Stadia might not be reaching the heights that Google initially promised but they continue to tweak their game streaming service. Some big updates are now available.
In their latest community update blog post, they did a bit of an information drop. For starters, it seems everyone will get $10 / £10 off their next purchase and as they already said, new sign ups now only get one month of free Stadia Pro.
For playing on PC, we finally have built-in performance controls. You no longer have to use an Android device to switch between resolutions as it's right there in Stadia settings now. That's a very welcome change and something that truly should have been there from the beginning. Not only that though, performance / resolution settings are now per-device instead of being applied to everything. All sounding pretty good and sensible.
Google also rolled out experimental Android support for unapproved devices. So any device that can install the Stadia app can now play Stadia games. Touch screen controls were also rolled out. I tested it on a low-end Android Honor phone and it worked surprisingly smoothly.
As a reminder, more games also entered Stadia Pro recently (instant play links):
- SUPERHOT, the FPS where the world only moves when you do.
- Get Packed, the wacky multiplayer moving simulator.
- Little Nightmares, a shadowy and mystic adventure.
- Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, a Mighty Morphin fighting game.
- Panzer Dragoon: Remake, the classic arcade-style shooter.
Stadia Pro will also be getting The Elder Scrolls Online on June 16 with cross-progression, cross-play with the Windows / macOS version and apparently expansion purchases will work across platforms too so you won't have to buy them again.
Other games that got dates for Stadia:
- Relicta - August 4
- Windbound - August 28
You can try Stadia on the official site in any Chromium browser on Linux.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Much the same with audio/video streaming.
The "cloud" has proven itself unreliable in that regard.
Horrible UX - hiding the scroll bar, disabling keyboard scrolling
And on top of that they are hiding the prices of the games until your signed up, that is so shady that if not for the fact that is a subdomain to google.com I'd have said this was 100% a scam :|
It's hard to belive that https://stadia.google.com/ is a google page :SI do agree, their homepage is rubbish and that's actually their second attempt. I don't really get why they're still hiding the majority of it behind a login.
Horrible UX - hiding the scroll bar, disabling keyboard scrolling
And on top of that they are hiding the prices of the games until your signed up, that is so shady that if not for the fact that is a subdomain to google.com I'd have said this was 100% a scam :|
and valve doing an partnership with nvidia is an big issue, honestly i will keep buying my games on steam since stadia is not avaliable on Brasil yet (wich is a shame, i cant wait to have it) but if it ever comes to Brasil, i will be really confused on what platform i support...
(yeah, i know you folks write Brazil instead of Brasil)
update:
holyshit
i counted the games, 53 games for an platform that exist for ~7 months... that is too little...
i know they promissed 120 games until the end of the year and 450 for the next years, but...
Last edited by elmapul on 12 June 2020 at 10:00 am UTC
I really consider cloud gaming very bad for preservation of art.
Much the same with audio/video streaming.
The "cloud" has proven itself unreliable in that regard.
audio/video is less of an issue, no one has perfected DRM on it, so unless something is live and the DRM isnt broken before the transmission is finished, its an non issue.
but games on the other hand...
I really consider cloud gaming very bad for preservation of art.
Much the same with audio/video streaming.
The "cloud" has proven itself unreliable in that regard.
audio/video is less of an issue, no one has perfected DRM on it, so unless something is live and the DRM isnt broken before the transmission is finished, its an non issue.
but games on the other hand...
True, if every game stream is unique, then how do you preserve the actual experience?
With audio for example the publishers often retract their licenses so work often disappears, which means getting a small collection of people to try and preserve it. So it's hard word, but not nearly as hard as games.
But when I went to try Destiny 2 for "one last shot" before my two month free trial was up, I couldn't play it. My input was completely buggered. My mouse was "trapped" in the lower-right hand corner of the screen, and wouldn't move out of it.
There were hundreds of suggestions online - chrome flags, resolution changes, DPI adjustments, mouse accelerations changes. But isn't kind of the whole point of Stadia that it's cloud-based and so largely bug free and platform independent? But I can't even play their games from one month to the next without hitting those bugs? On the same PC?
I cancelled last Sunday - the payment was due today.
Ironically, I have a brand new all-AMD PC now and I'm curious if it's fixed. But too late now.
areamanplaysgame Jun 14, 2020
It's hard to belive that https://stadia.google.com/ is a google page :S
Horrible UX - hiding the scroll bar, disabling keyboard scrolling
And on top of that they are hiding the prices of the games until your signed up, that is so shady that if not for the fact that is a subdomain to google.com I'd have said this was 100% a scam :|
The reason they hide the prices of the games is because no one would sign up otherwise. Hard to imagine someone getting excited to pay full retail price for a AAA game they can't even install on a service that is getting virtually no good press and, given Google's track record, may be shuttered at any moment.
I wouldn't be shocked if eventually it was rebranded as Google Hangouts Games... unfortunately while your contacts transfer to the new service, your game "purchases" don't.
They had the opinion that it was way too pricey for the service offered and that they would be more interested in GeForce Now (though one chap was showing off his AMD GPU!). They also liked the idea of Linux but still were under the impression that there were no games available for our OS :-)
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