I've been using for about two years I'd guess. I have a pretty fast connection and it worked pretty flawlessly at home. I used it while traveling too, and if the connection was good enough for streaming services like Netflix or Hulu, it was typically totally fine for Stadia. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 at the highest settings while playing on an iPad was pretty damn cool, and meant I could slim down a ton when traveling.
That said, I haven't played any multiplayer FPS games. The multiplayer games I did play seemed totally fine, though "seems totally fine" is obviously a subjective observation.
The biggest gripe I had was that you couldn't use your Steam library or bring your own games in any way. The fact that they're refunding purchases is kind of amazing. Knowing Google, I assumed that when Stadia shut down, that'd be it, and I was ok with that.
I've used Stadia off and on for about a year now, both in a big city with fiber connection and out in the rural midwest with a decent cable connection. When it works well, it feels like magic. The latency is so small, you can't tell the difference between it and a game running on a local device. When you get a connection hick-up, it's bad, lots of artifacting, losing control, huge input lag.
The tech is amazing IMHO, thinking back to type of gaming I was doing back in the 80s. Gaming has come a long way.
I think its biggest problem is being associated with Google. They have built up a bad rep and I think gamers like sticking to platforms they trust and see being around for the long-term. Why invest in building a library that might not be around in a few years? I personally don't think they'll shut down the service but I'm not surprised that a lot of people have those worries.
I used it a bit. The performance was exceptional. I enjoyed playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my phone with a Razer Kishi controller. Although I'm not surprised Stadia struggled to find traction, I think this is mostly due to Google's ongoing struggle with entertainment branding, and despite this, I do agree with their sentiment that streaming is the inevitable future of mainstream gaming.
I know it was gutted at launch but I decided to try it anyways with open eyes since there was a 2-month free trial with some free games. I have fiber at home so latency and bandwidth is not at all an issue - on Chrome on Windows laptop the gaming experience was flawless and technically very impressive.
The value proposition of the service is in fact excellent for me. I game only sporadically, so investing in a highend gaming PC makes no sense - the hardware outdates too fast, and I anyway prefer to run Linux on my PC. I bought a PS4 but I prefer to play FPS games on a keyboard and mouse, and frankly most times I actually want to play the PS4 after months offline, I need to start with ~30 min worth of system updates before any game is even allowed to start (thanks DRM..)
With Stadia I pay one time fee for each game I want to play. Google offers for that fixed price always the latest, highest-end hardware and OS to play on. Contrast this to having to keep updating my PC hardware and maintaining a Windows installation just for gaming. If only it was working on Linux as well as Windows I would have certainly continued using it.
Oh that's right. I had a mostly fun time with google stadia. My internet latency is just good enough, even for shooters. Some days it was playable, others it wasn't.
They do focus on AAA games though, which I don't want to afford as a casual player. I like multiplayer with friends so we usually play not to pricy or free things.
The only "single player" I'm hoping for would be MS flight sim, but even there I'd just sing a few hours, not more.
To me it feels like I should invest in a good machine with a GPU another time because:
- streaming games is just not ripe enough
- I'll keep the machine for >5 years. Good to have one bottleneck less and such long usage is worth some investment.
Doing some math:
5 years * 12 month * 12$ or subscription = 720$
If I'm generous and say my gpu only stays up to date 3 years: 430$
So I have 430$ at least to spare for a local GPU and for the first 3 years will have the better performance (lag, compression, internet-dependence) and for the last 2 years I can still think about renting for another 300$.
I'd say if I keep my current computer it's worth it, if I buy a new one anyways I should get one with a gpu.
Stadia ran (runs) well at 50mbps, and their competitors don't require much more (~100mbps for comparable results afaict), and 2x that minimum often results in a flawless experience if you have the bandwidth/latency to back it up (e.g. if you're on a home/work connection, rather than a busy coffee shop).
I put almost 1,000 hours into Stadia across all my games travelling across ~20 states and 3 countries the past ~3 years. It's very rare to find places where it isn't "okay" to play (with some notable exceptions near launch where you'd regularly get ~1 second input delay at times or frozen, pixellated graphics), and in many places now it feels indistinguisable from native/local games.
I don't know which platform I'll move to from Stadia, but it will definitely be a cloud one.
The ability to play many of my existing Steam games made GeForce Now the clear winner for me. Don't have to repurchase any games and if I decided to get a better gaming PC in the future (which I did when HL: Alyx came out), I can play any games I purchased prior on that PC.
The latency for multiplayer was just barely acceptable. I tried both Rocket League and Destiny 2 and was able to notice that I wasn't playing as well in either compared to playing locally.
I still struggle to see how Google plans to make Stadia successful when they're asking developers to port to their platform and players to pay for games they can't play locally. It would be interesting if they released a console offering that just replicated one of the Stadia servers but I don't see that happening.
Have you tried it though? It's so much better than any other streaming game service from Xbox or PSN
When cyberpunk came out, it was crashing everywhere except the stadia version. I've rarely had performance issues with a stadia game, and even playing over 4g is pretty good.
The technology almost works like magic here.
Now if only there had been more games on it and if people didn't dismiss it before it even launched it MAY have had a shot (and I guess if Google didn't have a knack for killing off things).
I am fully convinced that stadia represents a good future for gaming, and as hardware costs go up with sinking bandwidth costs, I am sure the concept will come about again in a similar way.
Stadia works acceptably even on low tier consumer cable internet connections. The biggest issue is usually weak or noisy wifi but even then it's surprisingly robust.
I don't know what it's costing them to do that, but in terms of technical capability it's there.
I used Stadia for more than a year, and very rarely had issues or perceptible input lag even on FPS games, on a middling internet connection. The problem was, everyone knew right from the get-go that Google would shut it down, and it was just a matter of "when". Without any up-front clarity on the refund policy, people like me weren't willing to spend much in their store on anything new; I basically paid for Destiny 2 expansions and that's it, everything else was free games from the monthly subscription.
If they had said from day one that they guaranteed 5 years of lifespan before even thinking of re-evaluating and would refund any purchases in the event they had to cut that short, they would've got much more buy-in.
I didnt try stadia, but I did try a PlayStation Now trial some time ago. I only played single player games, but some were first person shooters where you’d expect lag to matter. My experience was also very good and I didn’t have any issues with lag. I kept forgetting that I was streaming.
But I have gigabit internet (and before I got that, had 300 Mb/s) and played with a wired connection, so that’s likely a contributor to my positive experience.
I think Stadia could work in big cities. If Google has servers in the city and you're using a wired connection then it should work fine for a large portion of games. It probably won't give a good experience for first person shooters though.
Stadia has been really great for me, in my sort of unusual case. I usually play a video games for a month, then not at all for several months, then back on. In my current situation it didn’t make any sense to spend so much money on a console, to barely use it. I definitely can’t play any games on my MacBook.
Stadia meant I could buy the game I really wanted to play (Red Dead 2), and not worry at all about how to play it. I’m currently on the free trial of the Pro subscription (which enables 4K streaming), but I probably won’t renew. I can keep playing for FREE, capped at 1080p, which I would expect will be just fine. Lag has been non-existent, video quality could be a little better but it’s phenomenal for live streaming IMO.
Edit for context: My internet connection typically hovers around 60Mbps, and I play with an ethernet connection (which I got for remote work, not for gaming, but it's been great).
Haven't tried Stadia, but I can certainly vouch for GFN. The lag is comparable to consoles on TV (and in some games, better), so while it would be a handicap in PC-centric fast-paced games, I was damn impressed with it. If I had a reason to pay the $5/month premium for unlimited gameplay away from home, I certainly would.
* The input lag is _still_ noticeable. I've tried this from multiple locations on various devices, all with extremely good internet (one of them was in the UK with gigabit internet) and the lag was always there. I'm not ultra-snesitive to input lag either - I regularly use Nvidia GFN, which also has some input lag, but it's actually playable.
* The overall experience is very unpolished. You'll most likely get stuff to work but, if anything fails, you're gonna have to post on google forums and hope someone will be able to help you. (It's google, so no support). Also, none of the features promised at launch (join a game from YT, large MMO worlds etc) have been delivered.
* It's google, so who knows how long the platform will be around for. (It's a meme, yes, but it's also a real risk, compounded by the fact that you'll own the games that you buy solely on Stadia)
* You have to re-purchase games that you already own. e.g. if you own a title on Steam, you can't play it on Stadia, you have to buy it all over again.
EDIT: if you like what Stadia is claiming to offer, I suggest you look at Nvidia's GeForceNow, which has a couple of advantages:
* You can play the titles that you own on Steam
* (In my experience) gameplay is smoother
The one disadvantage is that games get removed from GFN based on the whims of the publishers (you'll still own the titles on Steam, you just won't be able to play them on GFN).
Comparatively, I play a fair bit on Google Stadia, a similar Gaming-in-the-cloud service powered by Google.
My experience with Stadia has been pretty great. Since November 2020 I've been playing Destiny 2, an MMO FPS, so perhaps the worst-case latency-requiring kind of game, and it's been pretty great, at least for PvE activities. (PvP has been less great, but perhaps that's more the fault of my aging reflexes than near-imperceptible network latency)
When traveling, I've been playing Destiny on Stadia on an iPad (!) with an Xbox controller paired, using the host Wifi.
That, alone, was enough to sell me on the value of Stadia. I'm gladly paying the $10/mo (half that of GeForce Now) for the Pro tier, which gives me 4k HDR, and a bunch of games free each month.
People like to harp on Stadia, and it's true that their player numbers are low. In fact, a couple of days ago Destiny announced availability on the Epic Games Store, and apparently on Day 1 the number of players via the Epic Games Store outnumbered the number of Stadia players by 10x. There was a promotion on Epic which helped, but still, 10x!
Google has certainly tarnished their brand by killing well-loved products, but I also feel like they're under-promoting what they have. For example, if I try to go to stadia.com right now from this mac/safari, I'll just get a page that says "Stadia requires Chrome", with no promotional content to entice the user.
I use Stadia pretty regularly as my sole gaming platform, and so far its been pretty amazing for games like Assassin's Creed and even FPS games like Destiny 2. I encounter noticeable stutters a couple of times every hour or so, but for the most part its as if I'm playing on actual local hardware. Also, the loading speeds are blazing fast - its made me very optimistic about how the gaming experience can improve in the years to come due to the underlying compute being elastic instead of limited to your own box. I'm someone who held off on buying a console for years due to the cost, so for me Stadia has been an absolute blessing.
I tried Stadia, but the input latency was frustrating. I tried to play games that ran okay, but didn't want to upgrade my computer. Most noticeably to me, Destiny 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 ran poorer and worse input lag. I have gigabit fiber and sub 10ms latency to all the major datacenters in Europe.
I didn't stop using Stadia because I didn't trust Google, I stopped using Stadia because the experience sucked every time I tried it.
Funny I just plugged in my Stadia controller and played around to see if the service was still active. It's sad, I really liked the service for a few reasons:
1. I don't have a gaming console, and this allowed me to easily (with the help of my Chromecast) add gaming to my living room.
2. It's way easier than Steam Link/Controllers which always require an element of "massage" to get and keep working.
Downsides:
My library of games on Steam, Epic, EA are obviously not accessible with Stadia, and I wasn't about to re-purchase or purchase exclusively any game content from a service that was doomed.
I've also played with Xbox Cloud Gaming and while decent I found it unusable on mobile.
That said, I haven't played any multiplayer FPS games. The multiplayer games I did play seemed totally fine, though "seems totally fine" is obviously a subjective observation.
The biggest gripe I had was that you couldn't use your Steam library or bring your own games in any way. The fact that they're refunding purchases is kind of amazing. Knowing Google, I assumed that when Stadia shut down, that'd be it, and I was ok with that.
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