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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"

#371
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I should have clarified. My only devices are a Pixelbook and my work MBP - no desktop. Playing at home (or work) are totally fine for me. Playing games like Hearthstone (where latency isn't breaking factor) is fine with me as well.

FWIW Hearthstone calibre games are already playable on any moderately recent smartphone. Not much gain from Stadia in that regard.

The word "calibre" is doing a lot of work in your sentence.

There are all sorts of seemingly low-resource-intensive, low-latency, even old games of that "calibre" that stutter on my Macbook Pro.

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

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. I think most people who like playing video games would have some sort of video game playing hardware, yes. So, they might have opinions on what a good gaming experience is. And, if they have issues with Stadia (incl latency, graphical fidelity, and library), then it might be coming from an informed place.

Yup, also if you look at people who write or have written netcode for a living, it's been pretty obvious where Stadia was heading for a while. You need to be able to reliably hide ~100-200ms of latency for any number of reasons. If you're talking about something that runs over wifi you're fighting against the laws of physics and no back-end infrastructure is going to save you. The way you do that is with client side…

> You need to be able to reliably hide ~100-200ms of latency for any number of reasons. If you're talking about something that runs over wifi you're fighting against the laws of physics and no back-end infrastructure is going to save you.

There's margin no? I mean, right now I get 3ms ping to Google from my wired computer, and 10~15ms from my phone on wifi. Wifi doesn't add that much.

And I'm in a large European city, not in Silicon Valley.

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

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If bandwidth is good enough to handle 4K 60 FPS game streaming, downloading or patching a 150 GB game will be breezy enough it won't bother you much anyways. Bear in mind, the Washington Post reviewer who was showing how bad Stadia was on the office's gigabit connection was speedtesting at 291 Mbps down at the time.

That still doesn't cover the cost of a high-end gaming machine. GPU alone can be north of $1k. Imagine not having to re-buy all those components every 2-3 years.

Stadia isn't going to give you the visual quality of a high-end gaming machine so that's a bad comparison. 4k at 60 FPS doesn't mean anything if there is lag and compression artifacting.

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

#374

"Gamers" don't want Stadia. And all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. It's targeted for those that don't have either, like me. I carry my Pixelbook everywhere and would be nice to play games on it. I don't want another device to carry around and don't have the time or patience to wait for patches/updates or the ridiculous storage requirements games have nowadays. The on…

I'm seeing this a lot and don't understand... where the hell are you people travelling where bringing a console/game system is a concern? I travel for work or for vacation. If for work, I'm there hitting "Spit money out for me" at an ATM. Not gaming. I'm not home so I can make much better money in a short timespan to enjoy home time more. End of days is visiting restaurants/bars and either socializing or schmoozing c…

I bring a Nintendo Switch with me when I travel because it helps cut down the boredom on flights, especially international. Books are great, movies are great, but sometimes I just wanna play some indie game on a halfway decent screen with real thumbsticks.

Could I do that with my laptop? Maybe, but I'd rather carry just my work laptop (heavy XPS 15, has everything on it, but can't/shouldn't install games) or a personal ultraportable that might not be powerful enough

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

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is not the world. The average person in parts of Europe and Asia has a much better internet connection.

In Germany I have 8 Mbit/s

Bandwidth has nothing to do with latency. A low-Earth orbit satellite connection could have 20 Mb/s bandwidth, but the latency on the round-trip for the packets could be 800ms, technically still under a second...but completely unplayable.

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

#376

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…

It’s cool to have options. Hope Stadia works out and a lot of people enjoy it. There’s something really fun about building a pc and overclocking it and modding the games though :-) Also, having all your mods and saves on your own backups is great too. That being said, it’s quite perplexing that a 1080ti can’t keep a stable 60fps in 1080p on a game built on unity on ultra settings reliably. For instance, The Outer Wor…

I think Ultra settings aren't meant to be the "goto settings" to use. A lot of things ultra settings include usually eat up a ton of needless performance. The way some games deal with it is by just degrading the quality of ultra settings.

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

#377
post #368

"Gamers" don't want Stadia. And all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. It's targeted for those that don't have either, like me. I carry my Pixelbook everywhere and would be nice to play games on it. I don't want another device to carry around and don't have the time or patience to wait for patches/updates or the ridiculous storage requirements games have nowadays. The on…

I still think they're not really getting to any sort of market fit. There's avid gamers who will buy a serious console or gaming PC and is likely spending quite a bit on games. Then there's casual gamers who getting their fix by playing Candy Crush on the subway. Google seems to be aiming for some middle ground of people willing to dedicate time and money, but just not that much. I'm not sure that market even exists…

I'm a casual gamer that likes PC/console games. You don't have to be a serious gamer to like something else than Candy Crush.

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

#378

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.

Curious as to what you find so bad about GCP support.

(I work in GCP enterprise support)

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

#379
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think they're not really getting to any sort of market fit. There's avid gamers who will buy a serious console or gaming PC and is likely spending quite a bit on games. Then there's casual gamers who getting their fix by playing Candy Crush on the subway. Google seems to be aiming for some middle ground of people willing to dedicate time and money, but just not that much. I'm not sure that market even exists…

I'm a casual gamer that likes PC/console games. You don't have to be a serious gamer to like something else than Candy Crush.

but then you've probably already invested in some game pc/console. not one of the mythical people referenced here

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

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Movies still come out on disc even though netflix and streaming services in general have been very successful. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be the same with games.

Movies are an easy example: Do you want to watch the original ending of Return of the Jedi, the special edition ending, the revised ending post-prequels, the 4:3 edition or the widescreen edition? There are plenty of reasons to want to keep a copy of the version of the experience you enjoyed and want to experience again.

In that example, I'd wager most people wouldn't care which version it is.
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