Google Stadia instead of next gen console??

[gangzoom]

Not tried Stadia before but got an email about a free trial, and ongoing cost is only £8.99/month so why not try it.

Destiny 2 running beautifully on a 2013 MacBookPro.



GRID on my S9 with cheapo Bluetooth controller also worked great.





Very little latency, similar/better than old UT/Counter strike days from the 00s. Game access/install times are also very impressive and easy, there also appears to be cloud syncing between devices/games.



Overall given I needed to spend exactly £0 on new hardware am very tempted to keep it going after the free trial, especially when next gen consoles are looking like £500+ machine without games!!

You do need a good internet connection, haven't tried in on the TV yet but I recon you will need a hardwired connection for 4k streaming on a 50inch+ display.

Anyone else tried the service?

[gangzoom]

Getting weirder by the second, Elder scrolls online 'running' perfectly on my S9 using touch screen keys??!!

Google has just killed next gen consoles, even their own Play store games. £8.99/month for this cross platform convince, and no dedicated hardware, its game changer.

[gangzoom]

RobDickinson said:

Seen a linus review and every streaming service seems to have some drawbacks.

You're limited in fps/hz, or quality or resolution etc and sometimes lag is an issue, or game library. But they are coming along.

There's currently a free trial, give it a go. As long as your internet connection is good you can be playing some AAA titles on any device you have in minutes.

Lag is no worse than good old 00s days, no one had issues achieving 'Monster kills' streaks back than in UT .

[gangzoom]

untakenname said:

The concept is good but there's one major thing that lets it down and that is that it looks pants on a 4k OLED TV and also the same game costs a lot more than on Steam, I've got an RX5700 also plugged in via HDMI and the games look far sharper and better.

Haven't tried on the TV yet, last time I switched on the Xbox it took 30 mintues to run all the updates.

What's a RX5700? I presume a PC?

Playing on my old 'work' MacBook Pro is about as good as it gets for me these days. First time I played a FPS with WASD keys for ages and quite enjoyed it.

£9/month seems OK to me for whats on offer, providing they keep supplying the bundled games in that price. Strava is costing me about half that much for just been a GPX data tracker .

Edited by gangzoom on Tuesday 30th June 07:09

Edited by gangzoom on Tuesday 30th June 07:11

[gangzoom]

Quick play before the nursery run....realised a track pad isn't going to work with Elder Scrolls, yes I playing Destiny 2 with a trackpad yesterday!!..



...GRID though worked fine with just the keyboard, no fancy steering wheel setups sadly.



No am not serious gamer anymore, but been able to access these AAA title on a 2013 laptop, with £0 upfront cost is pretty good. Google have a winner on their hands, the number of people like me must be massive versus the number of people getting ready to splash out £500+ on a PS5 before games/online access - Off to get a mesh WiFi setup for the house

[gangzoom]

Stevil said:

So many promises that they've failed to deliver on and advertising things like 4K gaming when it's really just an upscaled 1080P. I'll happily give it a go if it hangs around and they get things sorted out, but there's no way I want to pay full-price for titles on a platform that may well not be around in a years time.

Have to say I have zero interest in 4K gaming, 2013 MacBook Pro cannot run much these days and my Xbox One is essentially a door stop as its turned on once every 2 months.

Haven't quite worked out what the game pricing on Stadia is. Currently it seems to suggest the monthly cost INCLUDES half a dozen AAA titles?

If Stadia wants £40 + monthly fee, forget it, I'll go back no gaming at all.

But it does work well for me, managed to do a few races in Grid whilst in-between cooking dinner with the laptop open.

[gangzoom]

Stevil said:

Just to add, for not a great deal more each month you can do hire-purchase on an XBOX One under their all-access scheme:

Thats double the cost of Stadia, and when I tried Xbox online thing taking 40 minutes to download a game wasn't for me.

I had Stadia open whilst catching up on emails last night, just been able to click on a tab in Chrome and get jump into a game within a few seconds for 10-15 minute break from work stuff is fab.

It reminds of me of first trying Netflix when I still was buying DVD/BlueRays. For Ultimate quality the hard media was better but the convince of streaming is so much more important for most people.

If Google keeps the pricing reasonable I can see Stadia really growing, seriously in the current financial climate £400+ for PS5 + cost of games versus £9/month with no additional hardware costs, surely that's a no brainer for most people?

[gangzoom]

Those of you who have tried Stadia may be able to help, so this is the list of games I have access to during the trial.

Do these games dissappear after the trial or do they stay in my account providing I pay the £8.99/month?

[gangzoom]

I've had more time to play with it, surprised to find out the xBox controller works with no issues. Decided am too old and slow for competitive FPS, the various market places/bounties etc is too confusing for my old brain .

For all those say they will miss owning physical media, the same was said about music and films.

Overall am impressed enough to keep the Pro subscription going at the moment. Just the ease of been able to run the latest games with no worries about hardware, no loading times is great. Add £0 new hardware costs and £8.99/month when Xbox live is £4/month is pretty good.

When you consider the only thing my 2013 MacBookPro doesn't do well is letting me play the occasional games, its really quite nice I now no longer need to replace it for as long as it can run Chrome, and absolutely 0% chance now of me spending £500 on a PS5 .

[gangzoom]

hyphen said:

PS5 isn't for casual gamers. And it will also depend on what blockbuster titles it has that stadia will not have.

Its all abit irrelevant though when Stadia is £8.99/month versus £500 for hardware + £40-50 for games + £4/month for online mutliplayer access.

If Stadia gets some 'Exclusive' titles than who on earth is going to waste all that money (and time) on separate gaming stuff when a Chrome browser is all you need.

It really depends on how much money Goggle wants to throw into it, for £8.99/month am happy with it, might even 'buy' a game on it and stop the Pro subscription at some point. Got one month free which might be enough to see me get bored of GRID.

Cyberpunk looks interesting, I wonder how pricing will be on Stadia? Would also be interesting if it runs better on my 2013 laptop with Stadia versus my Xbox One (after waiting a few hours to install/update that is ).

Edited by gangzoom on Friday 3rd July 06:15

[gangzoom]

Had a few hours free yesterday so got stuck into GRID and Destiny.

Gameplay is great on my laptop, very happy, not ISP may not be so happy though, can anyone tell when I first started my Stadia trial?

Lets see how 'unlimited' their unlimited service is .

[gangzoom]

Like the jewel in the crown, just doing some email catch up this morning with the work laptop at home, bare in mind I cannot even install WinZip normally without going to IT and begging for admin access.......Do pigs fly?? Well apparently they now do!! - Even the Xbox controller works!! So whats the point of having multiple device when my work laptop will do it all, work and play.

It's 100% Game Set Match to Stadia for me

Edited by gangzoom on Saturday 4th July 12:47

[gangzoom]

Oakey said:

You've got to laugh at the logic of complaining about having to download game updates and then using over 40Gb in one day streaming games

Not complaining at all, just noticing the data usage. I pay for the unlimited service anyways so good to put it to the test.

[gangzoom]

TheDrBrian said:

Given that you don’t seem too disconcerting with tech allow me to explain it to you another way

gangzoom said:

So whats the point of having multiple horsepower when my Nissan Micra will do it all, work and play.

But a Nissan Micra woudlnt do 0-60 in 5 seconds without spending ££££.

Been able to run Destiny 2 and Grid on my 2013 home laptop or an IT managed work latop thats locked down like fort Knox (I cannot even use unauthorised unencrypted USB drives) is pretty cool.

My 2013 laptop actually run all my work computing needs fines, apart from new games. With Stadia now letting me play the latest games on it why would I bother upgrading the hardware/laptop?

Google have a winner here.

[gangzoom]

TheDrBrian said:

But you’re not doing 60 in 5 seconds. You’re doing it in 15 just the speedo has been upscaled and there’s 3 seconds between you flooring it and the game responding.

3 seconds lag, you must be joking right??

Remeber the days of dial up, UT/Quake/QS, anything under 100ms lag was seen as instant. I was still able to snipe by people half way across the map with ping times of approaching 150ms.

I get the hardware stuff, but why do you need it if Google can do it for you and stream to what ever device you have??

Am actually surprised games still have a 'load' time on Stadia, not long but 5 seconds. Am sure Google will get rid of that some point.

There is lag but no where enough for me to offset the advantages (and cheapness) Stadia brings.

I wonder what the Xbox streaming service will look like, but this is the future of gaming.

Edited by gangzoom on Saturday 4th July 13:52

[gangzoom]

vonuber said:

Er.. My PC does all that too, and i don't need to pay a subscription service.

If you lent me your PC that would be much appreciated

I don't think we've spend a single £ on laptops since 2010, all our laptops are work machines supplied by work. The thought of spending even £500 on the next Xbox/PS5 seem too much to spend on games for me!

For me Stadia needs to stay at the current price to keep me interested - sub £10/month with regular 'free' games bundled in. If Google can make money from that kind of model is a different matter, Spotify still seems to be going despite me having a free account from the start.

[gangzoom]

Doofus said:

I don't stream music.

That's pretty impressive in this day and age, I gave up trying to maintain my iTunes library around 2010, about the time I got an iPhone and realised there was no way it could hold my entire music collection. I did spend some time trying to setup a home back up system for my music but than gave up.

About 3 years ago I've also given up locally backing up my digital photos, I think my last back on the NAS setup was around 2018. Its now all on the 'cloud', I have to say the recent take over of Flickr did give me someworries about all of sudden having to manually download 300gig+ of photos.

The total reliance of broadband is a potential flaw in all of this though, our hardwire connection went down on Christmas Eve, you can imagine the situation in a house filled with extended family and not even a TV aerial!! - Luckily it was sorted quickly.

I bury my head in the sand on this issue though, and try not to think what life would be like without good internet access. Gaming though for me just another move inthis direction, I could even see a situation when things like Photoshop can be 'streamed', I was mocking the initial Google Chrome books as been underpowered toys, but actually Google may have it right in the longrun

Edited by gangzoom on Saturday 4th July 14:30

[gangzoom]

TheDrBrian said:

I was putting it in terms of cars. 200-250ms of input lag is awful. It's like driving a car from the backseat.

Of a different car.

Its not 200ms, must be below 100ms, that's in Destiny 2, multiple player.

https://youtu.be/Cs7hQe--wm0

https://youtu.be/O1gbOEtGSNs

Edited by gangzoom on Monday 6th July 18:27

[gangzoom]

Jim on the hill said:

That sounds a bit better then, I remember looking into it last year with all the hype but no 4K support.

Having seem early reviews of Stadia Google clearly has the tech working, and working well.

I have a Xbox One hooked up to my OLED TV with a £1k amp attached and floor standing speakers.....But anyone with kids will tell you time is by far the most precious commodity you have.

Everytime I find free time to my self and want to do some gaming it seems like half of that is wasted on downloading updates/installation.

Stadia on the otherhand lets me enjoying playing games even if I have 30 minutes free between Teams meetings.

For me it works really well, and fact I'm not having to pay for Destiny 2 (with expansions) or Grid both games I wanted to try is a bonus.

Stadia does need to increase their catalogue of games though, bur regardless spending ££££ on gaming hardware seems totally pointless to me now. Why bother when anything that can run Chrome works perfectly?

£9/month versus ££££ on hardware + game costs + Xbox live subscription - I cannot see how Google is making money though??

[gangzoom]

^I had the Xbox game pass on trial, but the 40 mintues+ of sitting around watching a load screen wasn't fun. We live in a world of instant content access, not wait, download, install, and am glad to see the video games world have finally caught up.

I was thinking about budgeting for a replacement for my laptop or even next gen console, but now I just don't see the need.

But am not a 'proper' gamer these days, in the years I owned my Xbox one I've bought 5 games for it and thats it, I think one/two a year roughly.

I'm intrigued to see how the Xbox streaming services work. Stadia has virtually no lag, and with also virtuality no load times streaming is surely the future what ever services becomes available. I'll be happy to pay £10/month for what ever service, but am done with the idea of paying for new hardware when streaming works so well and is so efforteless.

Edited by gangzoom on Tuesday 7th July 06:57