Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Super Jay Mann posted:

Why does this exist again?

Not even being snarky, months and months of information and I'm still not sure what it is Google is actually selling.

You can make a lot of money by lowering the barrier to entry and then charging incremental prices that total to far more than people would pay upfront. This is the model of no money down cars, mobile gatcha, three easy payments, cellphone contracts, free drinks at the casino, and everything else. Console makers have been trying to find ways to zero the price of hardware for awhile. Microsoft has been experimenting with consoles that are free with a game pass contract etc.

The Stadia pitch is “you can dip your toes into serious gaming for $129” and soon “for $69”. The current appeal to hardcore gamers who build their own PCs is a mistake but I think it’s really a sales pitch to curious and casual gamers, or ageing ex-gamers who miss the hobby.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
Destiny 2 is still the pack in? Even after it when F2P everywhere. Amazing.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
If the power is in the potential, wait for the potential to become the actual. It's not like these are promising young wines that we expect to age well and then they'll be good. It's not like you need to buy them now before they shoot up in value because if you don't the wine is gone. If Stadia delivers, they'll keep manufacturing the things.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

“the Verge” posted:

Google is probably banking on the fact that it’s already much more common to plug things into our laptops, desktops, or phones, since they are usually just a few feet away from us anyway.

The entire trajectory of the past few years has been away from me plugging things in to my phone.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
I keep reading these articles and trying to get my head around a mental model for how Stadia works. I had understood that the controller was the console, effectively. It had its own WiFi connection and then you logged in to a client on whatever machine to see the results of your gameplay streamed on that screen. But if the controller only connects to the Chromecast wirelessly, and for the other clients it connects as a standard wired controller then what on earth is going on?

Like, this explanation makes no sense. https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/17/google-stadia-controller-wireless-limited/

“Engadget” posted:

Since the Stadia controller only uses Bluetooth for setup and connects via WiFi for gameplay, you truly can't use it without a cable at first.

And the post from the customer service person seems to open the door to the controller not working at all.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/di92bp/damn_you_small_prints_there_seem_to_be_some/f3u7loq/

“community rep” posted:

When plugged in via USB cable, the Stadia Controller acts as a standard USB HID controller and may work on other platforms depending on the game and setup.

What on earth are founders paying $130 for? If any HID controller can drive the clients on laptop etc.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
If the controller connects direct via wifi why does it need wires. Maybe I don’t understand what either “connect directly” or “wifi” means. Or maybe this has all been marketing bullshit.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
Stadia is Google's new cloud-based gaming platform. Using your Stadia controller you can connect directly* via Wi-Fi** to the most powerful gaming cluster on the planet seamlessly*** play games across screens you already own****. Using Crowd Play you can instantly jump in on the action*****.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

pixaal posted:

You make a game like that in house for launch. Without it it will fail.

Yes. Without some kind of flagship this is really just an expressed paid beta for suckers.

Whether it’s some lovely game with really impressive graphics to sell the PS4 or Xbox or something like Mario 64 or Wii Sports to sell new control schemes, you really should launch with something that ONLY your system can do. Stadia should be launching with some kind of otherwise simple game that could have 1,000 players at once or whatever. Some kind of absolutely ridiculous cartoon battle royals with tiny tanks or something equally goofy.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

cams posted:

those are videos of people taking things out of a box that have zero function at this time, correct?

this is the purest form of the unboxing video

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
“A personal Stadia stream will continue to run for ten minutes after you shut down on one screen, allowing you time to switch to another device and pick up where you left off.”
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/11/google-stadia-will-be-missing-many-features-for-mondays-launch/

Wait. What happens to my game after the 10 mins are up?
I would have assumed it would just hold my state like an emulator.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
Yeah that’s what I thought too. Which was why their “we’ll hold you stream for 10 minutes” promise made no sense to me. Like, my home consoles can go into rest mode for days and resume exactly where I left it unless there’s an online component at which point the game complains.

The amount of features that are getting cut or delayed from their prominent demos (plus the ones they technically never promised but implied) is fascinating to me.

I guess it comes down to different ethos of what a demo announcement is for. I’ve gotten used to the big three game console makers and Apple who typically don’t announce features until they are certain they can ship them and it’s big news when they fail (AirPower). I’d forgotten about Google’s tendency to pre-announce promising concepts and speculative tech.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

hostile apostle posted:

Xcloud is 720p on Android phones only, and from most accounts nearly unplayable for many games like FPS due to latency. PSNow has the same latency issues. Sounds more to me more like the biggest problem for Microsoft is that they have to play catch up. Google was ahead of where they are today a year ago with Project Stream.

Google is absolutely behind in content, but tech is certainly not the weak point. In the end this is a content business, but the tech has to be there too.

Google are not morons - they're not going to sell games for $60 when other stores are selling them for $12.

This is the intoxicating magic of the true believer. Real released things held to the standard of a theoretical future thing. And the present tense is used throughout.

xCloud is Android-only today. Stadia is Nothing-only today and will be Pixel-only (a subset of Android) at launch. And you’ll need to plug in your controller. Microsoft has managed the voodoo power of having wireless controllers be wireless.

Maybe Stadia’s tech will be dramatically better at launch. Maybe they cut all the other promised features and all the basic QoL like having a working storefront to maintain laser focus on top notch streaming. We’ll see. For now, we’re seeing a real (free) public beta against a soon to launch paid beta and the only thing going for the paid beta is our hopes and dreams.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

hostile apostle posted:

Count me as the idiot who spend $129 on a $70 chromecast ultra and a $70 controller to play RDR2 (which I have not played yet) in actual 4K 60fps and not some upscaled fake 4k on a $350 PS4 Pro which I don't have.

Inferior posted:

Digital foundry has a good technical analysis of the system up- https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-stadia-tech-review

RDR2 is running at 1440p.
:discourse:

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
Seriously, gently caress Google and Phil for selling these $125 public beta test accounts to people through a mixture of overpromises, misleading implications, triggering FOMO with the account name reserve system and then not even delivering the beta hardware on time to the people who bought in.

This botched launch manages to mix incompetence with scummy sales tactics and it's unbecoming.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Rotten Red Rod posted:

Here's the game price list:



Big fan of the Stadia Pro DEALS on the service that currently contains only Pro users. What a savings!

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

charity rereg posted:

if someone streams a game from stadia does stadia also handle the streaming, or would be it then be RE-compressed and poo poo out as an even further degraded 1080p or 720p video? If the former, cool, if the latter huge LOL. the games already look like compressed poo poo.

The Verge's review is a pretty great list of things not there yet.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/18/20970297/google-stadia-review-gaming-streaming-cloud-price-specs-features-chrome-pixel

The answer to your question is:
Coming* in 2020**
- the ability to instantly*** share gameplay captures to YouTube, and cross-platform**** voice chat;
- an unspecified amount of YouTube integration will enable some of Stadia’s promised features that didn’t make launch (see below).
- You’ll be able to click on a YouTube ad for a game to jump straight***** into that game
- You’ll be able to live-stream to YouTube in 4K****** at the same time you’re playing in 4K*******
- You’ll be able to share a link to an exact******* moment in a game with friends or followers so they can try it instantly********
- Streamers will be able to let viewers line up to instantly********* join their game

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

an actual dog posted:

stadia ui only works in portrait mode



Everything about this launch has been a humiliating demonstration of my paucity of imagination when it comes to predicting how things might be poorly designed or go wrong. It didn't even occur to me to consider this could be the kind of thing they'd not think through.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
The Verge review is pretty good, but there are some weird parts where the Google storytelling has taken hold.

quote:

“When streaming at 4K, we render at a native 1080p and then upsample and apply a variety of techniques to increase the overall quality of effect,” a Bungie rep said, adding that D2 runs at the PC equivalent of medium settings.

But then when talking about the lacklustre controller:

quote:

I also loved just how good it felt to pick up an Xbox 360 gamepad and play Destiny 2 at 4K 60 fps on a Windows PC again, after days of training myself to adapt to a lesser experience.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
Stadia by Google: A PC gaming and tech support megathread

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Trying to remember where in the final season of GoT this was and how hilariously apt that adapted quote turned out to be.

The $10 subscription gets funnier and funnier to me as we come to grips with the fact that what you are paying for is a lottery ticket to 4K 60fps gaming in a carnival midway that’s rigged such that many of the games can never pay out since the mighty hardware that Google is running this on is already inadequate for some games to hit the target.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Illusive gently caress Man posted:

idk. it would probably be even harder to convince developers & publishers that you aren't going to kill a product when the product has no name or press.

They managed to do that with many of their services through waiting lists for beta sign ups. Google practically invented the marketing move of the exclusive beta to build anticipation.

Instead, they chose to over promise while taking people’s money and failing to deliver a product on time.

Imagine a world where Stadia was an ultra exclusive they rolled out slowly over time. You signed up, they took no money. If you got in, you were eligible to buy a founder’s controller for a limited time. Maybe you could register for the beta as a clan, so that friends could play multiplayer together (since cross platform wasn’t in). They sold it as 1080p gaming with no console but sometimes, people reported getting higher(!) resolutions.

Word spreads that the system works well if you have good Internet and hints at a future of console free 4k60 gaming, once the world gets its poo poo together with broadband. Surprise new features come online during the beta. Google remains tight lipped about future plans but people keep getting delighted. If any of the (announced in out world) features never happen, we’re none the wiser. We don’t miss ‘em.

doingitwrong fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Nov 19, 2019

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

shrike82 posted:

Cloud services are huge money makers. Not really a difficult pitch to dumbass executives about converting consumers from sporadic game purchasers to paying a monthly subscription service forever

Which is why my jaw dropped when Google announced that users would have to pay full price for the games. It’s so obviously the backwards move. People, even reviewers, still keep calling this Netflix for games when the defining feature of Netflix is an all you can eat buffet of content.

They don’t have the buffet and they don’t have F2P which are the top two ways to get money out of casual content consumers. Instead, they are promoting a buy to “own” model which runs counter to the shaky future of the service while their marketing and launch lineup is aimed at core gamers with a lot of latency sensitive action games and the teraflops image. Except they are all old games, most of which are heavily discounted or included in actual Netflix for games services like GamePass. Even their launch pack in game got converted into F2P on other platforms.

Their subscription is currently a $10/mo lottery ticket that you might get 4k60 on your full price games while behind the scenes the hardware can’t even hit 4k60. Its the dumbest subscription imaginable and as soon as the free tier becomes available it will clearly be the better option for anyone trying the service.

None of this makes sense and it’s glorious.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Wanderer posted:

For whatever it's worth, here's my review of Stadia. I've had a Pro account for a week.

https://www.geekwire.com/2019/google-stadia-review/

Nice review.

quote:

The Stadia’s official controller has an entire button specifically dedicated to the Google Assistant, and as of right now, you get a “not yet available” message when you push it. If you want to redeem a game code, you can’t do it on your TV or phone; that requires you to load Stadia up in a Chrome window. If you want to dial back Stadia’s bandwidth like I did, you can’t do that in a browser or on a TV; you have to use the mobile app, which in turn is only available for Pixel phones.

Wow.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

hostile apostle posted:

You realize the subscription gives you free games each month, just like PS+ or Game Pass - so I guess doing what the rest of the industry does makes it the dumbest imaginable.

PS+ gives 2 games a month. More if you have a PS3 or Vita (I don't). Xbox Live Gold gives 4 games a month (2 Xbox One and 2 360 Backwards compatible).

They are not a good way to get free games. If the subscriptions weren't required for online play, I'd drop both PS+ and Gold in a flash.

Most of the games aren't that great, all are old titles or indie games (this describes the entire Stadia library at present). I sometimes appreciate the indie games because I'm happy to dip in to them and try out things I'd never have bought. Most of the time I don't even bother claiming my 'free' games because I know I'll never play them. GamePass's much larger library blows out the slight indie benefit. The old AAA games I've either already bought or wasn't interested in.

Stadia is offering the same "$10/mo for games you aren't sure you want" but you only get one a month, and their launch game is F2P on other platforms.

They managed to do worse than the rest of the industry.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
Microsoft is selling a no money down service where for $20 a month you get an Xbox and gamepass. You have to commit to two years. After the first year, you've paid about the same as paying for a Stadia controller and a year of Stadia Pro. But you have access to hundreds of games (including a big chunk of Stadia's "we cost extra" launch library). It doesn't run 4k60 (but neither does Stadia).

I feel like the casual but not totally casual gamer market is better served by the Xbox deal than the Stadia deal (I think they are both bad deals).

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
It's simple. Stadia is for people who love playing games, who care deeply about graphic fidelity, who have 4k TVs, who can't stomach the price of a console, who don't mind dropping money on speculative gadgets, who have top of the line Internet, who haven't played AAA games in the last 5 years, who don't mind some rough edges when it comes to performance or graphical fidelity.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

an actual dog posted:

Yea wired is always going to be faster. A more like for like test would be stadia controller vs. bluetooth but if I remember correctly they don't allow that at all.

Wait why would that be faster. The laptop / chromecast would be wirelessly connected anyway. What Google promised was that your controller was directly connected over WiFi skipping the step of connecting through a device that was also connected with WiFi.

Controller (wire) PC (WiFi) Router (???) Stadia
vs
Controller (WiFi) Router (???) Stadia

They walked back the WiFi promise for most use cases. But the chromecast WiFi connection should still hold.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Shumagorath posted:

I feel I should point out this is what my game-related decision-making is like yet I'm still not subscribed to Stadia.

That’s a hell of a run.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

hostile apostle posted:

It shouldn't be surprising that many hardcore gamers are rejecting Stadia, at least with the current catalog and feature set, while the filthy casuals are embracing it. The "psychologist" is right that the hardcore gamers view streaming as an existential threat to their identity. If it did not, we would not be seeing the vitriol. Why do they care so much or react so negatively? Hardcore gamers want the best graphics, no matter the cost and inconvenience - Stadia does not offer much in this regard today that existing platforms do not, only things that the hardcore view as negatives - reliance on a consistent connection, lack of graphical improvements (today), unfamiliar pricing. Stadia games will probably not be competitive vs retail pricing (consistent loss leaders) or shady steam key sites.

It is unfortunate at launch that some of big titles didn't live up to the performance hype, but I am hopeful that as developers become more familiar with Stadia the game graphics quality will improve as is typical with almost all new platform launches. People seem to forget that a huge chunk of most new platform launches is made up of last gen titles shittily optimized for the new platform. I think Stadia games also need to demonstrate a unique feature set.

That said the fact of the matter is - it works today and I, at least, enjoy playing it and am getting something out of it that no other system can provide - freedom to play wherever I want (provided there's a good wifi connection :)) on whatever device I want (provided I have a pixel, which I do lol).

EDIT - As an addendum on the Stadia threat to gamer identity - people also enjoy building PCs as a hobby and if PC gaming were to go away (which never will, even if Stadia were to become a success) that would threaten their hobby and significant part of their life

source your quotes

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Combat Pretzel posted:

¹Stadia is compatible with Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 3a, Pixel 3a XL, Pixel 4, and Pixel 4 XL devices.

In awe of the wideness of that range.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
Your ability to judge Stadia (a launched, paid for product) only by its potential, while judging xCloud (a free beta) only by its actual is an inspiration to us all.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

I mean, fair. The One X and Pro struggle to hit 4K as it is. The rest of the consoles don’t at all. PCs hit 4K if you really want them to but those are rarely attached to TVs and the PC market is mostly MMOs and The Sims and whatnot, full of people who don’t care about 4K or precise input.

This makes Stadia’s 4K centric hardcore gamer marketing all the more baffling. They promised something few people care much about and then failed to deliver it.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Klyith posted:

lol this is a pretty great troll

In the November Steam hardware survey, the most popular resolution is 1080p. 64% of users have it.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

4K clocks in at 1.84%

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

...! posted:

You do know that forbes.com is a blog, right? Right?

This is like saying "Livejournal reviewer is a believer now." At least the word "believer" does imply that you're starting to understand that you're in a cult now.

This is a bad argument. I’m pretty sure Forbes pays their bloggers or at least their “senior contributors”. There are editors vetting the work. Paul is as legit a journalist as any gaming journalist. Certainly enough of a journalist to get Google tech support, which no ordinary person or LiveJournal user would have.

quote:

I was lucky I had a direct line of communication with some of the highest-up folks working on Stadia to help me fix this over the course of the last few weeks, yet most people won’t have access to that.

The funnier and better takedown, as Harry Potter on Ice points out, is that when you read the article, Paul isn’t a believer at all. You have to be a specific kind of apostolic reader to read

quote:

I now can see a future where game streaming, like video streaming, is the norm. Whether it will be Stadia leading us there, I don’t know, but I’m going to keep testing this tech as time goes on and see where it takes us.

and think “YEAH, this guy’s ALL IN”

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

true story: I have been invited to become a professional Forbes Blogger a few times. They literally scrape the internet for articles on topics they haven't covered and contact the authors to see if they want to post for Forbes for free. There is no vetting or payment that I'm aware of. There is an editor involved, but they only do spot-checks of already published work. There's no vetting content, you could just post goatse over and over and it would probably stay up for a day or two.

I wasn't aware of that part of their model, though I've run into it a bunch of times from other sites. My impression is that Paul Tassi who is a regular contributor, is on a different revenue model.

Kind of like how Medium has at various points had professional writing teams putting up content alongside random individuals etc.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

American McGay posted:

I doubt we'll ever see any truly F2P games available on Stadia and honestly I don't blame them for that. There's no way something like that fits into their business model unless they're expecting people to spend heavily on DLC options for F2P games.

I mean, that’s the business model for all F2P. The whales fund the game and the rest of us act as cheap AI for them. And F2P is the larger market segment (though that’s a lot to do with Gatcha games and the Asian market and the mobile market all of which are not where Stadia is playing).

But even in PC games as a service is a massive income stream that far outstrips premium games.



The problem is that for Stadia, the cost of supporting a F2P player is so much higher. In the normal business model, we all handle our own rendering and electricity costs at home.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Rotten Red Rod posted:

Again, how is this any different from a Base player who pays for a game once and has it forever? I say the F2P model actually makes MORE sense than that for Stadia.

Anything we say about the business model is pure speculation because nothing about Stadia makes any sense. So trying to figure out if the F2P model would be less insane than the current model requires us to make a whole pile of guesses about Stadia’s capital and ongoing costs to Google, the giant’s willingness to write off either of those costs to gain market share, whether the controllers etc were loss leaders and on and on. We don’t really have any idea.

The F2P models relies on the marginal costs of additional players being very low and the willingness of whales to pay being very high. Stadia is certainly more expensive to run than an F2P server with client rendering. More expensive enough to make the marginal cost of players too high to support F2P model? Who knows. So far, Google doesn’t want to find out.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
When Stadia wins, there will be 22 games. Finally ending these endless reviews.

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013
Xbox promised the partial downloads for this generation and what we got was a few games that let you play a first level and A LOT of games these said “READY TO START” but all that meant was looking at a title screen.

If they can manage to xCloud into reasonable transition into play the game I could see it working well. You start playing right away at lower specs and when you stop playing for the night it keeps downloading and when you wake up the next day it’s all good. Eliminates the small pain of waiting a few hours for the GBs to come down. I imagine it’s like how PS4 and Xbox instituted hardware pauses for this generation, so even unskippable cutscenes could be paused by going to the dashboard. We’ll get console mandated partial downloads instead of relying on game makers.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

doingitwrong
Jul 27, 2013

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

4 hours of content

I wonder how much of its total install size you stream per minute playing it.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply