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"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

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Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#181

Post by headmelted »

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #36

I want Stadia. I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. If Google doesn't drop the ball (which is a huge if knowing the company's history), Stadia makes a lot of sense. I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2, the cheapest way to do that as I don't have a console nor an expensive computer is Stadia. And when I will want to play Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia will be the ch…

Just no.

"Stadia is the first offering that matches my needs of a Netflix for games"

These services have existed for a while. OnLive failed because it was ahead of it's time, and lagged.

GeForce Now is free, while it's still in beta. Project xCloud is free, while it's still in beta. Google Stadia is £120 down and a monthly fee... while it's clearly still in beta.

"If Google doesn't drop the ball"

Google already dropped the ball here by asking for money for a beta test, and being the only big player to do so.

I like Google, but this was just the wrong way to go about bringing this product to market.

Microsoft have experience working with players and game developers. Nvidia have experience working with game developers - less so with players, but the Shield has done well.

The optics here are just bad. To see both of those companies put their services through prolonged public testing periods without charge makes Stadia look either naive (in that they thought this would be easy to build) or cynical ("hey the customers have to bear the sunk costs if it fails").

I don't for a second think Google is being cynical - but Stadia should have had a free public beta before taking a cent from paying customers.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#182

Post by perennate »

akvadrako wrote: post #104
evervevdww221 wrote: post #47

I used to work on (the second generation) cloud gaming. It's very difficult to be profitable. Most people would think that the challenge is latency, streaming quality. But the real challenge is cost management. The cost can be easily as high as $2 per hour. At this rate, the monthly cost will buy you a decent computer or a console. It doesn't make sense. Plus, to make cloud gaming work, you have to own everything. Fr…

How does it make sense that a computer at home, with 5% utilization and retail power prices, can be less per hour than a computer with 50% utilization and wholesale power? Even if all you do is host single-user machines with retail games installed and some kind of imaging solution, it seems like it should pay off.

I think the costs are higher for local gaming than cloud gaming. But the user views the costs differently -- with local gaming, they own a GPU after buying it, and the electricity charges are not really apparent; but with cloud gaming, they pay a clear monthly fee. So that fee can't be too high or users won't be interested. And on top of all this, you have to add the tradeoff of the latency and bandwidth usage versus local gaming where these are not a concern.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#183

Post by api »

Google Stadia belongs to yet another category: products that some people like and want and others hate and hope fail for social/political/economic reasons. AMP and Facebook Libra are other examples of products like this.

I hope Stadia fails because if PC gaming dies it will harm consumers broadly by further decimating the high-end PC market and reducing demand for high-end edge device CPUs, GPUs, etc.

We do not want a world where all compute belongs to someone else.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#184

Post by CoolGuySteve »

birdyrooster wrote: post #133
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on where you're located. With FiOS in NYC I can get to AWS Virginia in 18ms. I don't have any Google Cloud servers to test with. When I use Steam/NVidia in home streaming with my GTX 1080 card, I can render a 1080p frame in about 10-12ms and decode it in 10ms on my 4K FireTV. (I beat Witcher 3, TombRaider, and Hitman with it over a 50Mbit powerline ethernet setup and they all looked fine BTW.) Even if the…

I don’t know what games you play, but in home streaming is too much lag for me on basically any game. For myself, 144hz is a requirement because 60fps is a slide show. The resolution would need to be increased as 1080p looks terrible, so that is unacceptable too.

Have you considered that you might not be the target audience for a $10/month game streaming service?

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#185

Post by siffland »

So it is

$129 for the device, $9.99 Per month, $x.xx for the internet connection you require at all time due to no offline play, $x.xx to buy titles that you can only play with said internet connection.

At least now you CAN buy games you can play offline with the other consoles and PC. If someone came up with Movies Anywhere for video games so i could buy it once and play on any console i would be cool with this, but 20 years from now when you get that nostalgia and want to pull the Stadia out and play that one game....well you can't (unless it is still around, but then they will pull games from stores due to licensing, maybe because it has that one song on it and it is copyright....). At least with a physical game and ps4 or xbox1 there are usually ways to play without internet on some games.

I bet with the data mining and everything they will do fun stuff like have real time ads play on billboards in games targeting you and other such fun stuff (maybe they do that already in games, i have never looked).

I think the tech is cool and some people will love it. Not sure if it is what i would want to invest in.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#186

Post by cannonedhamster »

scarface74 wrote: post #40
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably their cloud offering and / or parts thereof, e.g. Firebase.

Their cloud offerings are a distant third to Microsoft and Amazon and support - especially enterprise support - is legendarily bad.

Their support is non-existent not just bad. They shouldn't be in any consumer market.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#187

Post by odessacubbage »

Eridrus wrote: post #83
ArmandGrillet wrote: post #36

I want Stadia. I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. If Google doesn't drop the ball (which is a huge if knowing the company's history), Stadia makes a lot of sense. I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2, the cheapest way to do that as I don't have a console nor an expensive computer is Stadia. And when I will want to play Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia will be the ch…

I think cost is what people are missing: Stadia hardware is much cheaper than consoles now, and when the next generation of consoles come out, they will be even more expensive, but Stadia will be the same cheap price. "Gamers" might not care about this, but parents buying their kids consoles definitely will. Obviously this is predicated on Google sorting out the content situation, but if you look at the Education/Chr…

assuming we don't run into another >599 us dollars situation, 120 + blowing the bandwith cap every weekend is not going to be much cheaper than even a full price console and will bring far more headaches. beyond that, who is gonna want to play with the kid on the lagmachine? that's not gonna go over well at the lunch table.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#188

Post by skybrian »

Crinus wrote: post #113
ArmandGrillet wrote: post #36

I want Stadia. I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. If Google doesn't drop the ball (which is a huge if knowing the company's history), Stadia makes a lot of sense. I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2, the cheapest way to do that as I don't have a console nor an expensive computer is Stadia. And when I will want to play Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia will be the ch…

> the lack of a long term vision How about this for a long term vision: any game you buy now will be totally lost in the future ("long term") when Google decides to shut down the service (which happens all the time) or deactivate your account (which also happens all the time) while developers will have moved on and/or closed and wont give a second thought about. In the meanwhile, while Stadia exists, any games will b…

Okay but why? When you walk out of a movie theater you don't have anything. Was it still a good movie?

Maybe longevity is overrated? If you play a game for a month or two and enjoyed it, it's worth the price. Rental services make this explicit.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#189

Post by cannonedhamster »

frayesto wrote: post #28
TremendousJudge wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Android, Maps, GSuite All of these products have existed for 5+ years. What recent thing has Google brought to the table that actually stuck?

Google photos?

Just recently lost a major syncing ability and became less useful.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#190

Post by lukeschlather »

scarface74 wrote: post #40
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably their cloud offering and / or parts thereof, e.g. Firebase.

Their cloud offerings are a distant third to Microsoft and Amazon and support - especially enterprise support - is legendarily bad.

As someone who uses Google Cloud, Azure, and used to work for Amazon, I am happy using GCP but find Azure to be lacking in a lot of ways.

Also Google support is usually absent but when I actually get to talk to a human, they're great. Microsoft support is usually present but often seems explicitly designed to waste my time.

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