I'm in(assuming everything works)

Wanted to get a read of the "room" on what people think about Stadia.

Personally, despite having a beefy PC and every console on the market....I'm in. My rig definitely can't run what they are advertising, and for basically the same price as game pass it seems like a no brainer.

Yes, I am lucky in that I have the bandwidth to support it(which actually doesn't need to be that high according to Google and beta testers, even a modest connection is good enough due to how they are handling the host-client connections). But the high speed infrastructure is slowly but surely coming around, with 5G on the horizon and ISPs just generally coming to more and more area. With the idea being 5G would supplement areas that can't get "traditional" high speed internet.

The other thing I wonder is where, assuming everything works as advertised, where this will put next-gen at. There will really be no reason to own a console, unless they can either deliver the same quality OR cram the tech required into a box at a reasonable price.

Thoughts?

I'm looking at the list of games announced so far and thinking "why do I need a Stadia?". As long as there's a huge list of games I can only play on my PC I'm gonna need a good PC, so again, why do I need a Stadia? Now, if I could just import my Steam library to their service and play everything through Stadia I'd be there on day one ready to see if this was my new platform.

Im not going to do the pro subscription, but if a game is offered at a neat discount & the tech works good enough for 1080p 60, i might buy a game here and there for streaming.No datacaps & a sufficient connection so that's nice

But if stadia discounts are comparable to steam discounts, i'd buy it from steam every time. More reliable access, performs exactly how it should & mod capabilities.

Not sure if 5G is as close as I'd hope it to be (maybe 3+ years away).

I also should have good enough speed to stream games at their highest quality, and maybe I'll hop in on that $10 a month subscription, but I am still very suspicious about their ability to deliver.

I need to see and hear reports after it initially comes out and see how well it all works in real world conditions on various ISPs.

Same, I'm not putting the nail in the "in" coffin just yet, but I'm certainly like 99% there.

I mean if there aren't games on the list you want to play, though there are a NUMBER of generally highly anticipated games, I can understand. But as it stands one can't even build a PC that can deliver the performance they are, hopefully, offering. And even then, that's an expensive rig, which will require upgrades down the line. The assumption Google will be handling any sort of hardware advancements required down the line.

All this said, I can see them raising the price over time, because as it stands their margins have to be RAZOR thin.

The thing with Stadia, is that it's quite a psychological punch to lose access to something you got used to; Something you put significant chunks of money towards. So once a subscription service is a success, increasing that price steadily is profitable because people have already invested heavily in the platform. They rather put an extra 60$ towards their annual subscription than to lose access to the hundred games they have on there.

But even if you're not using the stadia pro subscription, you're still dealing with 3 layers of companies to retain access to your purchased games. A telltale situation might take your bought game away. A publisher might take it's studio's elsewhere. Games might get rotated away from the platform once the licence runs out or it's no longer profitable to offer a certain game. These issues make me wary to ever get too deep into the Stadia platform.

Luckily it seems like they're not throwing money out for exclusives, so the gamefiles will mostly all be out there. That will help us to preserve & mod the games. They do have the Stadia Games and Entertainment studio led by Jade Raymond to create a few exclusives. So if Vinny wants to see those 'games that only make sense on stadia' that's where i would expect it to come from.

I'm opposed to it. The further reduction of game ownership is a deal-breaker for me.

Even if that wasn't, I have a monthly terabyte data cap. An instance of Stadia will apparently take approximately 20 GB/hr. Assuming I play an hour a night during the workweek, and a few hours each day during the weekend, Stadia alone would eat up the vast majority of my monthly cap. Even if only half of that gaming time is spent using Stadia, that's still almost half of my data cap, which is unacceptable.

I really hope this isn't the future of gaming.

Idk. I beta tested the Project Stream trial. I have a fiber gigabit internet connection and I was most definitely not getting anywhere near 60fps. It may have been 4k but it was a very low bit rate 4k.

Project Stream was awesome (over WiFi, no less), but nah, I don't see myself buying into this. I still buy physical media when I can, so I'm not exactly down with buying a game to stream and being even less in ownership of it than with a digital download.

I don't know, I just can't get behind Stadia.

I do love that MK11 is a confirmed title, though. Google's algorithms won't allow uncensored MK11 gameplay to be monetized, but they'll sell the game through Stadia!

I'm going to hold off until they have a dedicated speed test, to see if my connection will actually work. And, really, when they launch this they better have that speed test on their web site so you can tell what kind of performance you can expect.

Well, the games should play fantastically on my connection, but I'm not holding my breath. I might give it a try if I hear enough positive comments.

@reap3r160: But do I really need another subscription to play a few games a bit better when I already have a PC that play them fairly well ? I get the appeal, but as long as I'm "required" to maintain a gaming PC anyway the performance argument becomes fairly moot. As I said, if it would allow me to not spend money on a PC anymore then it becomes a different thing, but with that they're offering atm that's just not an option.

@ares42: Understandable, that's just a personal cost/benefit ratio question which is of course subjective. For me personally, 4k 60fps for $10 a month(when I already spend $120 a year if not more on games) is more than worth it.

Apparently there is a method of allowing you to play games you already own on their platform, though I'm unsure of how this will work, or if it will be supported going forward.

I do wonder what multiplayer will be like. They have that low latency stadia-exclusive mode where you only play against other stadia users, but you also have the crossplay scene. What is the latency difference between those modes? Will people like Jeff absolutely hate this for bringing even more keyboard users in their console shooters and altering the online scene even more? Which disadvantages do you experience when you don't use the controller?

And while you don't need to buy a console, playing this thing on your 4k TV instead of a traditional console means that you're spending 120x5 (5 year pro access) + 70 (controller)+ 70 (chromecast ultra) = 740$ to play your games for the upcoming 5 years. Hopefully this service exists for decades and doesn't require any controller upgrades or chromecast upgrades in the next decade, but that's still quite a price.

I'm super out. I'm sure this sounds like a great idea inside Google where they have a 10 zetabyte connection or whatever and no shitty ISPs to deal with. But out here in the real world with data caps and an internet connection that while plenty fast enough also drops with fair regularity (thanks, Comcast!) I just don't see this working very well.

Why would I shell out $10 a month for their service when I already have a PC and console capable of playing the same games, that I already own, offline, at the same resolutions and framerates, and all without the added wrinkles of worrying about whether I'm going to hit my datacap, or lose my internet connection, or suddenly have the service completely cave in and lose access to all the games I paid for?

And that's all before you get into all the nebulous privacy issues, which I would note they have so far conspicuously failed to address. This is Google we're talking about, so it's safe to assume that by signing up for Stadia you are giving them permission to track every single thing you do and use any and all footage you may accumulate. I have zero desire to have my gameplay suddenly show up on YouTube or Twitch like I'm some shitty influencer.

Not only is my internet not good enough for it, but i'm very sensitive to input delay and dynamic changes in quality, so i'd hate it regardless of how well it performs.

Don't see why I would. They didn't say anything about bit rate and how far does their system scale up? I've got gigabit fibre and that's probably the only way you'd get close to 4K/60 or even 30 with bit rates comparable to what you get with in-home hardware.

Plus I want to own my games as much as possible, as in they won't all just vanish some day.

I'm already wary of all my gaming being at the mercy of my internet, but I've also read that you still need to buy your games, presumably at MSRP prices. Doesn't that kill the whole point? Why would I pay $10 a month if I can buy the same thing for my consoles that are way more reliable?

$10/mo. sub + controller/Chromecast purchase + individual game purchases + high quality internet required at all times = i think i'm out.

i'll give the free tier a spin, but it's a large ask for me personally.

Even excluding the fact my country isn't supported and won't have the infrastructure for at least 3 years I'm still out. As someone that owns a PC the use case is poor and the complete forfeit of even the shadow of ownership is a huge nope. Until they get to the point where Stadia is the only way to play the new hot games because it uses 10 PC's at once to run I have no interest.

I am hugely interested what effect this is going to have on Football Manager 2020, confirmed as a launch game.

It is a game notoriously intensive on processing power, increasing exponentially the more leagues in the 52 playable nations you load in at the start of a save. It has often been a balancing act for players between having an incredible simulation of world football, and how fast you can get from season to season.

You've got to assume Stadia blows it all out of the water, being able to run a full simulation of worldwide soccer, on "full detail" as it's put in the settings, and have it run like a dream.

Multiplayer FM could also be really helped, an ambitious group of players could organise MMO FM sessions with this.

No mods though... damn. But it's so fascinating!

@simpo: The problem with football manager is that anyone that's really passionate about it wants to download all the facepacks & logopacks & get the right shirts in the game. Or be able to play in the 7th division of the netherlands. All that modding potential is gone the moment you decide to buy the stadia version given that you won't have access to the game files. But yes, you're right that it will be quite interesting to see how well it copes with all the included leagues in the world loaded.

hmmm..i totally missed your last sentence. My bad

As many misgivings as I have about the longevity of this platform, I enjoyed the beta last winter (?) and think this is the perfect way to play Ubi games (100+ gig downloads to climb a few towers and do meaningless open world stuff while listening to a podcast)

I won't be buying the founders edition as I have no desire for a chromecast ultra. I have an nvidia shield and I like having an actual remote control and a proper device under my TV rather than needing to dig out my phone if I have to take a leak during a movie.

But if they offer a deal on the controller I'll give them some cash. Like I said, I think this is perfect for stuff like the new Ghost Recon or even an Ass Creed.

As someone who probably only purchases one or two games a year, the subscription plan seems perfect for me. Unless I'm collecting a physical copy for specific reasons, I almost never care about owning a game.

If there are some decent exclusives, sure. I don't see myself buying anything on Stadia that I can buy elsewhere.

@ghost_cat said:

How? You still pay for each (prominent) game on top of the subscription fee the same way you do in the current PSN/Xbox echo systems.

Pro only includes 4k resolution (vs Base 1080p), 5.1 sound (vs stereo), free games releases (think of PSN and Xbox monthly releases of 1+ year old games) and discounts on selected game releases.

I've got a good internet connection, 250mbps down, and no data cap, so I should be able to use it of I want. I also don't really have any more morale objection to it; or rather, I think this loss of consumer ownership is a trend that will keep moving forward everywhere and Google is not unique.

However, I have a relatively beefy PC, and it's already hooked up to my TV so I can couch play whenever I want already. Stadia just doesn't offer any value to me right now, and I don't trust that the tech will work the way they claim. Maybe by the time I need to upgrade, their system will be working better, and that's when I'll need to make a decision about whether it's worth the money to upgrade again or if I should try Stadia. But for now, I'm out.

I definitely give it a shot, especially the free 1080p tier. I don’t think I’ll pay $60 for access to a glorified video feed of a game, but I could do $20-$30 apiece.

I'm interested and I will give it a try. I like the idea that we are able to choose a device to play the games with.

Additionally I hope it would encourage developers to use open standards and open platfroms like Linux+PC. Developers are still using proprietary APIs and supporting only Windows+PC and anything that helps this to change I'm on it.

I'm only really interested in checking it out if it ever turns into Spotify of games. Until then it doesn't seem like my kind of service. Also, unless Stadia becomes the dominant platform for developers, the fact that Stadia has the potential to be really beefy power wise is irrelevant.

Too affordable to not buy!

I pre-ordered the founder's pack because it's a decent price to try it out for 3 months. I can keep and use the Chromecast Ultra even if I don't keep the sub going, and I do want to play the new Destiny 2 content so that's also worthwhile.

Not sure if I'll keep the sub going after the 3 months.. We'll see!

Oh and I can get my GAMER NAME

I was really sold on the initial premise of Stadia being able to do things that no PC or console could (via scaling performance up with multiple server instances). But in reality nothing like that will probably exist for a few years because it will take time to implement/develop for. And even then, it might not really happen outside of a few tech demos.

I've got a mid-range PC, so fairly soon I'll have to decide whether to spend a few hundred to upgrade the graphics or try switching to something like this for a while. Have they said whether Cyberpunk 2077 will come to Stadia? Honestly that's going to be the game that will make me upgrade my aging 970.

Not sold on it yet. I have an issue with... well anything regarding what it is, which is the streaming. I'd like to test it out to see how it is, but for right now, I don't want to spend any money to try it. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested though; or maybe I should say that regardless of not being sold on it, I don't hate it or anything like that. Any time someone comes out and says you can play a bunch of high-quality games with convenience and a controller in hand, I'm usually in, but streaming isn't something I want.

I have an issue with any type of drop in quality when I'm playing, where I might be a few hours into the game and it keeps going from 4k to 480p or something or simply hovers around 1080p. I don't know if that'd happen, but because there's a chance, I am skeptical. I played a lot of demo's on OnLive when that was a thing, and I thought 'Dang, this is really neat! But dang, the quality kind of sucks...' I still think we're several years away before this will be something that I might want to get into.

I've currently been kind of worried about my 'habit' with buying digitally, ever since 2014 really. It's not really a habit, but it's something I pretty much only do now. I don't remember that last physical game I bought. I do it now because I won't have room for generations of physical discs (and I like keeping the boxes), but with relatively recent happenings of developers taking games off, like P.T. (even though that was free), it has me worried. That said, isn't it possible for developers to make discs not read and play? How does that work? Just a lack of patches to the game?

Also, on somewhat of a side note, one of my favorite games this generation is The Division, when they stop the servers for that game, it's going to suck because that just means years down the line when I think 'man, I haven't played that game in a long time, I want to see what it's like now' I won't be able to do that. I really don't like when games are always online. I hope they patch in some kind of offline mode.

I'm out. Way out. I have a decent internet connection and no data cap, but who among us can say they've never had the occasional hiccup or drop in resolution from streaming something passive like Hulu? So, how's that gonna work for games? But, that's not even my biggest issue. I thought this was supposed to be like a Netflix for games kind of thing. One monthly fee and you get access to a huge library of stuff. They want me to (presumably) pay comparable prices to Steam for even less actual ownership? Thanks, but no thanks.

I will probably get it for a month just to try everything out. Pure from a tech interest.

Here's an article from someone at Ars who got some hands on with Stadia (on mobile so this link probably won't link properly): https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/06/stadias-e3-doom-eternal-demo-made-me-a-cloud-gaming-believer/

They've got some good things to say, but keep in mind this was still a very controlled demo.

@hippie_genocide: you do realize you only pay if you want to own the game forever right? It is like netflix in that if you are paying the monthly fee you dont buy the games. Its like gamepass. The monthly fee gives you access to all the games.

This is false. The monthly fee Pro plan provides you with 4kHDR/60fps/5.1ch streaming.

There will be an included game library but it's likely older games and smaller titles and probably the occasional feature, like Destiny 2 will be at launch - and even that's unclear if you own D2 forever or if it's just "available" to you during that launch window. They have yet to announce any details about what the "included library" will contain but the Stadia website is very clear about still having to purchase games when you are on the Pro plan.

The monthly subscription is not the whole game library for Stadia. It's like Games for Gold at best, not Game Pass.

If you want to play newer games or AAA titles, you're buying those games (at a yet-to-be-detailed discount) on top of paying for your Pro plan.

You can also just buy the game without paying the monthly plan but then you're limited to 1080p stereo streaming..

I'm in, and I'll be glad to see my last progress bar or download screen.

Roll on November.

Even if it worked flawlessly on my internet, I'm still not interested. I won't go online to play single-player games, I'll stick to having a copy of the game files when I pay for a game.