Testing Google's New 'Stadia' Cloud Gaming Platform on a Mac

[konqerror]

That's completely absurd! If I'm paying monthly for the service why aren't the games included? That'd be worth it, even if it were a bit more than $10 a month.

The equivalent then would be Xbox One X + Xbox Live Gold + Xbox Game Pass. That works out to be $13.88 ($500 console/3 years) + $5 + $10 = $28.88 / month. If you want EA games, that's an additional $5/month to bring it to $33.88.

If you actually play the selection of games, sure. But if you only play one or two, it makes no sense. And on top of that, note that many popular games like Fortnite and Apex Legends are free-to-play anyway.

Essentially what they're counting on for game passes is that you overestimate the number of different paid games you're going to play.

 

[zorinlynx]

Conceptually this is right up my ally. I don't have to pay for a console or a gaming pc AND I don't have to pay for the service (if I'm willing to settle for 1080p)?
I wonder if they plan to ever add MMOs to this list.

hopefully this continues to expand and becomes better and better. The newstat wars game is something I likely won't play for some time unless I gain access to it through stadia.

Remember that Google tends to not keep services around more than a few years, AND you have to pay full price to "buy" the games.

So basically you're going to be investing hundreds, maybe thousands into a game collection that will go away in a few years. I'd skip it unless they include games in the monthly fee.

 

[0837990]

Conceptually this is right up my ally. I don't have to pay for a console or a gaming pc AND I don't have to pay for the service (if I'm willing to settle for 1080p)?
I wonder if they plan to ever add MMOs to this list.

hopefully this continues to expand and becomes better and better. The newstat wars game is something I likely won't play for some time unless I gain access to it through stadia.

You still have to pay for the games. If you use the free service your gameplay will be interrupted and you’ll be served ads every 5 minutes during gameplay. in the middle of a boss fight or a crucial moment in the game? Oh, here’s an ad for ya for some after shave, and the ad can’t be skipped after 15 seconds.

And you need to buy a controller.

 

[DevNull0]

That comment is based on the cost of a game service. Two AAA titles on Stadia could cost up to $120, then you have to pay the $10/mo. There's an argument to be had there.

Forget Apple Arcade, I'd be happy if Apple had a decent selection of modern AAA titles at normal AAA prices at all instead of IAP-hell or Arcade and it's indie games that are less advanced than commodore 64 games were in the 80's.

 

[Bandaman]

Conceptually this is right up my ally. I don't have to pay for a console or a gaming pc AND I don't have to pay for the service (if I'm willing to settle for 1080p)?
I wonder if they plan to ever add MMOs to this list.

hopefully this continues to expand and becomes better and better. The newstat wars game is something I likely won't play for some time unless I gain access to it through stadia.

The lag makes anything that’s an FPS or MMO a non-option right now. You’re also paying for full price for games regardless of the free option.

 

[Justanotherfanboy]

<snip>For Macs in particular, there is no possible configuration of mac hardware that can run these games well. Streaming is the only solution. </snip>

I dunno... a tb3 enclosure w/ a modern card & bootcamp seems like another (arguably, better) choice.

 

[Bandaman]

I dunno... a tb3 enclosure w/ a modern card & bootcamp seems like another (arguably, better) choice.

Yep. They work extremely well.

 

[eicca]

I prefer my classic iPod over streaming music, and I definitely prefer a console over streaming games.

 

[DevNull0]

I dunno... a tb3 enclosure w/ a modern card & bootcamp seems like another (arguably, better) choice.

Yeah, given that that enclosure costs as much as the entire windows PC just to run windows anyway and deal with the mac's limited cpu, ram, and storage, and I would definitely argue it being better. I'm planning to buy more SSD for my gaming machine this black friday, I'm looking at about $120-140/TB for fast SSD this year and less if i don't care about speed. Apple prices are mindbogglingly high. And sticking yet another external drive on a cable is not "arguably better".

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Another sure flop from Google.

It’s bizarre how Google is so well regarded when they have a tiny list of good products (all of which have competitors equal or superior to them), and then at least absolutely abysmal failures for each one of those successes.

I don’t think a streaming platform has to fail like this... multiplayer games work online despite ping times, so it seems like all that has to be done is crank up the bandwidth and stream rendered video + audio in addition to control input.

 

[jayducharme]

This review pretty much sums it up, and made me laugh out loud several times.

That was epic. Thanks for posting it.

 

[nStyle]

If Stadia worked as intended, it’s actually not a bad deal provided you are only interested in the games they’re offering and you have to have 4K 60FPS gaming.

A rig capable of handing that amount of pixels is going to cost around $2K (not including monitor/TV since you’d need that with Stadia too). Given the opportunity cost of that $2K, it would take over 20 years to break even on your purchase. And that’s not including the fact that you’re going to have to pay more every 3-5 years to keep up to date. So “renting” is better in this case.

That said, I can’t see many people only wanting to play games on Stadia, so the fact that most people are going to want something more reliable and also want to play a lot of free competitive games then it definitely doesn’t make sense. Steam sales and just the fact that there’s so many more ways to game on a PC tilts the equation in its favor as well. Also the fact that you don’t own the games or have the option to rent or resell physical copies hurts the situation as well. And finally, it’s just unreliable right now.

Just like AWS and Google Cloud have basically made it cheaper to outsource computing power rather than companies having to buy tons of physical servers, the same will eventually happen for gaming. There’s a lot of latency and general reliability problems to overcome first though.

 

[Piggie]

Just to put my viewpoint over.
Do I think this is the long term future? Yes.
Do I think Google have launched this before it's really ready for mainstream? Yes.
Do I think they need to actually launch it, and once it's out in the wild then get to work making it better? Yes.
Do I think expecting people to pay full prices for streamed games? Yes.
Do I think they should scrap it and forget the idea? I will be the future for "most" normal people.

The concept is the right one, esp for young people today, gaming on any platform without worrying about heavy duty hardware, and continue a game on your tablet you were playing earlier on your PC/Mac is excellent.

It's a long term concept, but I could see, in 5 to 10 years if Google and others stick with it, it wil become the norm.
Give it 20 years and many would consider it crazy anyone ever bought hardware and physical games.
It's just a long run, over the long term, but I'm glad Google have taken the step to get it out there.
It just needs to stick around long enough to fix, over the next few years the current issues.
And I'm sure the pricing model will need to change fast.

 

[0388631]

NVidia did something similar. When it shuttered they gave out Steam keys for the games people purchased, IIRC. Microsoft and Sony are teaming up for a stream competitor, and honestly, anyone with a brain knew Microsoft would be able to pull this off better than anyone else.

 

[gnomeisland]

The specs are 4K60 HDR. The fact that it doesn't work right is a different story. It's still far better graphics than an Apple TV, i.e. iPhone 6.

iPad Pro 2017? Unless you mean the Apple TV HD which isn't 4K60 HDR. Although even the AT 4K isn't really powerful enough to play games at 4K HDR, regardless there's a big difference in the hardware.

 

[Krizoitz]

To be fair, you're actually running the game software on Google's high end gaming systems. The $10/month is an alternative to spending $1500 on a gaming rig.

To be fair you can get 4K gaming out of a sube $400 PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. And while that’s stil a fair amount of money it also comes with no lag and a much larger library of games.

It doesn’t really matter if Stadia is cheaper over time if you can’t actually play games on it and/or if the games you want to play aren’t there.

As others have said it’s a good idea but the technology isn’t there yet to support it.

 

[farewelwilliams]

even if you can deliver frames uncompressed, there's still a huge input delay.

 

[DevNull0]

To be fair you can get 4K gaming out of a sube $400 PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. And while that’s stil a fair amount of money it also comes with no lag and a much larger library of games.

You can technically play 4k games on a macbook. And Apple claims their laptops with integrated GPUs can drive some insane number of 5k displays. If you don't understand the difference between rendering an image (and what render features need different amounts of computing power), this is certainly not the right forum to discuss it, but I would suggest the gaming and pcmasterrace subreddits.

PS4 and XBone gaming are not in the same universe as PC gaming.

That said, the PS4 Pro and XBone X are excellent bang for your buck and do give a great gaming experience. They're just not on the same playing field as a GTX 2070 or one of the really expensive chips. And fwiw, I'd much rather go the console route than the Stadia route.

 

[drumcat]

They have these things called "consoles", and you can run them "locally"...

 

[Quu]

Fact you need to not only pay for the service itself monthly but also purchase the games you want to play seems like it would be the biggest drawback even if the image quality and latency problems didn't exist. But they do so the problem is only compounded.

I wonder how long it'll be before Google cancels this project, 2 years? 3 maybe?

 

[lordofthereef]

The lag makes anything that’s an FPS or MMO a non-option right now. You’re also paying for full price for games regardless of the free option.

I understand that. I buy games once in a blue moon unless it's something for the switch with my six year old has.
It's a savings any way I look at it. I pay $60 for the game (or maybe less, I honestly haven't examined their prices) and I play the game wherever I want. This would top out at three games a year l, maybe. The time for MNOs was in a previous life lol.
[automerge]1574392700[/automerge]

You still have to pay for the games. If you use the free service your gameplay will be interrupted and you’ll be served ads every 5 minutes during gameplay. in the middle of a boss fight or a crucial moment in the game? Oh, here’s an ad for ya for some after shave, and the ad can’t be skipped after 15 seconds.

And you need to buy a controller.

You can use various controllers with it. So the controller is a non issue.
I realize you buy the games but that's not a problem. I'm already eliminating buying a console, or worse (in terms of expense), building a gaming PC that would spend most of its time collecting dust.
I didn't realize about the ads though. That would indeed not be great.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Did they cancel this yet?

 

[lordofthereef]

Remember that Google tends to not keep services around more than a few years, AND you have to pay full price to "buy" the games.

So basically you're going to be investing hundreds, maybe thousands into a game collection that will go away in a few years. I'd skip it unless they include games in the monthly fee.

Based on the responses I got, maybe I wasn't clear enough. This is a couple games a year for me. The reason I don't invest in hardware is because I don't play enough to justify the costs.
I used to be the guy that upgraded his gaming rig yearly. I didn't go as crazy as some but I felt like I was spending at least a few hundred a year, sometimes up to $1000. All of that is Sunk costs and this stuff (including hard copies of games) depreciates rather rapidly, with few exceptions.
If I bought a game this year and they shut it down next year I'd still have saved money over what I'd have to do to play the games I currently can't play otherwise.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

So you have to pay $10 per month AND you have to buy the games? That makes Apple Arcade sound like a real bargain. Outside of the cloud aspect, why would anyone choose this over competing formats?

Agree. This is literally the worst of both media-consumption methods. If back before AppleTV+ I had to pay Apple $10/month to have access to my purchased-for-$10-$20 movies, there's no way I would do it. I buy some movies to have them "forever without further payment," and I subscribe to streaming services to watch a lot more content, but that I don't really want to have forever.

Having a free tier (which they say is coming soon) is vital. But they should also have at least a moderate selection of games "for free" with the paid-per-month tier. Games that wouldn't otherwise be free. Maybe only have them available for one month at a time, or something. But for that $10/month, you should get more than just "access to the system." And/or a guarantee (or as close to a guarantee as you can do with cloud-based services nowadays) that those $50-$60 "purchased" games will always be available, regardless of monthly payments. (That's one good thing about Apple/née-iTunes-purchased music, movies, and TV shows - you can download them in iTunes/Music/TV, store them on a hard drive, and have them forever. - As long as you have at least one computer that is "authorized" with the iTunes Store, it can be 100% offline and play them forever.)

 

[Lalatoon]

Im not a fan with this kind of setup. Latency is a real issue with Internet connection specially if you are playing FPS or AAA games.