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Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
Here's something that baffles me:

The Project xCloud beta is free (as any beta should be). I tried it out on my phone, because like hundreds of millions of people, I have an android phone. It worked well enough, and there are a bunch of actually great games included with the service. Neat. I even reported a bug or two.

I have an nVidia Shield with GeForce Now streaming. It too is a free beta. It's got a gigantic library of full priced, current titles. It pretty much works fine.

Stadia is not free. I can't try it out on any of my existing hardware, because my LG V30 isn't a Pixel. If I want to play anything other than free to play games on the service, I need to pay full price for the title. I can never sell or trade that license, and if I cancel the service, there is no refund. From all accounts, if you can get it to work, it works fine, but the support is hot garbage when it exists at all.

Why (the gently caress) would anyone pay for this? How is this competitive in any reasonable way? The experience is objectively less mature than two of its direct competitors which are in free public beta right now. I'm honestly asking.

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Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

hostile apostle posted:

Destiny and Grid were solidly playable for me, but definitely not excellent. Input lag was very very tolerable for most of my play, minus a few short hiccups.

for someone who seems to be going out of their way to defend their purchase itt, you're really not making this sound like an appealing experience for the vast majority of Americans.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

this is very clearly and obviously a way to goose demand for Google Fiber and put some corporate will behind expanding it, now that it's otherwise basically stalled out

This is a fine sounding conspiracy theory in a vacuum, but falls apart if you understand the US telco monopoly network. Google's "corporate will", manpower and cash on hand are less than 1% of the problem with expanding Google Fiber. It's entirely a political problem, and not a single player is working with the consumer's best interest in mind, least of all Google.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Marmaduke! posted:

Hi fellow Geforce Now user! I've noticed that in the weeks leafing up to Stadia's release getting on a rig took a long time, but since Stadias release it's been nearly instant every time. Have you noticed this too, and I wonder if it's connected to the release...

Honestly, I mostly use my Shield for streaming MHW from my PC to my living room, I haven't actually logged into Geforce Now since I played through Spec Ops: The Line and bummed myself out real hard.

edit: which, incidentally, looked and played fine at 1080p with the usual expected input lag and streaming artifacts. I never noticed any major stuttering or hitches with that game, nor with Resident Evil 7, MK11 or Prey.

edit2: all of which you have been able to play for free for years now, which is crazy.

Dr. Fishopolis fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Nov 24, 2019

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
it also overheats and shuts down due to really poor thermal design.

the solution is (i am not making this up) to tape heatsinks to the case.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
That's making the sizeable assumption that google doesn't get distracted by a passing butterfly and forget any of this exists in 6 months time

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Pathos posted:

I am actually struggling to believe the “taping heat sinks to it” solution.





Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
Fine, but there's no reason to think it'll be any better than Geforce Now or xCloud, both of which have much stronger value propositions. Go hop in the betas for those.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

hostile apostle posted:

That doesn't even make any sense, smells like more bullshit. There's no way for a code to be caught in limbo. The code is not tied to the email you ordered the bundle with and wouldn't have activated prior on the gsuite account.

what a weird person you are

why would anyone lie about this

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
naw, gmail's great and search is still great. They really don't have a lot of competition there, I think they're just, as a company, bored, rich and stupid. They're kind of trying to do the Apple thing where they barge into a young but already established industry and act like they invented it, except honestly nobody even buys that from Apple anymore.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
Well yeah, they're still the king, sorry. We all know what their game is, and to what lows they'll stoop to play it, but there isn't really a better option.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

CJacobs posted:

well that is just a terrible way to look at things as a consumer

It's just reality. I use DuckDuckGo and as much FOSS as i can cram into my personal life, but I'm not going to stop using Googles ad services and groupware for my company as long as the ROI makes sense. If you want real change, vote with your vote, not with your dollar. Join a local broadband advocacy group, give money to the EFF, vote for Bernie Sanders in the dem primary.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
- google is inherently threatening if you know anything about it, and video gaming is already ground zero for the death throes of capitalism
- it is such an obviously, inherently bad value proposition that it insults consumers' intelligence on its face
- the "launch" is a comedic shitshow of the sort we usually see with first time Kickstarters, not bajillion-dollar corporations

i don't need a phd in rocket psychiatry to figure out why people are a bit offended.

e: lol found it https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/e1l9j4/why_many_gamers_hate_stadia/

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

hostile apostle posted:

So, in summary it works for this person, and you find that unbelievable because there's no possible way it could work for anyone.

I absolutely believe Stadia works great for some people, including you.

I also believe that even if it works properly, it is such an incredibly obvious ripoff that you should feel ashamed of yourself for spending money on it.

In all of your posts defending Stadia, you haven't even begun to address the actual value proposition. Google isn't first to market. How does it compare against Geforce Now, Playstation Now or xCloud?

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

hostile apostle posted:

At launch, Stadia has limited (today) / no upfront cost (early next year), or the ability to play on any device in any location with a solid connection. 5G will also change that, provided it lives up to the hype (might be a tall order). Neither XB or PS, or their next gen, will offer that.

More will be coming.

PS Now already offers that. xCloud is in beta, but also offers exactly that. Steam Link Anywhere will let you do exactly that with any gaming PC.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

hostile apostle posted:

Google hasn't spent years and a ton of money to build the infrastructure to "not do a hell of a lot" and give up day 1. Google is not so naive to think it would be easy to displace the behemoth incumbents in a multi-billion dollar industry. This is a live service - not some fixed spec piece of hardware that will never see any changes or incremental features.

Have you actually ever used any other streaming services?

Google might not be naive, but they're clearly leaning on the Apple Reality Distortion Field. Every single piece of media they've put out makes it sound like they invented game streaming, and this is an entirely new idea. They know they can't compete on features, pricing, stability or game library, so they're waving their hands around and acting like the competition doesn't exist.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Gobbeldygook posted:

Stadia could be a value proposition for the Dad Gamer. I recently 100%'d Assassin's Creed: Odyssey with 138 hours /played. The Dad Gamer who only has an hour or two per night to play games would take 3-4 months to match that. With Stadia he just needs to buy the game and then he can play it at his own pace at 1080p. GeForce Now, while free now, I predict will cost at least $20 a month once it leaves beta. If he took three months to beat it he'd have spent $60 on subscription fees + the cost of the game. I don't think the Dad Gamer market is big enough to keep Stadia afloat, but that particular subset of users will be very happy with Stadia.

Ok, well GeForce Now is in free open beta right now. I agree that if Geforce Now costs $20/month it's not a good deal, but it doesn't cost that and you made that number up.

edit: moreover, if Stadia is established by the time GeForce Now comes out of beta, what makes you think they wouldn't compete on price or at least match it?

Dr. Fishopolis fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Nov 26, 2019

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
They've been using the service as a loss leader for hardware for like half a decade at this point, I'm not sure where you think this pressure to make revenue is coming from.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
Yeah I'll run some games in 4K locally on my PC if I want eye-searing sharpness at the expense of framerate, but streaming 4K isn't really close to the same experience, even when it isn't cheating the resolution to begin with.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

univbee posted:

Gave Stadia another shake from work via Destiny 2 and it looks like it might be working better now, more like Geforce Now's lag.

Introducing Stadia! If you can get it working, it's almost as good as our competition's free beta!

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Tei posted:

Better shaders. I imagine the PS4 shaders are easy on the hardware and look worse.

It's the PC version, so I imagine this is probably true due to having a lot more VRAM to work with. Especially if you're talking base PS4.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

charity rereg posted:

That's the pricing for GeForce NOW and it's kind of silly, I don't know why they're going with a typical cloud computing model when the real money is in set it and forget it subscriptions, where most of the clients will play <10 hours anyway. Feels weird paying more than $1/hr to play games on your own equipment.

What?

No part of this is correct. With a Shield TV and an nVidia GPU in your gaming PC, you can stream your games to your Shield from your PC over your network. You don't need any sort of subscription for that.

Geforce Now is in free beta, and will let you stream games in your library to your Shield from an nVidia server over the internet. There have been no indications of what it will actually cost when it's out of beta.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

hostile apostle posted:

In a non public beta, but sure...

Let's where the catalog and feature set on Stadia is whenever xcloud launches in whatever form in the indefinite future. Until then its baseless speculation.

Have you tried to get into the beta? It's an open registration, and you really don't have to wait very long. Try it, you might like it!

What are your thoughts on the value proposition of Stadia vs Playstation Now?

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

charity rereg posted:

This post does not say Shield TV streaming costs money. As I said, what costs money will be GeForce NOW (I am also in the beta). Here is the article with the planned pricing from NVidia, nothing in my post is incorrect based on what we know: https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/nvidia-geforce-now-price-beta-features/

Fair enough, I didnt hear about that announcement from CES 2017. That said, i'd be a little shocked if the plan hasnt changed in all this time. I guess its not like we have any info to contradict it.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

That Italian Guy posted:

It's also one of the reasons Apostle is (very clearly) not being paid for his fanboysm. Paid "influencers" for this kind of things tend to spew positive bullshit (like some of the posts on Reddit) and roll with the punches if attacked / try to defuse the situation. No decent shill would engage/keep up the level of hostility Apostle has, and if Google is good at something, it's advertisement.

a: how exactly do you know so much about secret paid influencer posting styles
b: you don't, do you? this is just some weird flex?
c: sigh

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
Sarcasm aside, if that's the case I'm genuinely curious and would like to read said links

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Lambert posted:

There's no set way social media advertising is done. Just because one extension that claims to be able to filter out fake reviews uses some criteria doesn't mean they all do it the same way. Who knows if their filtering is even close to being accurate.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. I appreciate the links, but I already know you can buy Amazon reviews in bulk, that much is obvious. What's weird is when people squint at a post and go "this looks like a shill. i can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shills in my time"

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
good news for anyone who spend $50 to play Farming Simulator 19 on Stadia:

https://kotaku.com/google-says-itll-give-refunds-to-anyone-who-bought-stad-1840068054

Bad news is that you still spent $50 to play Farming Simulator 19 on Stadia. Even when you get your refund, that will remain a fact about you that is true forever.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Gobbeldygook posted:

GeForce Now just dropped support for almost as many games as Stadia has. This amounts to deleting some people's Dark Souls saves with no warning. :smithicide:

I mean, that's horrible but can you play Farming Simulator 19?

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

hostile apostle posted:

Xcloud is not a product, yet - which was specifically your comparison

Really? I've been playing video games with it, and it works as advertised. What makes a product a product?

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Lambert posted:

It's not publicly available as a product anyone can purchase/get into.

Yes it is. It's an open, public beta. Much like Stadia, except they don't expect you to pay them to test their poo poo.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Tei posted:

in general looks gorgeous, exactly how you imagine a Farm Simulator would look like.

thread title

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

hostile apostle posted:

Person B is a something awful forum troll who has never used the service.

Are you redefining convenience now? Before it was being argued that Xcloud was more convenient, yet no one has said why, only presented irrelevant strawmen. I thought it was about be able to play on any device in an array of location and settings

Stadia seemed to be pretty convenient this past weekend when I was able to play at the airport when my flight was delayed with all the crazy weather. Worked pretty drat well. Completed two nightfall strikes in D2 with barely a hiccup.

Playing in an airport, you're going to be stuck with a 720p stream. At that point, the only functional difference between Stadia and xCloud is price. Assuming you're playing the free version of D2, it's pretty obvious who wins here, considering xcloud is free. Yeah, it's a beta, yeah, they'll charge something for it eventually, but right at this moment, it's free.

Stadia is not free. You paid $130 for the experience. Stadia's already in the losing column here.

Oh wait, except I forgot about population silos. You see, Destiny 2 is a multiplayer game, and the quality of your experience greatly depends on the available community. With xCloud, you can play with the whole xbox userbase. If you already have a character and a clan and a big exotic collection, well hooray because it's just like playing on your xbox. If you don't, well hooray because there are plenty of other people around to help you with that.

Stadia on the other hand... well, no. I don't even want to think about what the comp queue times are like on Stadia, assuming anyone even bothers. Good luck getting that Recluse!

These are points that have already been brought up here. They're not irrelevant strawmen, you just don't like them so you're ignoring them.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

hostile apostle posted:

Ok, just so I get this straight, now the argument is Xcloud open beta is temporarily "free" and multiplayer population. The story changes with each post Any new platform will be disadvantaged on population counts, that is true. Stadia could make itself free tomorrow and that would certainly help population counts, but that doesn't make it a sustainable business or platform.

I don't know if it's "the argument", but it's the argument i'm making right now, so why not address it? I can think of a lot of arguments against Stadia, I'm not sure why you think it's important to stick to only a few.

I agree, you're correct that making Stadia free would help multiplayer population. Considering that both Nvidia and Microsoft are running open, free betas for their versions of this idea, why do you think Google decided not to do that? How important do you think it is that Stadia is financially successful in the short term?

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
I wonder if i'm on apostle's ignore list or if he's just an abject coward who won't debate me

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
I've never considered the free games I got with PS+ something I "own"

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
Welcome to Stadia, where the business plan's made up and the launch doesn't matter!

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Klyith posted:

(Amd 3600, 5700 GPU, B450 mobo, 16gb ram, 1tb SSD, ok PSU, cheapest case = about $900. That's not what I'd call "cutting edge" but it's like a next gen console in 2019.)

That's way better than a next gen console unless AMD has some voodoo poo poo they've been keeping under wraps. It better be, considering it's double the price and pulls 600W+ from the wall at full tilt.

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

doingitwrong posted:

This is a bad argument. I’m pretty sure Forbes pays their bloggers

heh

ahaha

hahahahhaha AAAHHHH HAHAHAHA

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Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
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.

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