Stadia - Google's game streaming service

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Hime wrote:

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Hime wrote:I think people are being a bit harsh about the prices, how often are games released on different hardware, even if they've been available elsewhere released at a budget price?

Bring able to stream RDR2 is pretty cool.

My understanding of xCloud is that if you own a game on your Xbox, you can stream it from your console, anywhere. So you could buy RDR2 for like £20 from CEX, then stream it anywhere.

What does that have to do with it releasing on a new console? I'm not saying it's right but games terms to release full price when they come out on a different platform. You've been able to get The Witcher 3 for under a tenner for years but if you want it on the Switch it's full price. Also, I doubt you'll be able to play disk games on X Cloud with the exception of the home server thing.

For me it's all about how it works over 4G but hearing that you're looking at 10GB's an hour probably means it's not going to be viable. The only practical use for streaming for me will likely be if Sony & MS use it to allow you to instantly play games while they're downloading in the background.

My point is, why the strawberry float would you want Stadia when xCloud does it all, cheaper, without the ownership question? I give it 2 years, max, before Google drop it like Google+

Yeah they really missed the ball not having a subscription service, I can't believe they couldn't have gotten a load of older games that wouldn't have been so demanding and made it a better value proposition.

I hope it doesn't fail to keep pressure on Microsoft and Sony to keep up.

As was pointed out on twitter, just because something is bad doesn't mean it will fail. I think Stadia will be around for a while.

Tafdolphin wrote:As was pointed out on twitter, just because something is bad doesn't mean it will fail. I think Stadia will be around for a while.

Why exactly is it bad? The streaming seems to work very well which is surely the most important thing, the fluff around the edges can come down the road.

I don't understand why people are willing this to fail.

I mean, read the reviews. It works, but as a service it's atrocious.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5yz ... ot-so-much
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/ ... c358a25ec7

It's a beta that Google were charging £120 for.

Will it always be bad? No. Undoubtedly it will improve as more features (like, practically everything they advertised the service with) come online. But for now they are not and it's bad.

As for willing it to fail, that depends on the person. Me, I have huge issues with idea of the 'ownership' of games being completely redefined. However I'm not an idiot: this is where games are headed. I just don't trust Google to be the one leading the charge.

Hime wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:As was pointed out on twitter, just because something is bad doesn't mean it will fail. I think Stadia will be around for a while.

Why exactly is it bad? The streaming seems to work very well which is surely the most important thing, the fluff around the edges can come down the road.

I don't understand why people are willing this to fail.

But I think that's the problem, or a key one at least. Based on most of these early reports the streaming doesn't seem to work well - the visual quality is poor and the input lag is often terrible.

Certainly some people might be willing it to fail but I think most are just observing and discussing the fact that lots of things have genuinely gone badly as far as this launch is concerned - be it technical problems or wider issues with the pricing, selection of available titles and severely limited feature set compared to either existing platforms or the original Stadia announcement.

Hime wrote:Why exactly is it bad? The streaming seems to work very well which is surely the most important thing, the fluff around the edges can come down the road.

Paying $60 for a game, plus a monthly subscription, without actually owning anything, and Google's propensity for dropping gooseberry fool when it becomes inconvenient. And given that Google's entire business model is based around data mining for advertising purposes, the only reason they're doing this is so they can advertise gooseberry fool to you more effectively. Once that turns out to not be as profitable as projected, they'll cut you off. You'll have paid full retail price for games, with nothing at all to show for it.

No postman today and no registration email either.

Tafdolphin wrote:I mean, read the reviews. It works, but as a service it's atrocious.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5yz ... ot-so-much
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/ ... c358a25ec7

It's a beta that Google were charging £120 for.

Will it always be bad? No. Undoubtedly it will improve as more features (like, practically everything they advertised the service with) come online. But for now they are not and it's bad.

As for willing it to fail, that depends on the person. Me, I have huge issues with idea of the 'ownership' of games being completely redefined. However I'm not an idiot: this is where games are headed. I just don't trust Google to be the one leading the charge.

Maybe I'm just a bit more lenient with this stuff but it's brand new technology for which £120 isn't an outrageous amount, hell it's only £50 more than a Switch Pro controller and cheaper than some game special editions. The idea that you can stream Red Dead Redemption 2 is pretty exciting.

I get the ownership thing but we're already a long way down that road. Having a disk doesn't necessarily mean you can put the game in and it will work anymore.

Re: the money, it's £120 for a feature lacking, not particularly well optimized test run. That's the issue people are having. Also, it's £120 for access to that service, which is largely broken, and doesn't include any of the games to play on it.

I'm not sure that anyone is 'willing it to fail', it's just made some quite frankly bizarre design decisions. Stadia's problem is Xcloud is also now in Beta, so you have a £120 beta with 20 odd games that you have to pay for up against a free beta with 50, then Xcloud is being bolted onto Gamepass for no extra charge next summer and unless Stadia overhaul both it's line up and subscription service it's going to be, well...lets just say, beaten?

Tafdolphin wrote:Re: the money, it's £120 for a feature lacking, not particularly well optimized test run. That's the issue people are having. Also, it's £120 for access to that service, which is largely broken, and doesn't include any of the games to play on it.

I can't comment on it being broken as everything I've read suggests it works. So for less than the price of the Death Standing Special Edition of a Scuff controller you're getting access to try something completely new.

I guess it's up to of you consider that a good value proposition but in a world where people will pay a grand for the Galaxy Fold, hundreds of pounds for VR, change their phone ever 6 months, I don't think £120 is outrageous to try some new tech. Hell if you just break it down as a controller, Chrome cast, Destiny 2 and 3 months subscription it's not horrendous.

The other problem is that this is not new any more. OnLive was what 5+ years ago, and Sony Microsoft and even the likes of Nvidia have been offering forms of streaming service that are cheaper and with wider support than Stadia for a good while now.

An early stab at a technology from a minor player coming out and failing is one thing, but this is years down the line from one of the largest tech companies in existence. The same degree of "well, it's a hard problem and at least they had a swing at it!" just doesn't hold any more. They are charging a reasonable sum of money for a service which just doesn't stack up at this point - people should be disappointed by that!

On the Nvidia Gamestream trial that I've been doing I can play basically any PC game I own across the main services (Uplay, Steam etc.) at no additional cost. How the hell is Stadia where I need to pay a subscription and re-buy any games supposed to contend with that?

Hime wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:Re: the money, it's £120 for a feature lacking, not particularly well optimized test run. That's the issue people are having. Also, it's £120 for access to that service, which is largely broken, and doesn't include any of the games to play on it.

I can't comment on it being broken as everything I've read suggests it works. So for less than the price of the Death Standing Special Edition of a Scuff controller you're getting access to try something completely new.

I guess it's up to of you consider that a good value proposition but in a world where people will pay a grand for the Galaxy Fold, hundreds of pounds for VR, change their phone ever 6 months, I don't think £120 is outrageous to try some new tech. Hell if you just break it down as a controller, Chrome cast, Destiny 2 and 3 months subscription it's not horrendous.

Did you read the two articles I linked to?

And yes, value propositions are a personal thing but I'd hazard the winds are blowing against you here.

I don't want this to fail, it's definitely where things are heading in the future. What I DO want at this point is for it to offer me something that I can't get on my current gaming systems. At the moment it offers nothing.

Photek wrote:I'm not sure that anyone is 'willing it to fail', it's just made some quite frankly bizarre design decisions. Stadia's problem is Xcloud is also now in Beta, so you have a £120 beta with 20 odd games that you have to pay for up against a free beta with 50, then Xcloud is being bolted onto Gamepass for no extra charge next summer and unless Stadia overhaul both it's line up and subscription service it's going to be, well...lets just say, beaten?

Yeah I agree but isn't it better that they both exist? Microsoft has their arse kicked at the start of this generation and look how that turned out.

Tafdolphin wrote:

Hime wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:Re: the money, it's £120 for a feature lacking, not particularly well optimized test run. That's the issue people are having. Also, it's £120 for access to that service, which is largely broken, and doesn't include any of the games to play on it.

I can't comment on it being broken as everything I've read suggests it works. So for less than the price of the Death Standing Special Edition of a Scuff controller you're getting access to try something completely new.

I guess it's up to of you consider that a good value proposition but in a world where people will pay a grand for the Galaxy Fold, hundreds of pounds for VR, change their phone ever 6 months, I don't think £120 is outrageous to try some new tech. Hell if you just break it down as a controller, Chrome cast, Destiny 2 and 3 months subscription it's not horrendous.

Did you read the two articles I linked to?

And yes, value propositions are a personal thing but I'd hazard the winds are blowing against you here.

I looked at the Vice one in which the headline days that the technology is awesome. I'll link a few YouTube videos if you'd like.

What do you think it should have been priced at? If you had bought a Switch Pro controller at launch it would have cost £70 and a Chromecast about £30.

Hime wrote:

Photek wrote:I'm not sure that anyone is 'willing it to fail', it's just made some quite frankly bizarre design decisions. Stadia's problem is Xcloud is also now in Beta, so you have a £120 beta with 20 odd games that you have to pay for up against a free beta with 50, then Xcloud is being bolted onto Gamepass for no extra charge next summer and unless Stadia overhaul both it's line up and subscription service it's going to be, well...lets just say, beaten?

Yeah I agree but isn't it better that they both exist? Microsoft has their arse kicked at the start of this generation and look how that turned out.

Exactly, and as I said Stadia might rethink their strategy.

Some reactions here:

A long thread, but relevant

twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1196557401710837762

tl;Dr Google have designed the product backwards, asking what could they build that would work for them rather asking what type of product does/might the public want.

A comparison of Stadia (PC) RDR2 and Xbox1X

twitter.com/Nitomatta/status/1196485009315520512

A reason people want this to fail

twitter.com/vectorpoem/status/1196516175875723264

The entire hashtag on twitter is about how bad this thing is

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Stadia& ... 7923663872

EDIT:

Hime wrote:What do you think it should have been priced at?

I'm not a multi-billion dollar mega-corp. My having issues with the pricing of something does not mean I have to have my own idea of what would work. There's literally no point to me answering that, so far are my experience and skills from those required to even make a semi-decent stab at an answer.

If they want to charge for games the service should be free, if they want to charge for the service the games should be free. The Founders edition shouldn't exist at all and the controller should be priced at a reasonable profit point in relation to cost.

Wow, just read that Forbes article linked above.

strawberry floating hell. What a car crash its sounding!

Tafdolphin wrote:Some reactions here:

A long thread, but relevant

twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1196557401710837762

tl;Dr Google have designed the product backwards, asking what could they build that would work for them rather asking what type of product does/might the public want.

A comparison of Stadia (PC) RDR2 and Xbox1X

twitter.com/Nitomatta/status/1196485009315520512

A reason people want this to fail

twitter.com/vectorpoem/status/1196516175875723264

The entire hashtag on twitter is about how bad this thing is

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Stadia& ... 7923663872

EDIT:

Hime wrote:What do you think it should have been priced at?

I'm not a multi-billion dollar mega-corp. My having issues with the pricing of something does not mean I have to have my own idea of what would work. There's literally no point to me answering that, so far are my experience and skills from those required to even make a semi-decent stab at an answer.

If they want to charge for games the service should be free, if they want to charge for the service the games should be free. The Founders edition shouldn't exist at all and the controller should be priced at a reasonable profit point in relation to cost.

A few conflicting views there, no? Make something that people want - a subscription service like Spotify, Netflix or Game Pass. Also, those services are bad for the industry.