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SO, DO I STILL ENJOY GOOGLE STADIA?

12/12/2019

14 Comments

 
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Google Stadia, eh. Remember that? Remember when it came out way back in - oooh, what was it? - November 2019?

Things were different back then. We were different. The past is a foreign country, and so on and so forth.

Hey, remember how loads of people hated on Stadia? And how loads of people hated on me for daring to say it actually worked - for me - which rather undermined their assertion back when it was announced earlier this year that it wouldn't, couldn't, possibly work for anyone?

Remember how those same people sought out those singing Stadia's praises, and then attacked them, accusing them of being paid by Google to say nice things about Stadia, and they even set up social media accounts to spread anti-Stadia sentiment?

You can't blame them; that's just a normal, rational thing to do. They went all red in the face, and steam came out of their ears, making a noise like a boiling kettle. That literally happened. It's quite, quite, normal. 

These brave souls, these modern Luddites - doubtless inspired by Ned Ludd's anti-technology rebellion of 1811 to 1916, which saw armies of aggrieved workers destroying lacemaking machines and sending anonymous death threats to magistrates (and which famously cut short the Industrial Revolution before it even got underway, and that is now why we all toil in factories...) - should be seen for what they are; anti-progress heroes, whose sacrifice we should honour and remember forever. 

Or maybe they just really hated looking like idiots, so have gone all-out to look like even bigger idiots, so they then stood a chance of winning The Biggest Idiot In The World Award, which is at least some sort of achievement, I suppose. 

Fun times. Fun. Times...

It has been a few weeks, and I'm missing the hate, so I thought I'd check back with you all about how my Stadia experience has been going. Does it still work? Do I still, broadly, think this is the future of gaming? 
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EMPHAT
Yes, is my answer to both questions. Probably more emphatically than I felt before. As I said some weeks ago... it just works. For me. That isn't an endorsement of Google's service per se, rather that I more strongly than ever believe that streaming. as a concept, has to be the way forward for gaming.
​
And part of the reason I believe that is because Stadia is kind of disappointing.

Wha... wha... whaaaaa?

Here's the thing; the first, and so far only, game I've completed on Stadia is Rage 2. After finishing it, I spent some time mopping up the remaining side-missions, but then I wanted to play something else.

I bought Red Dead Redemption 2, but - having already played through that once - I soon got bored. Then I bought Gylt - thus far, the only Stadia exclusive. It's a nice enough entry-level survival horror thing, but it's really a game for kids. And lastly I bought Trials Rising, because I'd not played it before, and it was relatively cheap. It's alright, but not really my thing.

The trouble is, all the other games on Stadia I have either played already on other systems (Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the Tomb Raiders, Wolfenstein Youngblood), or really aren't something I'd ever play (Farming Simulator 19). And, of course, there's Destiny 2, which I've spent some time on, but the tiresome grind gave me RSI in both finger and brain.

Since the service launched, I think there has only been one new game added to the line-up, and that's Darksiders: Genesis, a Diablo-esque action RPG. I considered buying it, but again... it isn't the sort of thing I signed up for. I want triple-A stuff, which makes full use of the sort of power a high-end PC can offer... without having to own a high-end PC. 

And currently, Stadia is profoundly lacking in that area, unless you count games that many of us have already played to death. 

It's a problem, because the convenience of streaming means that I want to binge. I want to pick and choose games, I want to dip into one, and then switch over to another. I want to browse the store from the main interface - not have to pick up my phone to do so.

​And I don't want to have to pay full price for games that are over a year old. 
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HONOURS DEGREE
To give Google a degree of credit, Stadia is limited by the fact that its launch was actually a soft launch, and it won't really get going until next year. Nonetheless - putting the whole streaming thing to one side for a minute - if this were a console launch it'd be hard to call it a success.

Big hardware brands are defined by their games, by the exclusives that become synonymous with the brand - but Stadia lacks a Breath of the Wild or Halo of its own. Consequently, it has no real identity beyond being That Streaming Thing Which Some People Hate. That's a major issue for its marketing.

​Stadia needs to take advantage of the instant-access nature of its technology; it needs a library of games that are cheap - possibly even free to play, with a subscription. Ideally it needs a Steam-like selection of indie titles, quick, original, ideas that people can binge, going from one to another. It also needs to demonstrate its supposed processing power with original exclusives that really show off what it can do.

And, of course, it goes without saying that it needs to fix things so that everyone - regardless of how close they live to one of Google's server orchards - gets seamless, uninterrupted, access to all of it. 

This is how streaming is going to work; not just by ensuring the technology is viable, but by taking advantage of streaming, and a fundamental, human, desire to binge. It's how we watch TV now. It's how we want to access all our entertainment. Streaming platforms can't just pretend to be a console; the content needs to reflect how we consume streamed content.  

CONTENT?
So what's next for Stadia? Even though there are many still singing the praises of the technology - myself included - Google needs to do some damage control. It needs to find a way to shut the mouths of the haters, so their noisy, lacemaking machine-destroying, becomes more of an disenfranchised mumble. 

It needs to get aggressive with its content; it can slap as many sponsored posts as it wants on Reddit, but that doesn't change what it's offering. They can only lure people to it with games, and it really needed to have a lot more in place before it launched; once something has the whiff of failure about it, it's very hard to come back from that. Just ask Sega. 

Plus, most significantly, it can't afford to wait around; there are rivals waiting in the wings.

You can bet that Sony is going to go all-in with streaming, once others have fallen. It will learn from Stadia's mistakes, and not repeat them. It's already happening with Microsoft; by all accounts - though I've yet to try it - the company's own streaming service, Project xCloud, which is currently on preview for a select few, has received unanimous praise.

Already it's offering 50-odd games via streaming, and by carefully restricting who has access to it, Microsoft has managed expectations and bad press.

You'd think Google would've known better, but it seems they focused chiefly on making sure the streaming worked, and not on what people were actually going to be streaming. It's like inventing a new and amazing lacemaking machine, and then just using it as a coffee table. 
14 Comments
Damon link
12/12/2019 10:26:26 am

That last paragraph really hits home with a lot of Google projects. The tech is there... but then they fail to apply it and more importantly they fail to sell it to anyone who really can apply it. With google projects (sorry, Alphabet now) the Android phone is sort of an exception. Maybe this will work, maybe they will sell or license the tech-- Valve could possibly make use of similar tech for PC.

Or maybe it will be another project that was neat in concept, technically worked but had such dull application that at the end of the day it ends up as a footnote or extra feature.

That said I'm still not really sold on the point of this but I'm not wholly sold on streaming tv or music simply because few services have enough content I want to merit the subscription. I do have Hulu because there's enough I want to merit the cheap price, though.

Maybe in the future I will warm up to this. Maybe if a game streaming service comes out for PC-- where I do most of my gaming anymore-- and has support for the games I actually find myself playing.

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Alastair
12/12/2019 09:41:21 pm

It's like as soon as Google realises sitting won't make anywhere near the money that the advertising does, they let it wither.

Why can't they leverage all the games ported to Android already that would benefit from a controller over a tablet or phone screen?

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MENTALIST
12/12/2019 10:30:15 am

The effect of my experimentation with streaming is an odd one.

I tried Forza Horizon 4 a few times with different tweaks to my router, and positions in my house, and was maddened by the effect the lag had on my ability to play it. To the extent that it made me wonder what effect the lag of my LCD TV (I can't bring myself to disable local dimming, since it makes streaming TV I watch on my Xbox look all washes out) had on it.

So I finally got round to installing FH4 on my i5 / 1050 laptop, and massacred the graphics settings to the point it'll run at 60fps, to cut lag further still. And I'm using my controller wired, since it's one without Bluetooth. And, yeah, I'm pretty convinced that I'm doing much better at the game, to the extent that I've got caught up in their ranked competitive racing online.

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MENTAL1ST
12/12/2019 10:52:23 am

Conversely, I've been doing a bit of playing through Gears 5's campaign from the comfort of my bed at the weekend, partly out of a sense of duty to actually test the system they let me have a go of. It's been usable, though I suspect the game is tuned to allow progress whilst being wildly inaccurate with aiming.

Digital Foundry reckon that Stadia's streaming performance is a bit better than XCloud's - even after the vagaries of phone bluetooth and local wifi, that can make phone based streaming worse.

As is, I could see myself using XCloud every now and again, if it were thrown in with Game Pass Ultimate. Basically the same as I do now. I'm not going to go out of my way to pay extra for it.

Similarly, when free Stadia comes out, if I can get a meaningful game experience for less than a fiver, I'll give it a go. But the absolute impermanence of it (versus, say, the ability to keep an external hard drive with backed-up downloaded Xbox One games on it, if I wanted to) makes me unwilling to "invest" in it.

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TJ link
12/12/2019 12:08:33 pm

I'm one of the lucky few who has been approved for Project xCloud. It genuinely is amazing and I'm struggling to find any negative points to it. I've clocked in about 8 hours of Sea of Thieves, 2 hours of Borderlands and then a few hours of random games in the library - all of which ran without any issue bar the VERY occasionaly graphical flicker.

Stadia could catch up IF they choose to make a decent library of games included in subscription. Charging full price for year old games is not going to help them in the slightest.

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Johnny Blanchard link
12/12/2019 12:11:45 pm

Online streaming will probably become the norm, i'm not a fan of it, there have been far too many examples of what happens when the rug is pulled out from a digital service, but it has the prospect of being more lucrative than the traditional service methods, so it will win. But I don't think Google is the company to deliver it, i've had (relatively short) goes on both Stadia and xCloud and, in my opinion on my connection with the games I played, xCloud felt like the better experience. But I didn't do any particularily scientific tests. Sony seem to be about to use the same platform as Microsoft to run their streaming service (Microsoft Azura) so you can imagine the base experience will be similar. I don't really have a horse in this one, I spend far more time on ancient games than on modern ones, and prefer physical games that I know will always be there and I only have to buy once - but I guess in my old age i'm slightly luddite.

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Johnc
12/12/2019 12:41:20 pm

It does seem that Microsoft is the best placed to make streaming a success - their own cloud infrastructure, experience with gaming including their own licences and existing relationships with 3rd parties, extensive software and OS experience and resources.

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Johnc
12/12/2019 12:45:06 pm

I have Amazon Prime and Netflix. I watch some stuff on Prime Video but am often frustrated with the mix of 'included with Prime' and content you have to buy. So I watch Netflix much more, and it is always Netflix I go to when I want to browse around and find something new.

For some reason I though Stadia was going to be the Netflix model - subscription only and then its all free to play. When I found out that is not the case my interest diminished by about 80%

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Jol
13/12/2019 05:19:02 am

Nailed it. Stadia was initially presented as one thing - gaming Netflix - and then turned out to be something else (requiring actual hardware and game purchases). I've not used Stadia but I've dabbled with PS Now, which was... ok. The theory is great, but at the time it was mostly PS3 games streamed at 720p. So a bit shit.

Whether Stadia itself succeeds or not is almost immaterial however; gaming will ultimately move to a new payment structure in the same way that TV, movies, and music has gone. The issue really is about the practicality, and if it isn't practical now it will be soon.

Also its after 5am on election night and the Tories have officially won so FFS Britain have a word with yourself

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Pete Davison link
12/12/2019 01:32:44 pm

Streaming is never going to be *the* future of gaming. It might, like VR, be *a* future of gaming... but it's *never* going to be the be-all and end-all of it. I feel absolutely confident in saying that.

For triple-A, it's great; Stadia and xCloud's primary appeal elements right now are the ability to play big-name, big-budget games without 50+GB installs, without patch downloads and without needing a monster PC to get the best out of them.

But that's only part of the story.

Several indie developers I follow on Twitter calculated how well they would need to do on Stadia to even break even, and it's utterly unsustainable. If they got flat royalties from subscriptions, perhaps it would be better, but with Google's inexplicable current model of requiring you to "buy" literally nothing, any small-scale developer is going to encounter difficulties with 1) discoverability (which is already a problem in crowded digital marketplaces like Steam) and 2) getting people to cough up for something inherently temporary.

Similarly, developers and publishers of niche-interest games with a laser-focused target audience -- the sort of stuff I like to cover on my site, for example -- will have absolutely no interest in this, because the bulk of their revenue comes from established fans who support their favourite franchises with the purchase of lovely limited editions, merchandise and the like. That and the fact that a significant number of PC ports of games that were obviously designed with console as the lead platform have been a complete mess (hello, Koei Tecmo... I love you, but fire your whole PC team) means that fans of that kind of experience are still always going to prefer a console or handheld release.

It can be compared to, say, blockbuster films vs anime. In my experience, a significant number of people will watch a blockbuster film when it's current, but in most cases will forget it even existed a month or two later. Conversely, an anime fan might watch a simulcast while it's being broadcast, then immediately go out and buy the Blu-Ray of a series they particularly enjoyed to add to their collection once the run is over.

Streaming has its place, and I don't doubt that once the various logistical issues are sorted out, it will become a good way for people to enjoy the latest "blockbusters", much as we do today with Netflix.

But for the "arthouse" and "foreign film" side of gaming? People who fall into those categories are never going to be fully on board with this. They like their collections too much; they like the permanence too much.

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CdrJameson
13/12/2019 09:21:25 am

But you can always have other streaming services that serve a niche, like Crunchyroll for anime or Antstream for retro.

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nomoretxmax
13/12/2019 10:51:13 pm

Hey, remember when you became a whiny baby because people rightly called you out on your Stadia shilling, and all you cared about was how they dared to talk to you even though they didn't follow you on Twitter? Remember how you you cry about everything like a sad old man? Remember how stupid you looked when you tried to take on Yogscast and failed miserably? Remember how you've yet to post any proof of your Stadia working on your Youtube channel? Hmmmmmm.

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Dominic
14/12/2019 11:07:34 am

🙄

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kyle
20/12/2019 04:12:36 pm

Stadia isn't a very good concept because it relies on you having both a good internet connection and a relatively short distance to the nearest google server farm.

It's also an immense waste of bandwidth compared to just running a game where the player is, and it replaces buying with renting, you pay forever but own nothing. I'm not a big fan of feudalism.

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