the docking station for their phone/tablet :)
The free advertising they inject into Chrome is kind of annoying.
So, apparently the only way to buy games right now is via your phone. Even on a Chromecast, if you go to the “more games” option, it just gives you a URL to put into your phone.
This launch is so unbelievably half baked.
Ah - that’s correct. Basically the app doubles as a form of 2-factor verification - you can’t start playing stadia on a non-mobile device until you have the app installed + launched on your phone.
It sort of makes sense given how many device types the system supports, but it is a bit annoying.
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I’m tempted to stream Stadia games on Twitch I can clog both my upload and download pipes with effluvia.
Seems slightly high for 1080p but my tests aren’t too far from that - I averaged slightly above 10mbps @1080p which basically translates to ~80MB/minute
With a console at least a Pixel smartphone isn’t required for basic functionality.
Look, I don’t think it’s fair to hold a company like Google, with its limited resources, to this sort of standard. Of course some things are going to go wrong during the launch - they’re just a small, independent company trying to do what’s right for gamers.
Of course it’s a flop at launch, the promise of the thing you can stream anywhere without any initial up-front cost, but the service at launch charges $130 for hardware and only works on Chromecast, web browsers, and Pixel phones.
Once Stadia has its real launch, when the service is free and works on every android, iOS, Roku, FireTV, Samsung SmartTV, etc, then we can see how it does.
I still think it’ll fail without any exclusives or substantial sales to reel people in, but we shall we.
It wasn’t that bad ever for me either when I played AC: Odyssey during that beta. In the 40 hours I played, it “crashed” twice but brought me back really close to where I was due to the regular autosaves in that title, and it would sometimes bring the resolution down really far like a Youtube video when your bandwidth is choking, but it was always responsive.
I imagine it’s only gotten better since then.
You can’t hand wave away this paid beta as not a real launch since it’s for sale right now with no free option. Beta is what xCloud is doing.
Totally agree, once you charge money it’s launched. I just don’t think Google sees it that way.
They’ll call it a soft launch.
For a soft launch, I was expecting a lot less mainstream media coverage. But this news and reviews seems to be everywhere, not just the gaming websites.
So it’s a soft shit launch then I guess. Microsoft’s streaming service must be closer to launch than expected as that is the only reason I could see for them rushing this gimped model/plan out. They should have labelled it an “Early Access” launch so they can still charge folks for beta testing and save face. Everyone loves those.
Well unless I am misusing my terminology, a soft launch is a restricted or limited group which in this case is the Pro part. The big release would be the free part, so yeah this should be a soft launch, because a soft launch can be paid unlike a beta which really shouldn’t.
For a company that kept “beta” on gmail for, how long, 10+ years? I’m surprised that they didn’t do the same thing with this launch.
I don’t know that they saw it as a public beta. The launch events were very slick and I don’t remember any kind of expectations management during those.
If you know you’re not launching with any of the more compelling features, you say that up front. Not in a constant drip-feed of bad news in the couple of months before launch.
They clearly just ran out of time, but felt compelled to launch something, anything, this November.