1693

I spent a little time with whichever Tomb Raider game was there (Shadows of the TR?) and was perfectly pleased with how well it was playing on the crappy laptop I had available to me. The ability to play on aging hardware will certainly keep it as a staple to me, I suspect, given that they get the library up to snuff.

1694

I suspect they might be more successful if they somehow offered lower cost “add value to your existing games ownership on other competing digital platform” cross grade option to “own” it on Stadia. Like an iTunes Digital Copy. Something GOG does for free for some titles.

1695

All 3 are/were available at launch and made up 25% of the initial 12 launch library causing for some jokes about it being a Tomb Raider service.

1696

Yeah that would be awesome.

Also Steam has quite a large library of Linux titles, but I guess the graphics portion would still need to be modified to use Vulkan.

Valve’s Linux hopes with SteamOS and the Steam boxes never caught on. Maybe Stadia could breath new life into that 😁

1697

A one time charge (it could never be free I suspect) wouldn’t cover the cost of keeping the data center lights on though. Google really should be eating the costs more to spur on developer and player adoption.

1698

Oh right right.

I mean the catalog isn’t awesome, but there are some decent games (even on the free title list) and being able to play on older hardware really does have a place in the market. Only time will tell if that’s enough.

1699

They should’ve just gone the same route as stuff like Shadow and nVidia, and made “Stadia” a means to access your PC games in the cloud for a monthly fee, in addition to working out Stadia-only discounts and deals with storefronts like Steam. They could even have a built-in Stadia client to go along with more established ones, to see if they can coax people into giving them money directly.

The biggest sticking point for Stadia, is going to continue being it’s nature as a discrete platform. You can’t just give it a try and play some games you already own - you need to buy games specifically for the platform, and if you decide it isn’t for you, you have to leave those purchases behind. And the upcoming “free” tier of the service won’t solve this fundamental dilemma either - if anything it’ll make it worse, because you won’t even have the monthly freebies to fall back on.

I still think this is the single biggest advantage Microsoft will have with xCloud, and why I ultimately give it better odds of success. Xbox owners can try it out all they want, and their existing digital purchases on the Xbox platform will follow them. There’s no opportunity cost to mucking around with streaming as much or as little as you want.

Stadia wants you to throw all-in with streaming on a discrete platform from the start, but Google haven’t even demonstrated basic commitment to the platform on their part, what with the utter lack of any financial commitment to first-party studios, etc. Even if you’re one of the True Believers who has faith with all of your heart that such acquisitions are coming tomorrow, that still probably means actual exclusive games from those theoretical studios would be 3-4 years away.

1700

It’s certainly the model that makes the most sense in my mind, but it’s also way, way harder than what Google is doing. It would mean that 1) Google would quickly become the world’s largest licensor of Windows, 2) Google would need to add tons of additional storage to their data centers (to store game installs and other files), and 3) This would mean that transfering between physical locations would require a system to move people’s data from one data center to another.

Lastly, this would make their dream scenario, and one of their greatest competitive advantages, where someone sees a YouTube video and clicks a button to play it and is in game in a few seconds, impossible.

So there are tradeoffs.

1701

The whole YouTube integration thing is neat on a technical novelty level, but I doubt it’s going to sell anyone on Stadia. Having access to hundreds of dollars worth of games they already own might though.

1702

I’m not even saying that they should switch to Windows on the back end. Sell discounted cross-grades to whatever games they do have available on their custom Linux-Vulkan platform as a promo to build up subscribers. For subscribers to build up their Stadia library.

Uh bringing over save game data probably won’t be doable and I didn’t even think of that or offering that.

1703

Two things:

  1. I wish there were more turn-based games
  2. I wish you could demo the service before buying
1704

What do you have against Linux?, PS4 uses FreeBSD. Android uses Linux. Both seems to run videogames well enough.

1705

Nothing. Did you read what I wrote? I said they shouldn’t change the technical aspects of the Stadia versions of the games and their backend. Someone earlier suggested running Windows on data center to sell hosted Windows versions would cost too much and I agreed. Keep Linux and Vulkan when offering side grade promos.

1706

On that note, for those who can understand the linked scheduling post, the discussion kept going in many places and is technically interesting, with Linus chiming in. My takeaway is that the default settings are fairly bad for desktop usage, but that the issues are more of a case of things working differently than being made poorly - including another example of hardware having to lie so that Windows works well.
It also has explanations for why developers don’t just use 100% of all the cores for apps/games, it’s very tricky.

1707

“Die Stadia, die!”

1708

We’ve got a guy at work that a super fan of Stadia. Like, totally drinks the Kool-Aid on it. It’s weird.

1709

My one Stadia friend is still playing it. He doesn’t really know how to get around an MMO so when I ask him about raids he has a blank response. He also likes making fun of Destiny because some Youtuber complained about it. He also continues to do something(?) in Destiny every day because “Stadia is amazing and Destiny is the main game for it.”

1710

Like Anthem and Fallout 76, it’s sunk cost Stockholm syndrome bravely defending Google.

As much of a failure that Ouya was, it had demos.

Some Stadia fan complaints:
-not getting title updates installed at stadia data centers, outdated game versions so days (RDR2), weeks or months (Borderlands 3) behind other platforms … but yeah no more slow patching!
-fixing bugs taking longer because devs place lower priority than other platforms
-wouldn’t it be great if we could cheat with trainers
-myriad of connection troubleshooting with ISP
-surcharge necessary for “unlimited” bandwidth option at North American ISP

Top complaints:
-lack of games (wouldn’t be great if x game was on stadia? Boo bad evil greedy lazy devs!)
-lack of indie games
-lack of AAA games
-no players for multiplayer modes
-game prices aren’t competitive
-we should be able to fine tune graphics settings
-poor google customer service (duh as pixel home owner)

Uh… they are all features of the PC versions obfuscated by the Stadia port. But noooo the fanboys will post dumb ass meaningless pics of “playing Stadia in airport” to stick it to those “traditional gamer elites” and the “haters” despite all the muddily compressed photos of dazzling image quality looking like wax museum figures.

To be fair, none of the stadia users give a whit about long term ownership rights and it’s not a topic brought up except by detractors. Aside from this, Stadia deserves mockery and scorn heaped upon it for offering less than consoles and PCs but costing more.

1711

I bought Anthem, and stopped playing it because did not had much replayability.

But Fallout 76 was great for a long time. Made 2 characters to 100+. I had a great build there, playing with that build was hilarious.

I guest you mention it, because these are games influencers say that are bad, and hence, many people repeat what influencers say even if they have not played these two games themselves.

1712

I played both games back when they came out. Anthem wasn’t the worst time I’ve ever had, but it wasn’t good, and the story was a piece of crap that was clearly bodged together like Destiny 1.

Fallout 76 was a bug-ridden pile of shite with a lifeless world whose main story was told entirely via long-winded holotapes.

If you’ve had a good time with one or both, that’s cool. But the borderline meme status of both games was due to a hell of a lot more than some “influencers” saying they were bad.