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.
Quoting: ArdjeI would pay that subscription money if I could just run my own steam games.
That would be the advantage of any Google competitor if it ever appears. If Valve or Epic would launch a stadia like service in addition to their regular platform (so you can always pay 10 bucks for a month of streaming on your whole library if your rig is broken or whatever) they would have the best offer. But Epic is uninterested in spending money to add value its library and from Valve it came no indication whatsoever that it might launch a cloud service, although with SteamOS and steam link they would have the majority of the software components just ready.
Quoting: MohandevirNo hard drive failure in 15 years? Wow! Hardly believable.I upgraded it once or twice, so it's not 15 years of continuous use for one drive, but none has ever failed me. In fact, the only component I've ever had to replace because of a defect has been a DVD drive. Even when my Ethernet cable somehow soldered itself to its port it kept working :D
Quoting: MohandevirBut my point is that there was (with the PS2) and there is (with Stadia) the possibility of loosing your game library.
Sorry but it doesn't make sense at all. Your PS2 games are not hardwired to your console, you don't loose your game library at all. Your games are untouched if a console failure occurs. :|
My PC, or my console etc can break sure, but it's not the manufacturer who will break it on purpose or take it from you.
This subject is pretty similar as the DRM-Free thing. Like when Amazon removes a book you bought directly from your Kindle...
A bit off topic, but I'm seriously sad that a lot of people will probably dig into this system...
Last edited by Cyril on 7 June 2019 at 4:51 pm UTC
Mohandevir Jun 7, 2019
Quoting: CyrilSorry but it doesn't make sense at all. Your PS2 games are not hardwired to your console, you don't loose your game library at all. Your games are untouched if a console failure occurs. :|
Nevermind. You are right, my example wasn't a good one, I already admited it and being a PC gamer, it's not a subject that's relevent to me, anyway.
I should have limited myself to this:
Quoting: MohandevirThis 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.
Mohandevir Jun 7, 2019
Quoting: SalvatosQuoting: MohandevirNo hard drive failure in 15 years? Wow! Hardly believable.I upgraded it once or twice, so it's not 15 years of continuous use for one drive, but none has ever failed me. In fact, the only component I've ever had to replace because of a defect has been a DVD drive. Even when my Ethernet cable somehow soldered itself to its port it kept working :D
Imo, a hardrive failure/replacement is probably the worst. Not because it's costly, but because of the downtime involved; you have to reinstall to whole thing and if you don't have a backup, which many don't, you need to redownload all of your games. Many recent titles are 50gb-100gb... Quite long if your connexion is slow. Even if you have a backup of your files, it's not instantaneous.
Quoting: wvstolzingExactly my point. So as I say, that makes it trickier for them to actually sell you the game in a "you get to put it on your hard drive" kind of way, which is what people are saying they should be doing. Mind you, I do think it would be nice if they provided that option, I'm just saying it's not as simple as it looks.Quoting: Purple Library Guy... but if they're going to let you buy it they have to have a version for whatever platform you're on because most of their customers probably aren't running Stadia Linux stuff on their devices. Having a store-as-such makes the project a lot more complicated in an area where they don't have expertise.
This is confusing; no one except Google will be running 'Stadio Linux stuff on their devices', there's no such OS -- or even application -- for the end user to run. All the user has is a browser window into the 'service'.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 7 June 2019 at 5:37 pm UTC
Quoting: MalI don't think anyone except Google is really in a position to make even a stab at beating the latency problems. Far as I can tell, what makes this feasible is that Google already has a bunch of servers all over the dang place, so Stadia will run from Google servers physically fairly near you, wherever you might be. Nobody else can match that infrastructure, and it would not be worth building it just to run a service like this.Quoting: ArdjeI would pay that subscription money if I could just run my own steam games.
That would be the advantage of any Google competitor if it ever appears. If Valve or Epic would launch a stadia like service in addition to their regular platform (so you can always pay 10 bucks for a month of streaming on your whole library if your rig is broken or whatever) they would have the best offer. But Epic is uninterested in spending money to add value its library and from Valve it came no indication whatsoever that it might launch a cloud service, although with SteamOS and steam link they would have the majority of the software components just ready.
Google is kind of frightening. Really, along with Facebook and one or two of the other behemoths, they should probably be broken up and/or moved into the public sector.
Does Stadia "beam" picture to you computer and computer sends the input to the server? Is that all? It does not matter what OS is being used on the device at home? It can be a 386sx as far as google is concerned? I will be most grateful if somebody explains this.
Quoting: OdisejDoes Stadia "beam" picture to you computer and computer sends the input to the server? Is that all? It does not matter what OS is being used on the device at home? It can be a 386sx as far as google is concerned? I will be most grateful if somebody explains this.
That's pretty much it! It's like watching a video on YouTube, but it's interactive and let's you send inputs from your controller to Googles server where the game runs. The server encodes a video stream instead of outputting the graphics to a display. The video stream is sent to your client which plays it back just like any video in your browser. For now it's Chrome only. The time it takes between your button press until you see a change on screen is about 150-200ms I think, which is about the same as a console connected to an average TV without "game mode" enabled on the TV, which means it's going to be fine for most people but it will be annoying for latency sensitive people playing fast paced games.
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