As your edit says, the whole point is for people who don't have computers that can run high end games. Also, once you purchase the game, you can play one any device (phone, laptop, chromecast, etc). It also has all the usual perks that comes with cloud games, such as seemlessly jumping from one device to another, instant launch into the game (no update/download time), etc.

It definitely has its pros and cons, and it all comes down to your specific gaming pattern and situation. If you already have a gaming pc or console, this may not be for you.

It fits in the niche of people who want to play AAA games, can’t afford a dedicated console and TV, and have a consistently fast internet connection.

Sarcasm aside, in the longer term there is probably a business model here where anyone who wants to play a subscription game like World of Warcraft signs up and gets a $100 tablet sent to them for free.

There also might be a model where very high performance rendering combined with ML does stuff where the consumer would otherwise have to pay thousands of dollars for. Not sure that would work in an AR-VR - competitive gaming future.

I saw a demo of Stadia in person a while ago. It was ok, but hardcore, competitive gamers aren’t going to accept the latency gap.

I play one "AAA" game: NHL. I buy a ps4 pro for $400 and then every 12 months I have to buy a $70 game and a $60 ps online membership. For this money I also need to wait 5+ minutes to get my ps4 out of sleep mode and into a multiplayer game. The service experiences pretty consistent downtime where I am locked out. The ps messages mobile app is terrible for trying to chat with a player. In game experience is even worse. I am also restricted to playing on my sofa at home when I spend a lot of time traveling for work with my laptop, iPad, etc. I would love to play NHL in my down time there.

If Stadia got EA Sports to publish NHL, I'm sold. The end to end product experience is just going to be miles better. I imagine certain games unlock Stadia for certain people.

Traveling with Stadia would be difficult imo. They already mentioned it's going to be pretty brutal experience on 4G while 5G should be good (but is barely available at all). However every hotel WiFi I have experienced is generally abysmal. So not sure how you are planning on streaming this service seamlessly on the go.

I was thinking good hotels with good wifi.

5G, if you want to only use it outside while standing right by a 5G antenna.

And ensure you have a massive data plan to go with it...

I can imagine Pokemon Go like scenarios of people standing around 5G radios playing Stadia... Except for much less people.