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Stadia Founder's Edition

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Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#321

Post by ClassyJacket »

baroffoos wrote: post #305
eximius wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Does Google not have any data centers in Australia? (Granted, it isn't a given that Stadia might run out of those DCs, but with Borg, I don't see why they couldn't.)

That won't help. The connection to your house in Australia is using ancient copper lines that is all rotted out and stops working in the rain. In absolute best case conditions you could use this service but most of the country would struggle to stream 1080p reliably. The internet upgrade in Australia (NBN) is well known as the biggest government fuck up in the last 20 years.

This is not a joke or an exaggeration, thanks to the NBN being switched from fibre to copper, my parents now have no internet when it rains, is windy, or there is lightning in the area.

All to upgrade them from 13Mbps to 17Mbps. Yes, I'm being serious.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#322

Post by kalleboo »

jayd16 wrote: post #125
PhilippGille wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 1 Gbit/s connection is a great bandwidth (you probably mean 1 Gbit/s and not 1 GB), bit the latency is even more important. If the game movements and actions lag behind your physical input, this can ruin the whole experience, no matter if the stream has a great quality (few compression artifacts, high resolution) thanks to the bandwidth. I only used the Shadow gaming VM service so far and the servers are in a neigh…

With fiber he's probably getting 1ms pings.

This all depends on where you live and the infrastructure. I have 1 Gbit fiber, but in my country nearly all the infrastructure is concentrated in one of 2 cities, so I still have minimum 15/30ms (IPv6/IPv4) ping to everything since it has to travel across the country.

edit: gcping.com puts me at 40ms

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#323

Post by mrep »

AnssiH wrote: post #22
bt3 wrote: post #14

Can someone explain the tech here? Obviously the brains of this is a Google data center beaming the game through a Chromecast to your TV (or in-app on your Pixel/ whatever). Is there any tech in the controller? What "costs" $129 if there's a subscription model attached to this? If the controller is indeed "dumb" (just sending inputs), why wouldn't there be compatibility with Xbox or PS4 controllers? If the history of…

> If the controller is indeed "dumb" (just sending inputs), why wouldn't there be compatibility with Xbox or PS4 controllers? The controller is not dumb, it connects to Google. Also, as I understood it other "supported" controllers can be used (per https://youtu.be/k-BbW6zAjL0?t=683 ) but then you need to use another device/platform that does the connect-to-Google part, e.g. Chrome on PC. edit: http://stadia.com/faq…

Yep, I played assassins creed on chrome on my mac with a usb xbox 360 controller and it worked great.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#324

Post by mrep »

jonah wrote: post #202

> Stadia is not available in Hawaii. > Stadia is not available in Guam. Is this a bandwidth issue? Alaska is Ok though?

Most likely they don't have data centers in hawaii and thus the latency would be too high to stream it from the continental US.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#325

Post by nightski »

enos_feedler wrote: post #302
AJ007 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fits in the niche of people who want to play AAA games, can’t afford a dedicated console and TV, and have a consistently fast internet connection. Sarcasm aside, in the longer term there is probably a business model here where anyone who wants to play a subscription game like World of Warcraft signs up and gets a $100 tablet sent to them for free. There also might be a model where very high performance rendering c…

I play one "AAA" game: NHL. I buy a ps4 pro for $400 and then every 12 months I have to buy a $70 game and a $60 ps online membership. For this money I also need to wait 5+ minutes to get my ps4 out of sleep mode and into a multiplayer game. The service experiences pretty consistent downtime where I am locked out. The ps messages mobile app is terrible for trying to chat with a player. In game experience is even wors…

Traveling with Stadia would be difficult imo. They already mentioned it's going to be pretty brutal experience on 4G while 5G should be good (but is barely available at all). However every hotel WiFi I have experienced is generally abysmal. So not sure how you are planning on streaming this service seamlessly on the go.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#326

Post by gnufied »

nathankunicki wrote: post #293
zeusk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If (once) Steam is turned off Big if, and if Steam doesn't provide an alternative method or change their DRM before turning off. Something unprecedented for Steam over 20+ years, but not so for Google.

Steam, one day, will disappear. Not tomorrow, but perhaps 100 years from now. On that day, you will no longer be able to download or even play those games for more than a few days.

Will I be alive to care?

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#327

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

bradenb wrote: post #56

I think this is a pretty reasonable price and I fully expect to pre-order, but I'm disappointed that the games must be purchased a la carte. I'd much rather pay a higher monthly fee and be able to play any games I wanted. I'm not sure how much more I'd be willing to pay, but I just think that purchasing titles that I don't own doesn't fit well with the streaming paradigm.

I think it would be nice if they had a demo/preview feature. With the streaming model, they could allow you play X hours of a game per day, or per week, or per month, or whatever, and lock you out or force you to purchase.

Or they could bill you at a slightly higher price per minute, up until you reach a maximum, where you are charged full price for the game.

There's a lot of room to play with pricing models with streaming (if they can get game publishers to agree).

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#328

Post by freehunter »

tills13 wrote: post #192
freehunter wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm astounded at HN's ability to spin anything as a negative. Usually I'm right there with you, but Google doesn't exactly have a good public perception around products and services without good profit margins. If they're not making money from it, it could be shut down at any moment (even for paid physical hardware, like the Nexus Q). "Too cheap" is a real fear.

Let's assume the worst. You buy in at $170. You subscribe for the 4k offering @ $10 / month. They shutter the service after 1 year after you've paid $120 in monthly fees. In total, you're out $290. You got a "free" Chromecast Ultra ($60), so you're only out $210. That's honestly not that bad. Sure, you could have just bought a new XBox One S, but the value of those degrade over time, as well and, as much as MS wants…

So you've paid $290 (plus the cost of the games) for one year of service, and that's not that bad? I don't know about you, but I have an Xbox One and it's lasted me more than one year for the $300 I paid for it, 4k or not.

I'm not even entirely sure what you're arguing... that it's okay to pay $300/yr for a video game system plus the cost of video games? That if you paid $300 for an Xbox and Microsoft discontinued the system after a year you'd be okay with the price?

Assuming the worst like you have, you paid $300 for a video game system that didn't include any video games and after a year you weren't allowed to play it anymore. That's pretty fucking awful. Even if Microsoft stops making the Xbox One, you still get to keep playing the games you bought.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#329

Post by nightski »

nathankunicki wrote: post #291
djanogo wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam is Valve's only business, if Steam shuts down that mean whole company is in trouble or about to go bankrupt or bought out. Google can shutdown Stadia because VP changed or Director got promoted to another part of business and nobody is there to sell this product internally - which means it gets shut down.

I can play NES games from 35 years ago despite the fact that Nintendo has ceased manufacturing the console and publishing the games. As soon as Steam decides to shut down (and it will one day, be it tomorrow, or 30 years from now, those games are no longer playable). Nothing lasts forever.

That's not true. Not all games on Steam have the DRM requirement.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#330

Post by nightski »

nathankunicki wrote: post #292
paxys wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An Xbox can play all games that have already been downloaded and all physical disks indefinitely, regardless of whether you have internet or whether Microsoft's servers are up.

While correct, that was not the point made in my comment. For downloaded games, once the service has gone offline, you are at the mercy of the lifespan of the hard drive. If I had a physical disc, I could just buy another when it goes bad.

Not sure about Xbox because I haven't owned it in a while but PS4 lets you copy your system drive to a new drive pretty easily. The function is even built into the OS. I switched out the hard drive to an SSD using this technique.
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