OK yeah, I’m out. This was fun as a lark, but looks like too much commitment to their platform for my taste.
Future candidate for:
For clarity, this is not like Xbox Games Pass, or Sony’s PlayStation Now. It’s more like having Xbox Live Gold or PlayStation Plus where you get a free game every now and then with Destiny being the first one, if you pay that $10 a month. You will also be able to stream at 4K 60fps HDR for your $10 on any game that supports that performance.
You will have to buy any games you want to play from their initial list but all you’ll own is a license to play it through a video stream from Google Stadia.
The Java workstation revived!
Remember when those were supposed to take over the world? Who needs local processing anymore!
We can only hope.
Yeah, exactly.
For what it’s worth, I do think the 1080p restriction will be lifted from the free tier very quickly. The attraction behind Stadia is you buy the game and it just works everywhere, your phone, your computer, your TV, your laptop at work, the TV at your hotel, everywhere. I don’t see anyone paying a monthly subscription just for access; much like XBL it will have to include perks and free games.
You never know for sure but I don’t see Google killing Stadia before it’s extremely clear it’s dead anyway. Everybody basically agrees streaming is the future for mainstream gaming and Google wants a part of that.
What Google needs to do to succeed:
- Get their infrastructure and service quality solid
- Guarantee a refund no questions asked if your internet doesn’t work with the service. One per account lifetime, you are “giving up” on Stadia with this.
- Make 4k, 60fps, HDR, 5.1 sound all free
- Build a great storefront like Steam
- Offer refunds within 2 hours like Steam
- Offer a substantial discount on the first game you buy through Stadia with a subscription
- Commit to free games on the subscription service and list them at least 1 month in advance
- Support Windows games in some sort of compatibility mode, so everybody doesn’t need to rebuild their code for Stadia.
- Have really aggressive sales, like Epic did with their $10 off everything sale. First one should be a Spring sale in March, if not earlier.
😠😠😠
Yeah, but the way it’s going so far that could be very soon.
Wrong.
Corporate suits agree that is what they want it to be, as they can turn games i to continual revenue rather than discrete purchases, and strip consumers of any pretense of ownership rights.
I agree they can all shove a pineapple up their ass.
Yes. Yes it is. This is the service where Google’s penchant for killing its products will finally bite it in the ass. Who is gonna drop $60 per title, trusting that Google will maintain your library? No one, until this is huge, but it won’t gain traction unless Google makes it worth getting into at the beginning, which it seems they’re not doing. The launch lineup is anemic, plans for expansion are vague, exclusives aren’t being advertised, $10/month is twice as much as similar programs from Sony and Microsoft, and it’s not clear that those games will remain free. (If I get Destiny 2 this month, do I always have access to it, or only for the month of November?) They’ve done a terrible job describing what you get with the service, and their pre-order bundle is expensive bullshit. This is a worse launch for a major service than Home or Daydream were, and both of those are basically abandoned and never had enough support from Google to make them valuable. Streaming will happen, but Stadia is DOA.
You aren’t a mainstream gamer. You’re posting in a gaming forum on the internet and have strong opinions about stuff like this. That makes you an enthusiast.
What similar programs? As far as I know, Microsoft doesn’t actually have a commercial streaming product yet. There’s a public beta for XCloud, but we don’t know what the pricing will be, nor exactly what they’ll bundle with that.
Sony has PS Now for streaming, but that’s $10 (for the 1080p 720p option; no 4K). Which seems to be the same price, not half the price.
But more importantly, PS Now isn’t really a similar product. It gives you access to a rotating library of games, but only those games. That might be a positive thing (you just want to have access to a few hundred games, but don’t care about exactly which one). Or it could be negative. (Own a bunch of games on PSN, and would like to stream them? You’re certainly not doing it via PS Now).
The thing people seem to be constantly ignoring is that this is clearly not a competitor to the Game Pass. This is a competitor to buying dedicated console hardware.
That’s Chrome, for better or worse. Well, for better and worse.
Citation needed. Counterpoint, casual mobile gaming isn’t going anywhere, which is the actual mainstream gaming, and done on moving, flaky connections.
Mobile gaming is its own thing and Stadia isn’t pursuing that market. I’m talking about mainstream core gaming and that is done on consoles and PCs.
Why wouldn’t someone who’s not an enthusiast will just go out and buy a last gen console for $200 instead of paying for something technical like this. Or be like a red-blooded American and buy a $500 console using their credit card and not worry about paying it off!
It isn’t technical at all, it will just be an app on your smart TV, phone, computer, etc. You pick up the gamepad, run the app, and that’s it, you’re playing your game.
Mainstream gamers will buy into streaming (not necessarily Stadia, but whoever ends up on top) because it saves them a couple hundred bucks in up-front hardware costs.
Imagine being able to sell Madden or NBA or Fifa for $60 and then turning it off the moment the next version releases!
Publishers are going to love Stadia.
Yes, and it also shares the benefits of digial distribution in that games can’t be resold, and in addition Stadia games cannot be pirated.
Ah, the nebulous “core” segment. That’s up to EA and Activision and whatever share they want.
It’s still just one segment. I don’t really care to know about it, but I have a feeling it’s not anywhere near big enough to define gaming.
I just defined that “core” segment as everybody who games on a console or PC. Basically, everything other than phone games. Was that unclear?
I guess if you want to nitpick, bejeweled on a PC doesn’t count either. Nor do Facebook games if they still are a thing that exists.