21–30 of 698 posts
The author wasn't in the room when this idea came up, so I feel like this is a completely made up story. These Sunblade were a great idea, and they still are. I'm sure we'll eventually get there again at one point. Sun failed on the execution, but that's an other story.
The main challenge, though, is that they are late to the competition -- NVIDIA GeForce NOW seems much more mature (the aforementioned people are already using their beta) and it's not clear what Stadia brings to the table that NVIDIA can't do better (since they make the consumer GPUs).
Also, I think Google messed up by focusing on the Stadia controller and other physical devices; that's exactly what people don't want, to purchase more devices. And I read through their FAQ and don't even understand whether you need the controller to use Stadia. If it's actually required, that's ridiculous.
Stadia exists because Google is a perpetual spaghetti throwing machine. Mainframe-style gaming is possible and they have the resources to try it so... here we are. If it doesn't take off, Google will have no problem killing the program in 3 or 4 years. That said, I really don't see the problem with this strategy. It surely makes much more sense than having an ever growing stable of also-ran offerings. The upshot of c…
Stadia is unique though that there are people buying digital games locked to the platform. So its entirely possible when the inevitably kill it those games could just be lost. So I hope for the people's sake that buy into it that Google won't shut it down (or at least have a way to add your purchases to steam or something), but its a different risk this time.
Even when Google shut down their Assassin's Creed demo of Stadia's technology, which was free, they gave everyone a game key to redeem on Steam at the end, so my guess is that's what would happen in a Stadia shutdown.
The most likely "loss" is from the hardware purchases, though Google has hedged here a bit on the fact that a Chromecast Ultra will still be useful post-Stadia. Even the controller might not go to waste if it works as a generic PC game controller.
I think it exists because they've got plenty of infrastructure assets all around the world because of GCP (and are investing in more) and they're probably trying to dream up ideas to drive up utilization and gain some operating leverage on it. A consumer subscription business that depends on all your data centers would do that. That's not a really good reason to make a product though.
Stadia exists because Google is a perpetual spaghetti throwing machine. Mainframe-style gaming is possible and they have the resources to try it so... here we are. If it doesn't take off, Google will have no problem killing the program in 3 or 4 years. That said, I really don't see the problem with this strategy. It surely makes much more sense than having an ever growing stable of also-ran offerings. The upshot of c…
>Android, Maps, GSuite All of these products have existed for 5+ years. What recent thing has Google brought to the table that actually stuck?
The strange thing about Stadia is that not only is Google making an impractical product that people don't want, but so are Sony and Microsoft. It's like the "race" to 5G or the "race" to AI, but in this case there is no prize -- you expect any hardware from Google to be a lost cause, even Microsoft has had good luck selling mice, but Sony is serious about hardware so how did they get caught up in it? The one real adv…
The prize is getting people to pay for a subscription forever instead of buying your console once
Cynically, it looks like they're trying to swallow that market whole, betting they have more money on hand to price themselves artificially low to carpet-bomb the small cloud gaming market.
EDIT: Something I forgot to mention, Parsec already works with the games you own anywhere else, and on a crappy Android tablet. What Stadia looks like its selling is increased latency, plus a walled garden store, plus necessary custom hardware.
Unless Google is giving away the hardware you need to play, I can't see this being price competitive next to a Nintendo Switch, and the latter needs no Internet connection at all.
Stadia exists because Google is a perpetual spaghetti throwing machine. Mainframe-style gaming is possible and they have the resources to try it so... here we are. If it doesn't take off, Google will have no problem killing the program in 3 or 4 years. That said, I really don't see the problem with this strategy. It surely makes much more sense than having an ever growing stable of also-ran offerings. The upshot of c…
>Android, Maps, GSuite All of these products have existed for 5+ years. What recent thing has Google brought to the table that actually stuck?
Stadia to me may not be ready yet, but I have no doubt in the future this is how we will be gaming. Once bandwidth is ubiquitous enough to stream 4K games at 60 FPS without having to INSTALL anything or even OWN A GAMING PC/CONSOLE, this is a no brainer. Why shell out for a new 2080TI card when you can just pay another month to Stadia and let them handle all the hardware to run Red Dead Redemption 2 at 4k 60 FPS? No…
I'm not sure if I want a Stadia, but I think there is a product that could succeed doing something similar. Like, I occasionally play Starcraft and other PC games, but it's kind of a pain to plan out future desktop or laptop upgrades because I can only consider products with more powerful video cards and enough extra space to hold each 60+gb game to handle even moderate gaming.
I couldn't imagine how painful playing starcraft would be with an extra 100ms of latency.
I have a Alienware "gaming" laptop where the built-in screen lags about 30 ms relative to most monitors I plug it into. I have a video to prove it where I am duplicating the screen and running a clock.
When I was playing League of Legends it seemed to me that I just couldn't win when I was using the built-in monitor but then the game got a lot easier when I used an external monitor.
I had a similar experience with much worse latency playing Titanfall on an XBox plugged into a Samsung TV. When I switched it to "Game Mode" I suddenly started moving up the ranks.
It's an issue that people are surprisingly oblivious to, but fast reaction doesn't matter much for single player games and when people lose at multi player games they just blame themselves.