"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by bobviolier on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @10:22AM (#21573753)

Yeah this ^

I guess Google did an MVP and everybody is expecting it to be a fully-fledged offering already. That might have been due to Google promoting it as such of course (and asking the price for it).

What I also see happening is that as soon as they have a free tier, people are gonna try to play a game for 5 minutes because they saw something on Youtube or somewhere else and then 1 in X will just buy the game on Stadia.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by gambiting on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @10:28AM (#21573834)

Except if any of this was true, then OnLive would still be alive and well. And Stadia is far more difficult to support for developers as it requires custom builds for the platform, so I have no idea what their plan is to keep developers publishing for it unless they start seeing serious sales numbers very soon.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by birdyrooster on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @10:26AM (#21573815)

It’s not well known but AT&T and Nvidia partnered to use hardware encoding/decoding (Shield) and fiber internet with compute at the last mile and they still couldn’t make a product that wasn’t laggy and have distracting artifacts. I am sorry to say Google‘s demonstration was more of the same and customers will not overlook this. Imagine how bad VR titles would get you motion sick with all of that latency and compression artifacts. With computers cheaper than ever and games hitting a ceiling on how much power it takes to render them, Stadia makes less and less sense. What does make sense is Google is so hungry for revenue they don’t care about user experience. What also makes sense is that those downvoting me have become blinded by optimism.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by CoolGuySteve on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @10:41AM (#21574031)

It depends on where you're located. With FiOS in NYC I can get to AWS Virginia in 18ms. I don't have any Google Cloud servers to test with.

When I use Steam/NVidia in home streaming with my GTX 1080 card, I can render a 1080p frame in about 10-12ms and decode it in 10ms on my 4K FireTV. (I beat Witcher 3, TombRaider, and Hitman with it over a 50Mbit powerline ethernet setup and they all looked fine BTW.)

Even if the Google data center is twice as far as AWS, that's 58ms lag, or 4 frames at 60fps. You can emulate the same lag by turning off Game Mode on your HDTV, it's fine for most games.

However, it is bullshit that the Stadia website doesn't have something like fast.com that tells you if your internet connection has enough bandwidth/latency to actually work with the service.

It's also not a good sign that they're not talking about avoiding wifi for your connection the way Steam does.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by iv42 on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @10:55AM (#21574240)

https://projectstream.google.com/speedtest

Bandwidth test only though; latency not reported.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by drusepth on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @06:08PM (#21579353)

>It's also not a good sign that they're not talking about avoiding wifi for your connection the way Steam does.

At the very least, they send an email full of tips to everyone that buys one, where the top-most/first block mentions a wired connection makes a big difference over wireless.

Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/4XsvdDN.png

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by birdyrooster on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @10:51AM (#21574162)

I don’t know what games you play, but in home streaming is too much lag for me on basically any game. For myself, 144hz is a requirement because 60fps is a slide show. The resolution would need to be increased as 1080p looks terrible, so that is unacceptable too.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by CoolGuySteve on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @11:06AM (#21574424)

Have you considered that you might not be the target audience for a $10/month game streaming service?

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by birdyrooster on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @11:18AM (#21574601)

I don’t know what their target audience could possibly be. If the game is so visually unappealing that the customer doesn’t care about frame rate or resolution, then it’s likely they already have the capability to render that with the console they already have. Stadia needs to convince people they have a better product than what consumers have today. Instead it looks like a step down and you still have to pay full price for the games. People can finance a console purchase over a couple years for a little more money and enjoy their experience more while having a structured monthly payment.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by mantap on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @12:48PM (#21575842)

Most people game at 60fps or even 30fps. If 60fps is an unacceptable slide show you are most definitely not in the target market.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by birdyrooster on Thursday November 21, 2019 @01:31AM (#21591897)

The problem is that modern consoles have native support for higher refresh rates and Stadia will need to continue to scale with this.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by birdyrooster on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @09:21PM (#21580582)

Yes but what you are positing as a target market already has something that does that today. Stadia has to be a value add.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by benibela on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @04:32PM (#21578538)

It would probably work well for turn based games like Civilization

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by birdyrooster on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @09:24PM (#21580594)

But why won’t people just use the devices they have today to play such a game? I don’t even know how many physical CPU cores Google will give each machine, but imagine running Civ on some server grade processors with tons of cores. That could actually be a good experience but I doubt Google could make money if they were generous in this way.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by SmirkingRevenge on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @08:40PM (#21580367)

I'm playing Stadia on my non-fiber cable internet, and there's no perceptible lag. I previously tried Geforce Now, under the same conditions, same pc - and it was unplayable.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by birdyrooster on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @09:20PM (#21580577)

Impressive! Which games have you played on Stadia? What input devices did you use?

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by SmirkingRevenge on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @09:25PM (#21580605)

I've only tried destiny and samurai showdown so far (but bought gylt). Used kb/m for the former and an xbox elite controller for the latter.

I had my activation code, but my stadia founders kit hasn't arrived yet, so I haven't been able to try the Stadia controller, or play on a tv.

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by Marsymars on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @11:23AM (#21574679)

Somehow even Steam in-home streaming between two wired PCs is a mess of distracting artifacts for me when playing a turn-based game from 2005 at 1080p. Is it really that hard?

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by macspoofing on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @10:40AM (#21574023)

>I guess Google did an MVP and everybody is expecting it to be a fully-fledged offering already.

If you charge $60 for the games, and $130 for the hardware (and associated $10/mo subscription for the premium option) - people will have certain expectations. For $300 you can get yourself a Switch and have latency-free mobile gaming experience. Obviously cloud-gaming is a slightly different use-case, but is it different enough for most?

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Re:"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because peopl... by hef19898 on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @11:12AM (#21574515)

MVPs are a great concept, but at least for me Google is way beyond the point to afford a MVP launch. they are Google, with that budget launched products should be a little bit better than that.

DISCLAIMER: Did not check out Stadia, i prefer to play on my own hardware.

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