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

[Uzi]

Geforce Now has maybe 10x the amount of available games that Stadia has. It's not even a comparison library wise.

[Hass]

I personally think the 3080 tier pricing is pretty good. £15 a month gets you a top tier graphics card which in today's market is thousands of pounds, not really available anyway and is not top tier 1-2 years away. It also means I can dip in and out of top tier graphics.

[ZOK]

And what do you need the NVidia Shield for if you are on that tier?

[Hass]

Just for 4k HDR streaming at the moment I think. All other clients max out at 1440p 120fps right now but I presume that's something Nvidia will fix. Google did a similar thing originally with Chromecast Ultra but eventually got browser and app support up to 4k HDR 

[ZOK]

Right…so if I wanted that 4K HDR quality on my telly I’d need this Shield, but if I was playing via my Mac I wouldn’t?

[bear]

3 hours ago, dreamylittledream said:

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.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. The announcement of the 3080 tier was the headline grabber recently but they also introduced a bunch of enhancements for the existing tiers which improved their performance and they've added resolution upscaling to the PC and Mac apps. It seems better to me at least. 

 

I'd have probably cancelled my subscription as I don't use it much but I am grandfathered in to the founders edition pricing. 

[Rex Grossman]

Is there somewhere to see a list of Stadia game prices? Something like Deku Deals?

[Hass]

7 hours ago, ZOK said:

Right…so if I wanted that 4K HDR quality on my telly I’d need this Shield, but if I was playing via my Mac I wouldn’t?

 

You can only play up to 1440p @ 120 FPS on everything other than the Shield right now (e.g. your Mac). 

[ZOK]

Cool, cheers!

[Jonny5]

22 hours ago, Rex Grossman said:

Is there somewhere to see a list of Stadia game prices? Something like Deku Deals?

stadia.google.com?

 

You can sign up for free & browse the store and even play the free stuff. 

[bear]

 

 

Sounds like a matter of time before Stadia goes away. 

 

 

If it isn't going to get the big games then what's the point? 

 

[ZOK]

All as expected isn’t it? Looks like I’ll get another year out of it and then it’s done.

 

I wish either Sony or Microsoft would buy it off them and launch an ‘online console’ with their existing games, that would just be perfect.

[Hass]

Don't Nintendo need a streaming platform? 

[Alex W.]

Kind of limits their ability to sell you the same game over and over.

[ZOK]

Thinking more about that article, the only real question for me is how long it stays accessible. I’ve pretty much zero interest in them adding new games to the service…they could simply add four new games a month from the existing library into the Pro tier and I’d be well served for years, and be getting my money’s worth.
 

Even if it’s limping on it’s not going to make any real difference to me - hopefully by the time they do switch it off Microsoft have got X-Cloud up to scratch, because I think that is probably going to be more attractive to me than GeForce as an equivalent. I’m guessing that it will have a friendlier front end at least!

[footle]

The thing that surprised me from Googles results was that they report losses from their cloud division, whereas Microsoft and Amazon treat it as a major profit centre. Corporate accounting at its finest?

[dreamylittledream]

12 hours ago, Alex W. said:

Kind of limits their ability to sell you the same game over and over.

They can charge you a monthly sub forever to play the same games over and over instead

[Mike1812]

Response from Stadia

 

 

[ZOK]

There’s nothing in that statement that conflicts with the article, obviously no-one really knows the internal intent but it reads equally well as a confirmation. Exciting to find out I’m a ‘Stadian’ though I guess! 

[Hass]

1 hour ago, footle said:

The thing that surprised me from Googles results was that they report losses from their cloud division, whereas Microsoft and Amazon treat it as a major profit centre. Corporate accounting at its finest?

Google's playing catch-up in Cloud. I wouldn't be surprised if that's true.

[Hass]

Assuming they can actually sell the platform on a whitelabel basis I'd imagine there's very little additional cost to continuing the Stadia store. It actually makes sense from a game developer's perspective too as you have a choice of being your own store, but there are costs in that, or you can just use the Stadia platform (friends lists, chat etc. etc.) directly. 

[StumpyJohn]

Just read the article on Ars, interesting that Phil Harrison hasn't mentioned anything about Stadia for a long time now and appears to have effectively been demoted and sidelined.  Less that 12 months before its in the google graveyard?

 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/deprioritized-google-stadia-to-pivot-to-google-stream-white-label-service/

[Uncle Mike]

If you put Phil Harrison as your main face on a project, you should know what you're going to get by now, surely?

[mushashi]

On 05/02/2022 at 09:31, footle said:

The thing that surprised me from Googles results was that they report losses from their cloud division, whereas Microsoft and Amazon treat it as a major profit centre. Corporate accounting at its finest?

 

Which major clients does Google's Cloud division provide service for? You can name plenty for both AWS and Azure, They also lost a shitload last year, so clearly aren't growing fast enough to get to the scale needed to compete with their main competition yet. The rate of loss making is slowing so they'll stop being a money sink in a few years time if they can maintain their rate of growth.

 

But much like other too big to fail Tech, they can afford to keep plugging the hole for as long as it takes to secure their bit of this very lucrative pie.

[footle]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/google-should-kill-stadia/?comments=1&sort=insightful#comments
 

One of those rare cases where Betteridge’s Law of Headlines does not apply.

[SozzlyJoe]

That's pretty damning when laid out like that, shows how it is obviously being allowed to wither on the vine. Still, shows that Cloud Gaming enthusiasts will have a home to go to with GeForce Now.

[Alan Stock]

Yeah it's a good article which neatly lays out all the issues and broken promises Google made. I was one of the people who was sold by their reveal presentation, or at least open to its potential. Unfortunately half of the stuff in that presentation turned out to be outright false, or vastly under what they promised. With the comparisons in the article, it seems like other streaming services have a much more robust and long term plan than Google had, and those companies are now seeing the benefit of their investment. What baffles me is how the higher ups at Google were so uneducated and seemingly naïve about the amount of money in the games industry and the investment required to compete. Its a tech company for god sake!

[ZOK]

On 16/02/2022 at 21:08, footle said:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/google-should-kill-stadia/?comments=1&sort=insightful#comments
 

One of those rare cases where Betteridge’s Law of Headlines does not apply.

Presumably because Betteridge’s Law applies to headlines that are questions. 

[footle]

1 minute ago, ZOK said:

Presumably because Betteridge’s Law applies to headlines that are questions. 

ha. I remembered it as “should Google kill stadia?” After I read it, not the statement it actually was 🙂

[ZOK]

That’s the thing - you’d expect it to be a question as these things almost always are, but the writer is in doubt. And reading the article it’s easy to see why!