Hmm yeah I don’t think I’ve ever seen it on any lists
sounds perfect
I bought this while heading into surgery like a genius and I have not yet recovered to the point that I wouldn’t be wasting the experience but hoping to get to it soon
my backlog is growing out of control this year for the first time in a long time
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why is the google controller $70. why do controller prices keep going up like that. presumably you need it to also pay money for stadium games that you also don’t own that you also need to pay a monthly fee to access that is also entirely dependent on like four things outside your control. right? oh, and for a year you also have to pay for destiny to get in the door. you’re really convincing me, google.
I think you’ve misread the Stadia thing, the Chromecast thing is just for TVs and the only other restriction is the only smartphones usable are Pixel phones. they’ve said you can just use any device running Chrome with any gamepad you can connect and you don’t even have to get the subscription thing, you can just buy games individually specifically for the platform
all of this is a smokescreen for why the fuck would you do this, why would you launch in first world countries where consoles and gaming PCs already make up a significant part of the market and not position your service for taking over nascent markets
also lol bandwidth (at least in certain countries). 4k HDR with 5.1 is 1 TB per 65 hours, which is hilarious considering they’re having two fucking loot shooters ready for the platform
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it’s me
I’m the asshole arguing against Stadia while ignoring that my expenditures into hardware make me exactly the kind of person who would write it off
I have no self-awareness
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Forklift confirmed!
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I guess this is the only use for the thing, and it’s a narrow market of people. granted, I know people for whom this could be of limited use in theory, but I feel like people who 1) don’t own a modern console or a mid tier gaming PC, 2) are interested in the kinds of video games that require one of those things, and 3) have the capacity to reliably stream them more or less do not exist. the pro tier is clearly useless. the ‘founders edition’ is for dumb people. I thought they’d try to shove this out for joe blow with a phone and disposable income, but it’s not for phone games and only on one phone anyway? I don’t get it. but I’m sure google gave someone several billion dollars to put this together, so good job I guess.
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As of right now, Stadia requires the founders edition, for you to play in 2019.
Later, at some unknown time in 2020, they will open up the platform to computers with Chrome browser, possibly other droid phones, possibly non-ultra chromecasts, etc. And they will also later offer the free membership, where you can just buy games outright and you max out at 1080p for stream resolution. But in 2019, you have to pay the monthly fee, to be able to play at all. (albeit there is overlap on that detail, because the required founder’s edition includes 3 months of “pro” service).
I see it as mostly a ploy to get people to buy chromecasts so that they will naturally attach to Google’s other services and be subject to Google’s ads. And also be tempted to upgrade their service to gain 4K quality, since they will be forced to own a 4K capable chromecast anyway. And be forced to experience the 4K service for at least 3 months.
Certainly, constraining the launch to limited amounts of hardware, will also allow them a test period to work out kinks. However, we are talking about one of the richest companies in the world with some of the most resources available, on which to launch something. So I’m not really buying that excuse, here. (I mean I’m just mentioning that myself. Not saying anyone here was trying to justify this limited launch as a way to test the service).
oh, you have to buy in instead of just letting people onto the platform
this is even dumber than I had previously imagined
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Someone, somewhere, somehow figures Stadia is a good way to get another billion people to pay for video games. And maybe that’s true? But is it true for Google? Or is Stadia going to be another service Google abandons in ten years after they decide they can’t do anything with it?
I don’t know how europe’s internet is, maybe that’s viable there, but in america internet connections are almost universally garbage, and are universally delivered well under their advertised speeds. and if enough people ended up giving a shit about this, I’m sure it’d be throttled by ISPs on top of that.
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Yeah, a month ago, a big thing with Stadia was that you wouldn’t need to buy hardware like you do with a console.
But at launch, they are forcing you to buy a controller and a chromecast. Albeit its bundled with a game (Destiny 2 I think) and the pro service. Its all still like half the price of an Xbone S on sale. But its still undermining what we heard a month ago.
you also need to buy a tv and a house
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Whether or not Stadia is a thing you might be interested in is largely going to depend on whether or not you have a good ISP. I can see the ISPs blowing up the game streaming market in the hangar.
Yeah.
PC gamer says “…works out to around 15.75GB per hour of 4K streaming, 9GB per hour of 1080p, or 4.5GB per hour at 720p.”
“… with a 1TB data plan (which is what I have from Comcast), that’s 65 hours of streaming per month at 4K. And that’s assuming I don’t do anything else on the internet. At 1080p60, it comes to 113 hours of streaming per month, assuming no other data usage.”
Its basically double Netflix/Amazon TV and movie bandwidth. Which makes sense, because your are doubling the framerate.
Also what will the input latency be? Every time I play Path of Exile on PS4 it’s smooth for a while and then I get that weird hitch where the game freezes for a second or two and then every input I did in that time all happens at once before smoothing out again for a while. That’s a network thing and apparently people who tried AC Odyssey during the trial experienced similar hitching as well on occasion. That’s probably going to be a common experience for many Stadia users who either don’t have a very good ISP or don’t have the right router setup or any combination of things like that.
I don’t think streaming overall is going to fail since it’s obviously what the big tech companies want so everyone with the infrastructure is pushing it but it’s going to be a bumpy rollout.
Yeah its gonna be a huge YMMV.
There is also distance from servers, to consider. With online multiplayer, if you are are within 2 states away from the server, you are generally good. After that, its all dependant upon infrastructure, from both ends. Sometimes you can connect to a server across the country and its a decent experience. Often, its not.
With the AC Odyssey test: I read accounts that the game actually seemed more responsive, than playing on a PS4 or whatever. (aside from any network hitches). I dunno if they were maybe interpolating frames for the services, to fake responsiveness. Or maybe its a special build of the game which has less latency at the source. So, if your network connection is great, then you might still feel the lowered latency on your end? I dunno.
I’m thinking the extra responsiveness might have just been the game running at 60fps (more or less) and the people playing weren’t used to experiencing the higher framerate.
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