A new report from Business Insider has highlighted some continuing changes for Google's cloud gaming service Stadia, and it doesn't exactly sound good - but it's also something that was mostly already announced. It's doing the rounds right now across various other outlets of course, as Stadia has never exactly been popular.
Back in November 2021, I wrote an article titled "Two years on, Stadia seems to have no direction left" and it doesn't sound like it's going to get any better.
We already knew that Google had shut down its internal game development studios for Stadia, with their focus to stick with third-party releases. That was seen as quite a big blow to Stadia when it was announced in Early 2021, and even then they said clearly the Stadia tech would continue on "for industry partners".
The article mentions "Google Stream" is now the new name for the Stadia tech Google provide to other companies, and the Stadia consumer platform (the store) has been "deprioritized within Google, insiders said, with a reduced interest in negotiating blockbuster third-party titles" so over time it's likely to see less titles release.
It's actually a huge shame, as the Stadia tech is actually really good and it is still by far the easiest and most fluid cloud gaming service I've ever personally used. I found Xbox Cloud to have poor quality overall and GeForce NOW was just a mess of launchers. Stadia sadly has been badly managed from the get-go, with expectations inside Google that were very clearly just way too high.
They also clearly got the revenue model completely wrong. I don't think it would have entirely saved it, but it would have easily been far more popular if they doubled-down on the subscription. Not everyone is Microsoft though and can afford to do something like Game Pass but this is Google - they absolutely could have. It was asking a lot to get people to buy full-price (sometimes more expensive too) digital games, that you only have for streaming and no local copy at all — with an optional subscription that took them forever to properly explain.
Meanwhile, the Stadia community managers have jumped in to try and calm things down on Twitter. In a thread they said:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.If you hear one thing, hear this: The Stadia team is working really hard on a great future for Stadia and cloud gaming.
We hope you agree, and we know the proof is in the playing.
We’re particularly proud to be offering 50 games to Pro members in February, with more than 100 titles to join Stadia in 2022 and plenty of Free Play Days for everyone to enjoy.
There’s also more feature goodness coming to Stadia too - stuff we can’t talk about just yet, but we promise to share when we can.
Have a great weekend, Stadians.
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I think you know what I meant, please don't try to drag me in one of those ownership discussion.Especially Stadia Pro, buy games individually AND pay monthly?buy games individually OR pay monthly
I don't think you really buy games on stadia, closest to really buying a game these days is GOG with their offline installer
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robertosf92 Feb 5, 2022
Every move that stops the distopian world where our computers are just terminals plugged in to a giant corporation's mainframe via the net is a good move towards freedom
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Oh yeah, forgot about that one :) Not sure how many they are, I think is at least Destiny 2, which can be a real time sink-hole.buy games individually OR pay monthly
buy games individually OR pay monthly or just play the free games.
I got a few games from Stadia via of their rewards program. The rest of the games I play on there are free. No pro or payment card needed.
- Rainbow Six: Extraction
- PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS
- Destiny 2
- SUPER BOMBERMAN R ONLINE
- Super Animal Royale
- Nine To Five Early Access
- HITMAN - Free Starter Pack
- Crayta
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Cloud gaming makes as much sense as working full time in the metaverse with a headset on your face all day. It doesn't. Never has.
If you can afford a fast and stable internet connection then you can afford a console or medium end PC.
So I'm in NYC. I get free ISP services 300 MPBS. I can afford a great computer and all of that. I have a great gaming laptop but I'm never ever going to be downloading ONLINE only games which is where Cloud Gaming comes in handy.
Destiny 2 is great but if I had to download it and mess around with Wine for it, then pass forever. Then you have online only games that have invasion DRM. With Cloud Gaming you can rock those and it won't touch your HD. This is a win win for me.
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Wow, what? Rainbow Six: Extraction? (brb)Oh yeah, forgot about that one :) Not sure how many they are, I think is at least Destiny 2, which can be a real time sink-hole.buy games individually OR pay monthly
buy games individually OR pay monthly or just play the free games.
I got a few games from Stadia via of their rewards program. The rest of the games I play on there are free. No pro or payment card needed.
- Rainbow Six: Extraction
- PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS
- Destiny 2
- SUPER BOMBERMAN R ONLINE
- Super Animal Royale
- Nine To Five Early Access
- HITMAN - Free Starter Pack
- Crayta
Oh yeah, trial for two hours version...hm, I never liked this two-hours free thing. Ubisoft likes to do that apparently. I think they did the same with the Division 1 once, but it sucked. Better have a free level (or week) to mess with and methodically get the hang of things, two hours instead fly out fast and you're still clueless (I was anyway).
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They lost me when they discontinued mouse and keyboard input.
I think Goggle had far too few features from the start.
Always with the justification that only a few would use it. True, but: If you give up all minorities, you end up giving up all.
I think Goggle had far too few features from the start.
Always with the justification that only a few would use it. True, but: If you give up all minorities, you end up giving up all.
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Honestly the more and more that happens with Google the more I just want to move away from anything that company does. Apart from the privacy concerns, they can't seem to commit to a project long enough to see it through. A real shame with Stadia seeing as it had the best tech in this area so far.
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Mohandevir Feb 5, 2022
Honestly the more and more that happens with Google the more I just want to move away from anything that company does. Apart from the privacy concerns, they can't seem to commit to a project long enough to see it through. A real shame with Stadia seeing as it had the best tech in this area so far.
Google seem to suffer from ADHD, as a whole. Just sad.
Games I bought on Stadia from Ubisoft are visible in my Uplay account. Who knows, they might get transfered to PC versions and then show up in GFN, if ever Stadia goes under?
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I tried it (in the free month), but the quality was terrible, although it may be the specificity of my internet or dedicated data centers for my country (Poland).
I got stadia right after it became available in Poland (Dec 2020) and never had connection or quality problems (on fiber connection from orange).
GFN, by comparison, has constant problems with logging in to my steam account and even if it succeeds, it can sometimes close unexpectedly after a few minutes.
Last edited by pb on 5 February 2022 at 11:15 pm UTC
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I really had a great experience with Stadia and AC: Valhalla when my rig was not up to run it on its own.
The tech is good, and I hope that it can be utilized somewhere else. It would be a shame to see it go down.
I was subscribed to GF now too, it was just .. a pretty bad experience compared to Stadia.
I still think the best would be if they partnered with Valve. Valve has the customer base, the technology to make a lot run on Vulkan and Google has the streaming tech and hardware to back that.
The tech is good, and I hope that it can be utilized somewhere else. It would be a shame to see it go down.
I was subscribed to GF now too, it was just .. a pretty bad experience compared to Stadia.
I still think the best would be if they partnered with Valve. Valve has the customer base, the technology to make a lot run on Vulkan and Google has the streaming tech and hardware to back that.
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They lost me when they discontinued mouse and keyboard input.
Which game did this? I'm on KB+M and everything works even MK11.
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Cloud gaming will never be a viable choice, unless you live next to the servers.
Also premium subscription for a couple of years may cost you more than cheap xbox version + game pass.
As a person that has been Browser Based gaming since it started in the 90's...I think ppl are not seeing the bigger picture. There are generations of kids going into adulthood who only gamed via of browser be it flash games or browser based MMO that will not carrying any traditional form of gaming into the next gen.
Cloud gaming and Browser based gaming are going to be interchangeable if they are not already.
As a person that saves a ton of cash gaming that way, it's going to more of the same as more cloud services pop up.
Last edited by Mezron on 6 February 2022 at 2:42 pm UTC
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He's likely talking about PUB. Initially it was playable with both gamepads or KB+M, and it used different cross-play features/servers depending on what you were using (gamepad vs KB+M). I think gamepad users were cross-playing only with console players for example.They lost me when they discontinued mouse and keyboard input.
Which game did this? I'm on KB+M and everything works even MK11.
Eventually though they discontinued the KB+M option arguing that nobody used it, although later many were unhappy with that.
But from what I understood at the moment, that was a PUB developers decision, not Stadia's, and presently you can use both input methods on any game except PUB (AFAIK).
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The plan was to eventually have "billions" of players ... but how will you manage that if you only unlock a few countries and can only reach a "few hundred million" people in total at all?
You can't make it around the world in 80 days on a scooter. You need a jet fighter.
You can't make it around the world in 80 days on a scooter. You need a jet fighter.
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I’m glad Stadia failed so you can stop posting articles about it. Yes, it was based on Linux, but developers didn’t use that code for native ports on GOG and Steam. I thought of it like Android where it was a closed Linux ecosystem.
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I’m glad Stadia failed so you can stop posting articles about it. Yes, it was based on Linux, but developers didn’t use that code for native ports on GOG and Steam. I thought of it like Android where it was a closed Linux ecosystem.
A) you want a service to fail, a service that others use, because you....don't want to read news about it?
B) you also want a service to fail because developers aren't releasing native desktop GNU/Linux versions? Despite no company ever claiming it would lead to that (Google never, not once, claimed this, and no developer to my knowledge ever claimed this either).
It's not like Steam is an open platform. It's quite closed. So are the majority of the games you're likely to be playing. Just want to point that out.
I did want Stadia to fail because they piggybacked on Linux and their "enhancements" never made it upstream. When the Steam Deck comes out with SteamOS 3.0, Valve's enhancements are going to be upstreamed. Plus, it was doomed to fail since they made you pay for each game on top of paying for the steaming service. If they just charged a monthly fee, then it would have been better. Especially for a service where you never really owned your games that you paid money for. This is true of digital content, but at least you can install to the hard drive with GOG and Steam.
I have my issues with GOG not providing Galaxy or a native Linux build of certain games, but you can always use Lutris to get the Windows games running and many times, it will run better with Lutris' Wine, Wine-GE, or standard Proton. Oh and I can download the .exe or .sh file on backups. I love that GOG is DRM free and why I have 400+ games in my library.
Last edited by t3g on 6 February 2022 at 4:49 pm UTC
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. ...they made you pay for each game on top of paying for the steaming service.No, they didn't. Why do you guys keep saying this?
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Personally, I wanted Stadia to be a tepid success. Successful enough to keep developing the technologies, prompting developers to learn to make Linux versions of games so there would be more Linux game developers, maybe being motivated to make improvements to the Linux graphics/sound/etc stack and pass some upstream. Not successful enough to constitute anything like a major movement towards game streaming being the future, which is a really rancid concept I want nothing to do with.I’m glad Stadia failed so you can stop posting articles about it. Yes, it was based on Linux, but developers didn’t use that code for native ports on GOG and Steam. I thought of it like Android where it was a closed Linux ecosystem.
A) you want a service to fail, a service that others use, because you....don't want to read news about it?
B) you also want a service to fail because developers aren't releasing native desktop GNU/Linux versions? Despite no company ever claiming it would lead to that (Google never, not once, claimed this, and no developer to my knowledge ever claimed this either).
It's not like Steam is an open platform. It's quite closed. So are the majority of the games you're likely to be playing. Just want to point that out.
I did want Stadia to fail because they piggybacked on Linux and their "enhancements" never made it upstream. When the Steam Deck comes out with SteamOS 3.0, Valve's enhancements are going to be upstreamed. Plus, it was doomed to fail since they made you pay for each game on top of paying for the steaming service. If they just charged a monthly fee, then it would have been better. Especially for a service where you never really owned your games that you paid money for. This is true of digital content, but at least you can install to the hard drive with GOG and Steam.
I have my issues with GOG not providing Galaxy or a native Linux build of certain games, but you can always use Lutris to get the Windows games running and many times, it will run better with Lutris' Wine, Wine-GE, or standard Proton. Oh and I can download the .exe or .sh file on backups. I love that GOG is DRM free and why I have 400+ games in my library.
What enhancements are you referring to? Because you might be surprised to learn that Google does contribute (most directly applicable is the hlsl -> spir-v work).
Personally I wanted Stadia to succeed so that I could play certain games that need to be always online anyway, or simply won't otherwise run on my rig. In a properly supported manner.
And it seems like that would have been more or less what I got, if it weren't for Google having no interest in the concept of "moderate success" and so being in the process of trying to pull the plug, but save face by doing it slowly enough so nobody really notices.
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. ...they made you pay for each game on top of paying for the steaming service.No, they didn't. Why do you guys keep saying this?
https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9580659
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Cloud gaming is like electric cars - sounds great until you get the MAJOR stumbling block of the entire thing. With electric cars, it's still the exact same problem that has plagued them since the Baker Electric launched in the 1890's - the batteries. With Stadia it's the REQUIREMENT of an internet connection.
Anything involving the cloud requires internet access, and pretty quick speeds. I live in an area where I lose internet access around once a month. My area is rural enough that video rental stores still exist. Not a Redbox, an actual store on Main Street. Even if Stadia held any interest for me I would very often be cut off from it.
Anything involving the cloud requires internet access, and pretty quick speeds. I live in an area where I lose internet access around once a month. My area is rural enough that video rental stores still exist. Not a Redbox, an actual store on Main Street. Even if Stadia held any interest for me I would very often be cut off from it.
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