringing to the table with Stadia.