Google Stadia - “being buried in a deep hole next to Google Circles and the rest”

[ZOK]

I’ve just tried C2077 on the LG CX app and it’s fine - it loads marginally less quickly than via Chromecast, and I’d say it’s a little bit jerkier here and there but that could just as easily have been a network issue. This is over wifi.

[jonathanhoey]

On 07/12/2021 at 14:29, Fretnoise said:

 

I just had a dig around my account and can't see any 'Buy as Gift' options.

 

This seems to suggest it's not a thing: https://community.stadia.com/t5/Stadia-General/Games-as-gifts/m-p/37744

 

You can share games within a family, if that helps?  

 

 

 

On 07/12/2021 at 14:49, Popo said:

You can share it with people in your ‘family’. I did this last year for exactly the same thing your trying to do now, and it worked a treat. Just asked my brother for his gmail address and shared the game with him. 
 

I also bought the £20 bundle recently, so now I’m playing that gift myself, one year later!

 

The tech is still absolutely incredible, draped in a completely wrong-headed business model. 

 

Thanks both. 

 

So I've got the thing and bought the game, and I've found the "family sharing" settings. 

 

I'm not going to do it yet (it'll be a Christmas Day surprise) but come the day, if I invite my girlfriend into my family group for the purpose of sharing the game, what other access does she have? 

 

We won't want to be able to share other Google features (read each other's emails or view each other's Google Photos accounts, for example). Can you lock all that stuff off, a feature at a time, so you're just sharing a game library but everything else is separate? 

[bradigor]

The app appeared on my TV, tempted to give another go with some of the F2P games. 

[Hass]

46 minutes ago, jonathanhoey said:

 

 

Thanks both. 

 

So I've got the thing and bought the game, and I've found the "family sharing" settings. 

 

I'm not going to do it yet (it'll be a Christmas Day surprise) but come the day, if I invite my girlfriend into my family group for the purpose of sharing the game, what other access does she have? 

 

We won't want to be able to share other Google features (read each other's emails or view each other's Google Photos accounts, for example). Can you lock all that stuff off, a feature at a time, so you're just sharing a game library but everything else is separate? 

 

The sharing is at the game level across family members. It's entirely separate to other Google products. 

[ZOK]

I’ve been playing Saints Row 4 on Pro, flipping heck that is an addictive game. Incredible how much sheer fun and invention they cram in to what is a basic template.

[bear]

So next months Pro games have been announced.

 

Quote

Life is Strange:Remastered

Life is Strange:Before the Storm:Remastered

Cosmic Star Heroine

Nanotale – Typing Chronicles

One Hand Clapping

Phogs

Mereks Market

 

 

[ZOK]

Any of those any good? Can’t say I recognise any of them.

[owen2471]

I have just purchased a Google Stadia Pro from Ebay, put a bid of 15.00 quid on and won. How do i get the best out of the Stadia, are there any free games available ? Can I subscribe to a paid service. I'm totally new to this, any tips please. Thank you

 

[Percy Filth]

1 hour ago, owen2471 said:

I have just purchased a Google Stadia Pro from Ebay, put a bid of 15.00 quid on and won. How do i get the best out of the Stadia, are there any free games available ? Can I subscribe to a paid service. I'm totally new to this, any tips please. Thank you

 

There's a few free games, Destiny 2 without any of the expansions is on there, PUBG is there too. 

The subscription service - Stadia Pro - costs £8.99 a month, and is pretty limited. I bought the Stadia new and it came with a month's subscription - I'd run out of stuff I wanted to play within days. 

It's probably best to check the Stadia store occasionally to see if anything is on sale, assassin's Creed Valhalla was on there for fifteen quid recently, as an example. 

Did you get a chromecast to go with the controller? You'll need that or something similar to be the 'receiver' for the Stadia service. 

 

I wouldn't say you've wasted 15 quid, but unfortunately if you want to play the best games on Stadia you're going to have to pay pretty much full price for each game. 

[owen2471]

Thanks for the advice. I did get chromecast with it also. Like i say i just put a cheeky 15 quid bid on it and won. I will probably get rid of it in a ,month or so, that is what i tend to do lately. 

[ZOK]

On the other hand I sub to the Pro tier and there are too many games for me, I’ve not even booted up most of them! But I just claim them as they come up whether I think I will play them or not, as they can leave Pro tier availability if you haven’t done do. So there is probably loads of junk in there I’ll never play anyway.

 

I’ve played loads of brilliant games on it though, it’s been decent value for me.

 

 

[ZOK]

Oh, Rainbow 6 Extraction seems to be free to play at the moment as well.

[CheekyLee]

3 hours ago, owen2471 said:

Thanks for the advice. I did get chromecast with it also. Like i say i just put a cheeky 15 quid bid on it and won. I will probably get rid of it in a ,month or so, that is what i tend to do lately. 

That controller is worth the £15, easily. Use it with your iPad, although you probably don't sub to Apple Arcade...

 

It really is a shame how developers haven't made use of Stadia's potential. Just knocking out cloud versions of games is fine, and it's definitely cheaper to buy a Stadia than it is to buy a PC that can handle whatever game you throw at it, but what it really needs is more stuff like Pixeljunk Raiders. At some point, Google have to throw some money at someone to make some exclusives.

[Haribokart]

3 minutes ago, CheekyLee said:

At some point, Google have to throw some money at someone to make some exclusives.

 

That boat has sailed at this point.

[owen2471]

Thanks for the responses. Got to say I am not to excited about it.

[ZOK]

1 hour ago, owen2471 said:

Thanks for the responses. Got to say I am not to excited about it.

I think if you’ve already got something that can play these games you will find it underwhelming, there’s almost nothing you can’t play elsewhere. Unless you consider not waiting for updates a huge advantage!

 

I think you can get Pro free for a month anyway so you can tuck into those games for a bit - also if you want 4K quality you need the Pro tier.

[rafaqat]

What’s game availability like on the stadia shop.  I don’t have a pc capable of gaming.  
 

Do all the big ones get released on it? 

[ZOK]

2 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

What’s game availability like on the stadia shop.  I don’t have a pc capable of gaming.  
 

Do all the big ones get released on it? 

No idea sorry, I don’t really follow the big releases. I’ve only ever bought Cyberpunk and Resi 8, the rest I’ve played are the Pro ‘freebies’.

[bear]

If you want PC stuff then you want Geforce Now. It's not as seamless as Stadia but it's got PC games. 

[ZOK]

I had a look at GeForce now to see if I could play Death Stranding via my Mac and I honestly couldn’t work out how it is supposed to work! It seemed so complicated.

[bear]

The initial setup is a bit clunky but the Steam integration makes things fairly straightforward. 

 

Once you have an account setup and the app installed there's an option to link your Steam library. It then checks your Steam library for compatible games and they all get added to your library.

 

For stuff from the Epic Store and Ubisoft each game has to be added manually. 

[ZOK]

I never found Steam that much fun to use either, I’ve got 4 or 5 games in my Steam library and I never play them. 
 

Yes, I think DS was on the Epic Store, I basically got as far as that and then couldn’t be bothered. I basically need console simplicity these days or it all seems like too much faff.

[dreamylittledream]

If you own Death Stranding on either Steam or Epic you can play it on GeForce Now.

 

It’s not hugely complicated. Sign into GeForce on device of choice, search up Death Stranding and add to your library, click on game and login to Steam or Epic through the pop up.

 

Quality of the stream and the interface on Stradia is miles ahead but GeForce is pretty effective at what it does and you don’t have to buy the games twice.

[Hass]

Unfortunately Stadia seems to have lost momentum since Cyberpunk. It's a great platform, but the new releases have really dried up. I said a while back in this thread after MS started buying everything that Google needed to go big or go home. Unfortunately I think they've gone home. 

 

It also annoys me to see Stadia not trying to compete with GeForce Now 3080. That was always the big promise of cloud gaming for me.

[ZOK]

2 hours ago, dreamylittledream said:

If you own Death Stranding on either Steam or Epic you can play it on GeForce Now.

 

It’s not hugely complicated. Sign into GeForce on device of choice, search up Death Stranding and add to your library, click on game and login to Steam or Epic through the pop up.

 

Quality of the stream and the interface on Stradia is miles ahead but GeForce is pretty effective at what it does and you don’t have to buy the games twice.

Cheers, but to be honest that’s killed any interest for me - if it doesn’t stream as well as Stadia then there’s no point really. I assumed it was the same.

[dreamylittledream]

57 minutes ago, ZOK said:

Cheers, but to be honest that’s killed any interest for me - if it doesn’t stream as well as Stadia then there’s no point really. I assumed it was the same.

 

There's nothing in the same league as Stadia for streaming performance.

 

If they had only hitched it to a platform with a reasonable collection of games at non exorbitant prices it could have been amazing

[bear]

Have you tried Geforce since the recent upgrades? The consensus seems to be that the 3080 tier is now the highest quality streaming service out there. I know they were supposed to rollout some of the performance boosts to lower tiers as well but there isn't as much coverage of that. 

 

 

[rafaqat]

I use GeForce now. The streaming is great. I thought maybe stadia might have a better selection of games. 
 

[Hass]

GeForce Now is probably as good or better than Stadia these days from a pure stream quality perspective.

 

The main limitations of GeForce Now today is that to get a 4k HDR stream you need a Shield which costs £180 and that sort of defeats the point. Plus the user experience of launching games still isn't as good as Stadia but that's partly because of it's "bring your own library" model.

[dreamylittledream]

7 hours ago, bear said:

Have you tried Geforce since the recent upgrades? The consensus seems to be that the 3080 tier is now the highest quality streaming service out there. I know they were supposed to rollout some of the performance boosts to lower tiers as well but there isn't as much coverage of that. 

 

 

The 3080 tier is ridiculously pricey for the games that are available so not really a fair comparison.

 

I’ve had the standard paid tier since it launched as it was a way of letting my kids play PC games on their weaker laptops and my general impression is it’s decent (much better than Xcloud for example) but still spotty on Wi-Fi (my Wi-Fi is not great admittedly) where as Stadia is almost always rock solid.

 

I’d have knocked in on the head a while ago had I not got 6 months free with my new laptop as it’s not longer really used that much and the number of games missing is frustrating. It’s a good service but it’s still a long way from being preferable to playing natively or indeed choosing it over Stadia if you have the game on that platform.