For those interested in trying out Google Stadia, the new streaming service, today Google held their first Stadia Connect to give out some details. Quick reminder: Stadia is the game streaming service powered by Debian Linux and Vulkan. It’s supposed to offer a “single click” experience with “no downloading required”.
On the subject of pricing: They will have a Stadia Pro subscription at $9.99/£8.99 a month which gives you up to 4K resolution with regular free games and discounts. They will also do Stadia Base with no monthly sub that will come "next year" limiting you to 1080p, both allowing you to buy games whenever you want.
However, it seems only those who purchase the special Founders Edition will get access sometime in November. This includes first access to Stadia, a Chromecast Ultra, limited edition Stadia Controller, 3 months of Stadia Pro, a guest pass to give access to a friend and the Complete Edition of Destiny 2.
First set of games includes: Baldur’s Gate III (Larian Studios) was newly announced - Trailer, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Gylt, Get Packed, The Division 2, Destiny 2, DOOM Eternal, Football Manager 2020, GRID, Metro Exodus, The Elder Scrolls Online, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Tomb Raider Trilogy, Borderlands 3 and more.
A pretty interesting line-up and there’s more they’re going to announce later, that’s just all they’re teasing for now. They also reiterated wide support for different game pads, not just their own.
You can see the video here:
Direct Link
If you want to play at 1080p, Google are saying you will need a 20Mbps connection. That actually seems quite low, but even so the bandwidth use that will come along with it will likely be massive. If your connection is a bit wobbly, Stadia will keep your progress for "several minutes".
As for availability, they're launching in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, USA and the United Kingdom. They say more countries will come in 2020 too.
See more at the official Stadia website and their FAQ here.
I found it quite amusing that the video kept dying on me (seems for others too), after Google's recent outage it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence about buying AAA titles to stream them through Google's network.
I remain unconvinced by it, especially now we know we will be buying games as well and you're locked to 1080p unless you also pay a monthly subscription. Buying a game, to have no real access to it with Google controlling every part of it? I mentioned before I didn't particularly like the idea of even less ownership but with a Netflix-like subscription model it might have made more sense but not if you're still paying full price.
I will add more details as I look over it all.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Arehandoro Jun 7, 2019
wvstolzing Jun 7, 2019
Quoting: Arehandoroand potentially GOG
Looks like it will be on GOG upon release: https://www.gog.com/game/baldurs_gate_iii (I mean it already has a store page)
Then price aside, I see Stadia as the ultimate console killer. On consoles people is used to buy games that are so bound to a console that will literally die with the console itself after a few years. With Stadia they could even see added value as the platform won't And the convenience it offers can hardly been beaten. Microsoft and Sony did well to ally against Google. Unless Google screws up hard with their cloud (unlikely but possible) they will erase xbox and ps simply because consoles are inferior platforms and there is nothing they can do better than Stadia.
But we PC gamers? We are a different kind. Stadia offers none of what Steam offers in term of features. No mods, no support for old titles, huge freedom and flexibility when it comes to input/output devices and so on. But it's all stuff that the guys at Google can figure out eventually.
And admittedly the fact remain that we pay a huge premium for those perks in terms of personally owned hardware. Is it really worth it? Build/buy a 4K PC that runs modern games is an expensive affair. Many PC gamers could just decide that it's not worth the money and just use Stadia when the time comes to upgrade their rigs.
so I won't be so fast to dismiss Stadia. Its extreme convenience and cheap prices are hard to beat. And even if present day PC gatekeepers like Valve and wannabe Epic decide to respond in kind by launching their own cloud, Google is undeniably advantaged on that side because they own their cloud.
Arehandoro Jun 7, 2019
Quoting: wvstolzingQuoting: Arehandoroand potentially GOG
Looks like it will be on GOG upon release: https://www.gog.com/game/baldurs_gate_iii (I mean it already has a store page)
Even better, I had not checked actually :)
Mohandevir Jun 7, 2019
Quoting: liamdaweIt's not free in any form:
Base Stadia - You buy the games.
It depends on the pricing of each games and the conditions, imo. Will they be ours forever, like Steam, even if it's not sold anymore, or are these games exposed to disapearing from the store like the Netflix model? We have no clues about these aspects, yet. Personnally I expected a subscription plan, similar to Netflix, even for the base option. To me it still an interresting option.
Quoting: liamdaweStadia Pro - You pay monthly, you buy games, you get few select free.
It compares to PS Plus and Xbox pass which are popular options. It's not a new formula and it's much better thant I expected it to be. This said, probably not my bag.
Quoting: liamdaweAlso, "unfair" about paying and not having any real access to the files, what's fair about it?
Google has issues? No game.
Your net has issues? No game.
This can be replaced by: "Motherboard failure ($$$), no games, HDD failure ($$), no games, GPU failure($$$$), no games, RAM failure($), no games... Want me to go on? It's all about managing the risks. Both point of view are valid.
Quoting: liamdaweModding? Haha no.
I don't think Stadia is targeted to the 1% techy educated market share that we represent or even the hardcore gamers that mods, which, I suspect, is not the vast majority. It probably has more appeal to the Xbox and Playstation players or the Windows users that have stopped gaming because of an ageing computer and/or are due for an hardware upgrade.
Personnally I see it as a complement to my Linux rig, for games that will never be playable on my Desktop, because there will be. You know "Stadia Games and Entertainment" produced games?
Last edited by Mohandevir on 7 June 2019 at 1:04 pm UTC
Quoting: MohandevirNot going to say that you are wrong. I totally understand your point of view. But let me be the Devil's advocate, for a minute...For buying games, it sound very much like you buy them and keep them, not a Netflix model, that seems pretty clear to me. Otherwise, you're not buying you're renting.
Quoting: liamdaweIt's not free in any form:
Base Stadia - You buy the games.
It depends on the pricing of each games and the conditions, imo. Will they be ours forever, like Steam, even if it's not sold anymore, or are these games exposed to disapearing from the store like the Netflix model? We have no clues about these aspects, yet. Personnally I expected a subscription plan, similar to Netflix, even for the base option. To me it still an interresting option.
Quoting: liamdaweStadia Pro - You pay monthly, you buy games, you get few select free.
It compares to PS Plus and Xbox pass which are popular options. It's not a new formula and it's much better thant I expected it to be. This said, probably not my bag.
Quoting: liamdaweAlso, "unfair" about paying and not having any real access to the files, what's fair about it?
Google has issues? No game.
Your net has issues? No game.
This can be replaced by: "Motherboard failure ($$$), no games, HDD failure ($$), no games, GPU failure($$$$), no games, RAM failure($), no games... Want me to go on? It's all about managing the risks. Both point of view are valid.
Quoting: liamdaweModding? Haha no.
I don't think Stadia is targeted to the 1% techy educated market share that we represent or even the hardcore gamers that mods, which, I suspect, is not the vast majority. It probably has more appeal to the Xbox and Playstation players or the Windows users that have stopped gaming because of an ageing computer and/or are due for an hardware upgrade.
Personnally I see it as a complement to my Linux rig, for games that will never be playable on my Desktop, because there will be. You know "Stadia Games and Entertainment" produced games?
Okay, now you're starting to get me to think more on it. I never even thought about components breaking down, leaving you out of playing your games. Now that's a very valid point worth something.
Quoting: MohandevirIt depends on the pricing of each games and the conditions, imo. Will they be ours forever, like Steam, even if it's not sold anymore, or are these games exposed to disapearing from the store like the Netflix model?
Kind of irrelevant in this. If Stadia stops supporting it, it becomes useless since you can't run it anywhere else. Which is the major problem with purchases for a service like this. Unless the price of games is so low that you would accept a throw-away purchase, this is a real deal breaker.
Mohandevir Jun 7, 2019
Quoting: EhvisIf Stadia stops supporting it
That's my whole point. We don't know. There are still missing pieces in the puzzle. If they plan to stop supporting games, I hope, at least, that prices will be lower, like renting. Either way, it makes it much less interresting. That's obvious.
Or you meant if Google stops supporting Stadia? Well... Just like in the old days, when a PS, PS2 broke down and you couldn't buy an new one. Game Library gone. The PC gamers are lucky, in that aspect.
This said, if Stadia is a success, there is no reason to stop supporting it. Google+ was shutdown because nobody used it anymore. If Stadia is a failure, who will it hurt? It's going to die in general indifference, like the other projects Google killed. That's the catch 22 I was referring to in a previous post. Imo, it's not a valid argument.
Thinking about it, what could happen, is a change in the conditions (free being not free anymore & price raise on the Pro subscription) because infra costs skyrockets (example). This could make a user reconsider Stadia and eventually make Goodle reconsider the whole thing. But again, it will have become a failure by then.
Edit: Sorry for all the edits.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 7 June 2019 at 1:49 pm UTC
Quoting: ShmerlI think complex simulation should be the real benefit of cloud gaming. Pushing more pixels per second? Local PC hardware handles that better and better every year. How much photorealism do we really need? At some point we won't see any difference, while server clusters is an overkill for that purpose.
And this heavy bend on graphics is really weird, given how many interesting things in gaming are underdeveloped. Strategy is more straightforward sure, but imagine something more complicated. Such as simulating climate, or a biological ecosystem, or simulating NPC behavior not based on predefined scripts, but on their self learning driven by in-game interactions. It's surprising these kind of ideas aren't yet applied more widely in gaming, with all this push for the cloud.
I personally agree very, very much. There is so much that could be done, and what is actually done (graphics-wise) sometimes is so meaningless. But the market is weird.
And frankly, more complex simulations don't always result in differences we can see. There are interesting possibilities, but in a sense people approach simulation in a much more logical way than graphics - with sensible trade-offs between performance and complexity and considerations between how much that impacts actual enjoyment of the game...
If Google have solution for both issue, probably I tempted to try it. If not, I'm stick with Steam and itch (or go on "sailing" if I'm totally desperate).
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