Stadia - Google's game streaming service

Yeah, I'll nab the founders pack. strawberry float it, why not?

Before anyone says why not, I don't want to know it was rhetorical.

So what exactly do you actually get with the pro subscription? You seem to get 4K and Destiny 2....and then, what, a free game at a currently unannounced interval?
If the subscription were a "Netflix for games" kind of thing then yeah it would definitely be worth it, but the description sure doesn't make it sound that way, at least not to start with.

At the moment I'm not really seeing the appeal. If I have to buy the games anyway I might as well buy them to have them available for offline play as well, plus I can probably buy keys from places like cdkeys for way cheaper than an access license will ever be on the Stadia even after a year.

I remain intruiged and I've only looked at the preorder site so far but it seems like there are still lots of important unanswered questions: how much will games cost to buy? What games can I expect on pro? How many/how often etc.

Game Pass is more appealing to me than this.

Lagamorph wrote:So what exactly do you actually get with the pro subscription? You seem to get 4K and Destiny 2....and then, what, a free game at a currently unannounced interval?
If the subscription were a "Netflix for games" kind of thing then yeah it would definitely be worth it, but the description sure doesn't make it sound that way, at least not to start with.

At the moment I'm not really seeing the appeal. If I have to buy the games anyway I might as well buy them to have them available for offline play as well, plus I can probably buy keys from places like cdkeys for way cheaper than an access license will ever be on the Stadia even after a year.

You get discounts on games too.

Obviously it’s hard to gauge value without seeing the free game release plan and what kind of discounts you get.

Also, I guess the other thing is, you probably own systems capable of playing games at 4K quality. People that don’t can get to that level without needing new hardware.

Website

Google appealing to gamers say you get to claim your profile name, but surely they could have adopted a Steam like system where everybody can change their display name?

The only games I was hoping for on this was the Total War series and it seems like the series isn't going to be available.

I’m on the final page of preordering but not sure if I will be charged now, or on despatch.

Anyone know?

ResetEra reckons 4K will use 15gb an hour.

That’s not going to work at all in the US with their shitty broadband and data caps. Google must have a solution to that, because while they might be able to get people to pay $10-$15 on a subscription, people aren’t going to spend excessive amounts on extending their data caps.

Venom wrote:Well...yes. Sure you don’t get new games. But you are getting an Xbox Game Pass equivalent with 4K without the initial expense of an Xbox One X. I’m not saying it’s my perfect gaming setup but it makes premium home gaming so much more accessible.

Well... Gamepass on Xbox is close to 200 games plus all Xbox exclusives go in Day 1. Gamepass on PC will Launch with 100 games later this year and I bet Gamepass Ultimate (gold + Gamepass) will come with Free Xcloud support. 4K streaming isn’t viable and unless MS take a giant miss step, what they are going to offer is a far better experience generally. Also, Gamepass allows you to download the games to PC/Xbox if you prefer, this is a huge difference.

I don't know. Google has better infrastructure, looks like it will be cheaper overall and most people will pick streaming for the convenience it gives over any other options (see Netflix)

BID0 wrote:I don't know. Google has better infrastructure

Based on what? MS makes more money and has more companies using their Cloud than anyone else.

Photek wrote:
BID0 wrote:I don't know. Google has better infrastructure

Based on what? MS makes more money and has more companies using their Cloud than anyone else.

Well the fact that everyone here (page 12) has half the latency to google servers versus azure ones.

Page 11 shows that the latency is comparable to playing on an Xbox One X... locally!

Didn’t realise Xcloud had latency numbers out.

Photek wrote:Didn’t realise Xcloud had latency numbers out.

Yup they're going to be hosted in Azure datacentres so you just need to ping the nearest site to you to see the response times between that site and your location.

I feel like we have had this conversation before a few years ago.

So I’d be pinging the one in Dublin...from Dublin.

From what a Dice dev said Azure is more tailored for gaming so that’s one of the reasons why Sony & Nintendo chose them over Google.

Photek wrote:So I’d be pinging the one in Dublin...from Dublin.

Yes correct. Just like I ping the ones in London from London.

Use the links monkey man provided on page 12. You'll probably not find google's mainland Europe ones being faster than your Microsoft Dublin one though as your slightly further out, but if google has Dublin servers they should smash the azure ones if it's anything like our results.

Stadia's pricing seems a bit disappointing to me. Still interested to try this and the Xbox and potential PS game streaming services on Azure though, see how playable they all are on my connection in a real-world test.

My hope for Stadia is that it will be bad enough that I don't miss out in not buying into it, but successful enough to make Sony/Microsoft cheaper and better

Stadia - Google's game streaming service

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