With 600mb fiber the UX is outstanding in my experience. The library was really limited at the beginning but it's slowly starting to take off. It's been a great low-cost entry point to a bunch of games that I was interested in. I can seamlessly play at home on my big screen or even sneak in a quick game at my desk in the office.
Why would anyone desire that it dies? If you don't like it you can ignore it.
Your comment is very low-effort. It's borderline disrespectful to the parent, a dev who has kindly shared some insider knowledge, in that it contributes nothing to their point and merely goes off on a petty tangent.
Just a small nitpick - the subscription to Stadia is not necessary. You can buy a game and play that game without subscription until the service shuts down, assuming you are fine with 1080p.
Just looking at the server lists. There doesn't really seem to that much geographical variety there. Although Google has not really given us details on where the services are running, at least the graphics in their announcements promised a lot.
Really like GFN, unfortunately the developer backlash renders it pretty useless since I can't play most of the games I want to on it - pretty much only Ubisoft games in my Steam library show up these days. Wanted to play Borderlands 3 - nope, not on GFN. Conveniently on Stadia, though......
I have a new (2020 model) Philips Android TV, and unfortunately GFN has an experience-breaking audio bug on it, and I hazard that it probably won't be fixed anytime soon, if ever, because "it's not supported hardware" despite them developing the Android TV app and it having a really common MediaTek chipset. Don't really want to fork out more money for a Shield after buying a brand new TV!
I tried Shadow last year and I really liked that, despite it being a little pricier. Regretfully cancelled my subscription, so I can't get it back until NEXT JULY according to the preorder page!
What I've tried so far:
- Moonlight (so, local streaming): Best experience, hands down... For local network, and assuming you have a decent computer anyway. So, great if you want to stream from a PC in your office to your living room. If you're lucky enough to get fiber to the home in your city, latency might be low enough and upload speed high enough that you can stream games outside your home. My cable ISP tops out at 10mbps though, so not for me. I use it as proof that there's nothing wrong with my Android TV's hardware though, since it's happy to stream at 4K HDR 60fps H265 from my PC with only ~30ms latency.
- Shadow: Good quality, good virtual PC specs (GTX 1080 baseline), surprisingly little latency, lets you play any game that runs on PC. My friend even managed to play through all of Half-Life Alyx on his Quest using Virtual Desktop streamer on my Shadow instance. Unfortunately your subscription can take _months_ to become active -- might improve in future if the company scales up?
- Stadia (sideloaded to Android TV): Playable. Played a bit of Destiny 2 and Borderlands 3. Both in 4K and HDR. Picture quality a little muddy at times. Latency a bit too high to comfortably play first person shooters, but probably okay in other games.
- GeForce NOW: Playable, but the picture quality was also a bit muddy and the latency was higher than Stadia, and on my TV it suffered from the audio glitch (distorted audio, like the buffer chunk's being played back at 44100 when it should be 48000, or the bit depth is wrong, or something). What really stops me from using it though - disappointing absence of most of my games from its library.
- Parsec, Blacknut: OK, have a bunch of free to play games in their respective libraries. The streams are only like 720p though.
> unfortunately the developer backlash renders it pretty useless since
Counter backlash then. You don't have to support people that don't support GeForce Now over Stadia. GeForce Now is no different than renting some server and streaming to another device.
> - Shadow: Good quality, good virtual PC specs
From what I've heard people are able to play Cyberpunk 2077 with RTX on using GFN (GeForce Now).
> Moonlight
That's interesting, I'm surprised you can't use Steam to stream games. But interesting nonetheless.
> Counter backlash then. You don't have to support people that don't support GeForce Now over Stadia. GeForce Now is no different than renting some server and streaming to another device.
Can't really backlash considering I already own the games of those publishers who initially supported GFN and then pulled their games from it :P I already paid for the Mafia trilogy, Fallout & Elder Scrolls, GTA, Red Dead Redemption series, DOOM, Wolfenstein, Borderlands series, .....
FWIW I paid for Stadia for a month but I wouldn't sink much money into it, either. The games I want to play are mostly missing on Stadia too. Wouldn't pay for either GFN or Stadia at this point.
> From what I've heard people are able to play Cyberpunk 2077 with RTX on using GFN (GeForce Now).
Yup, CD Projekt Red are one of the publishers of AAA games that seem to have no beef with GFN.
> That's interesting, I'm surprised you can't use Steam to stream games. But interesting nonetheless.
Oh, I forgot about Steam Link actually. I've used that too. It was... okay, but I experienced more bugs and couldn't get the same quality I got with Moonlight. Moonlight has higher framerates available (90fps, 120fps) and is more actively maintained than the Steam Link app (the Android TV version, anyway). Moonlight does depend on you having an NVIDIA GPU though.
Stadia is the most impressive tech recently released, it's clearly the future.
I was very sceptical at first but when I tried Doom 2016 over the wifi on my tv I was realy impressed.
Just think about it for one second, the game runs over the wifi on 30$ Chromecast on my 10y/o TV and it looks great with almost no lag, I'm an avid FPS player and it's really ok lag wise to play on Stadia.
You have no physical copy, no downloads option and no recourse; you're effed.
And it doesn't have to be the end of Stadia scenario either. You lose access to your account and you are similarly effed, the algorithm decides you are suspicious and, you guessed it, you're effed too.
The idea that you pay for a game and get a video stream is a scam.
Latency is a dependent on how far away you are from the datacenters and Google does have many datacenters. You can play Destiny 2 for free on Stadia to see what the latency feels like on the service. Also there are differences between games it seems with different games experiencing different amounts of latency. The Division 2 and the Doom games are some of the best games in that regard on Stadia.
I'm running it in the country in the Midwest with 100mbs down on a mesh wifi and it's practically flawless. Not any noticeably different than when I lived in Chicago with a fiber connection.
It's impressive and way better than I thought it would be when they first announced the product.
I recommend people try it out for free and judge for yourself.
I think FPS and reaction type games are not it's strengths, but some third person action / adventure games have been super fun. Sometimes I forgot it was not running games locally. Impressive tech.
I hate to break it to you but since you keep bringing it up.
You don't own your game even if you buy a physical disc. On steam, or any pc digital distribution platform you are paying for a license to play said game. You are always effectively renting the game. Same goes for consoles. In this regard you are getting the same deal on Stadia.
Another thing you seem adamant to impress on anyone who dares suggest they like Stadia is that if the other streaming platforms go down then you still have your pc games available on other services. This is true, but one of the primary benefits of a streaming service is that you no longer need expensive hardware. If a user decides to use only streaming services then they are unlikely to maintain a decent gaming rig. So over time this becomes a moot point. If you have and maintain a good gaming pc then why would you even bother with ANY streaming platform as they will always be somewhat inferior.
I unironically enjoy the experience, because until I can replicate the movie theatre in my living room this is what I'm paying for.
I go mainly to the festivals, premieres, sometimes there is a prelection before the screening, or Q&A with the director.
As an aside, this year I enjoyed an Asian film festival at home and was able to see more movies than any other year... 2020 is weird.
I recognize that streaming has its place in the world, but I'd hate it to be the only option, like it is in Stadia model. Also, if you don't buy the game then you shouldn't have to pay like you'd be buying one.
