But the implementation is shitty and it depends on the game and the devs on how "4K" the title is. Some games have no pro tier version, and some have like 1440p30. The free tier is 1080p60ish and you pay for the games you want.
Input latency is really a non-issue. I don't think there's more to it. It's just not something you have to think about — until you do, but it's been pretty rare for me.
Also you can play it on every desktop platform via Chrome, and via Safari on iPads and iPhones. Works on Android too.
And of course Google is going to kill it probably soon :)
It seems to me that statements like that are reserved for people who live relatively near a datacenter or have extremely high internet speeds, or sometimes both.
I've been playing on wifi with a 100/10 Mbps connection. There's sometimes these lagspikes if I play in browser, but the general input latency has never been something I've noticed.
I'm a casual gamer at most, and maybe I'm not noticing it as much as some CSGO-pro would.
So I have no idea what the input lag would be, but I can't imagine it would be any good.
You can play it on any device (no chromecast necessary) with basically any input method. I'm a huge fan of the tech and would use it more often while traveling with a laptop if it had more than a handful of games. Or a search bar in the ux.
As usual Google does 80% of the work and gives up when it realizes the last 20% is the real hard stuff.
If they misled you into paying, that seems like straight up theft.
Assuming they give the controller kit for free, Stadia costs $10/month, so in 4 years you'd have paid $480, almost the same as a new console. plus, the price of the console likely isn't an issue if you can afford buying a couple of games that cost $60 each.
then you have the latency problem in Stadia and the fact that you can't really play it from everywhere (even though it's in the cloud); you still need the chromecast, right? they might as well beef up the chromecast and make it a regular console. the newest chromecast already can play android games I think.