But that's the rub innit? The only people who are going to be really interested in this product are the hypermobile, and I don't know about your experience with mobile internet, but my LTE can barely keep a YouTube video in decent quality going. With remote gaming, you're now adding controller input to that datastream, outbound, and then rendering those actions and transmitting back to the device to enable anything remotely approaching a good gaming experience seems like science fiction.
The people who will be most interested in this are those without a "home" setup, and the less "home" you have, the more appealing, but also seems like it would in turn be the most frustrating experience to try and use. Which is sort of what this piece is getting at:
- Gamers don't want it, because we already have our libraries and such tuned to existing platforms and devices
- Casual gamers may want it, but they're already spoiled for choice in a massive mobile market, where games just happen on their already very powerful phones
This puts Stadia in an awkward position of in theory being the worst of both worlds: the limitations of console, with the network requirements only high tier residential internet can deliver, over devices with limited network capability.
You'd be surprised how better internet can be outside of USA. My LTE can probably keep up four 4K streams going.
only problem is it only works in north america and I'm in southeast asia right now.
Just because you can't see how a trap will be sprung, doesn't mean the trap doesn't exist. This will bite people in the ass a year or two down the road. Then everyone will cry, "How could this happen? We need legislation to protect us!" No, you just need to be quit being a baby and start being an adult and understand that minor comfort and convenience can come at a heavy cost.
Ps now (I have a ps4), 10 bucks a month to play how many different games when the hell ever I want. It totally works out for me because I normally don't care about most games after 10 hours of gameplay. I don't want to buy a game for $60 bucks and not actually have it. Generally, I don't buy a game until it's down to like $30, because I don't have to play anything immediately. At 32, I'm over the whole "ER MY GOD, I have to play this game right meow!"
I'm someone who lives abroad and doesn't like hunkering down with any equipment, not even a bookcase. I don't like staying in one apartment for a long time. The only cooking appliance I own is a single cast iron skillet. Something like Stadia interests me if it can deliver.
Also, even when you're at the beach all day every day, you still come back to a place to sleep where you might enjoy some gaming or Netflix. And if you are living there for weeks, you'll find that you don't need to visit the beach every single day to enjoy your time there. It's nice to merely do something you love in a place you love. :)
I'm generally happy with the few games I have on my Macbook Pro. But even on a $2000 two-year-old machine, I have to play almost everything at minimal gfx settings and I have limited SSD space. Even a game like Civilization 5 becomes a stuttering mess. I don't see the need to dismiss Stadia without trying it.