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Stadia Founder's Edition

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Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#191

Post by FridgeSeal »

owaislone wrote: post #163
partiallypro wrote: post #69

I just don't see how they are going to compete with Microsoft on this, or Sony for that matter. I can't help but think this will be killed off in the next 2-3 years due to low adoption. Microsoft and Sony already have their foot in the door, and xCloud is supposedly going to be an E3 topic...and I'm sure they will bundle it with existing Xbox Live services for a bump in price. Google has proven me wrong in the past,…

I don't think it's as hard as you'd imagine. Gamers are the craziest of early adopters and tech enthusiasts. They'll flock to you if you give them a great product. Unlike other areas (messaging, social media), you don't need the critical mass to have a successful product especially with cross-play becoming more and more common/acceptable. Even if you need the critical mass, it's much easier to get it with a great pro…

Go on a number of the gaming subreddit and you’ll see Stadia is being met with distaste and hesitation. Gamers are increasingly tiring of the games-as-a-service model, and this is a step even further in that direction.

Personally I think this will have the same lifetime as a lot of other google products: it’ll launch, have some success, and then be killed unceremoniously a couple of years down the line.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#192

Post by tills13 »

freehunter wrote: post #149
tills13 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> too cheap I'm astounded at HN's ability to spin anything as a negative. > these games are second-rate titles from the last year since when were games like AC: Odyssey or BL3 "second rate"? Of course they aren't going to have all games (out of the gate, we can assume they are working on licensing) or have exclusive titles (for obvious reasons).

>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 you to believe it, the One S is not a 4K system. It's hard to measure the value of the entertainment you got using it. In my case, I definitely would have achieved $210 in entertainment value out of the system over the course of a year.

Maybe they'll revisit the pricing in a year instead of just cancelling it...

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#193

Post by FridgeSeal »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #114
partiallypro wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no denying the underlying idea is big, the question is can Google actually penetrate the market, or have the grit to see it through when adoption is low in the beginning. I'm betting no, but we'll have to wait and see.

First time someone gets bored at Google they will drop this like nothing with a month or two notice and any games purchased will be vapor. Google doesn't care about it's users. It's just another platform to extract data mining or ai from. Google makes massive unilateral consumer unfriendly changes before breakfast. They barely care about business customers. If you're not ads or ad related and bringing in money you're…

You’re being downvoted, but you shouldn’t be, because you’re absolutely correct.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#194

Post by tills13 »

owaislone wrote: post #180
tills13 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> too cheap I'm astounded at HN's ability to spin anything as a negative. > these games are second-rate titles from the last year since when were games like AC: Odyssey or BL3 "second rate"? Of course they aren't going to have all games (out of the gate, we can assume they are working on licensing) or have exclusive titles (for obvious reasons).

Also not sure if it'd just a licensing issue. I think all the games might very well be modded to run on Stadia servers. May be the renders are optimized to send out compressed video over the wire instead of a video output. Totally speculating but I think it's likely that the games need to be integrated into the Stadia platform somehow.

iirc they support games made with certain engines out-of-the-box. Ironically, I think I heard that it's the Unreal Engine (sorry, Epic Games Store...). AC:O and BL3 seem to support that theory.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#195

Post by ineedasername »

As a (slightly) more than casual gamer, this is a hard sell. I have a deep catalog of games in Steam & GOG, and having to re-purchase them is a non-starter, especially given alternative streaming services that let me use my back catalog. It's even more surprising that Google doesn't have some way of accounting for this because GOG does: at least for a limited selection of games, GOG let's you link to Steam and get the games into your GOG library.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#196

Post by FridgeSeal »

falcolas wrote: post #64

Anyone know of a "how will Stadia perform on my ISP" check (all I see is a bandwidth check, which is not the same)? I'm not expecting anything (I'm on average 50ms ping to servers, 120ms ping if you include processing on the remote end), but it would be good to have confirmation. I'm also disappointed by the dramatic extension of the "you don't own the games you buy", since there's not even an option to download the…

I’m in Australia, so precluding anything else, our terrible internet means this product is more or less dead in the water for me.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#197

Post by duality »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #99
gamblor956 wrote: post #13

And the betting on when this product will be shut down by Google has already begun...right now 3 years is the choice with the most money behind it. Some fools are guessing Google may give this as much as 5 years. Given Google's abysmal history of supporting its software and hardware products, see e.g., the Nest fiasco from a few weeks ago, only a fool or someone with cash to waste would invest in a Google hardware de…

I couldn't agree more. After Inbox, I've been burned for the last time. Won't be buying into new Google services again.

How did you buy Inbox? Wasn't it free?

Seems like a false equivalence "free skin on top of Gmail" != paid-for service like this one.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#198

Post by calcifer »

owaislone wrote: post #163
partiallypro wrote: post #69

I just don't see how they are going to compete with Microsoft on this, or Sony for that matter. I can't help but think this will be killed off in the next 2-3 years due to low adoption. Microsoft and Sony already have their foot in the door, and xCloud is supposedly going to be an E3 topic...and I'm sure they will bundle it with existing Xbox Live services for a bump in price. Google has proven me wrong in the past,…

I don't think it's as hard as you'd imagine. Gamers are the craziest of early adopters and tech enthusiasts. They'll flock to you if you give them a great product. Unlike other areas (messaging, social media), you don't need the critical mass to have a successful product especially with cross-play becoming more and more common/acceptable. Even if you need the critical mass, it's much easier to get it with a great pro…

> I don't think it's as hard as you'd imagine.

I think it's very hard. The best article ever written on this subject is "So You Want to Compete with Steam" [1] and it applies as equally well to Playstation/Xbox.

[1] https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-...

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#199

Post by duality »

vvanders wrote: post #94

Really not seeing how they pull this off. Even a couple of congested wifi channels is enough to put latency jitter into the connection that's noticable. Back in gamedev we did all sorts of tricks with dead reckoning and the like to hide/compensate for it. With the current architecture I don't buy that you'll be able to make those same saving adjustments.

Maybe a different class of games will do best on a streaming platform.

Re: Stadia Founder's Edition

#200

Post by calcifer »

duality wrote: post #197
greenpizza13 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. After Inbox, I've been burned for the last time. Won't be buying into new Google services again.

How did you buy Inbox? Wasn't it free? Seems like a false equivalence "free skin on top of Gmail" != paid-for service like this one.

"Buying into" isn't only about money. A lot of people put time and effort into Inbox, Reader etc. and they were badly burned when Google decided they weren't making enough millions of dollars.
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