Stadia - now "free" for a month or two - The Bear and Badger

Yossarian

tigerswiftly wrote:

I just want to know exactly what Microsoft have in store so I know whether or not to get an X!

I’m confused by this, how would streaming services have any bearing on which console you buy?

tigersgogrrr

Yossarian wrote:

I just want to know exactly what Microsoft have in store so I know whether or not to get an X!

I’m confused by this, how would streaming services have any bearing on which console you buy?

Who said anything about streaming services? My understanding was that Microsoft were planning on releasing a streaming device and a 'standard' console. I want to know what the standard console will be and how the 'new gen' will leave the X.

Have qualms about buying an X if a more powerful console is out next year.

Yossarian

Ah right.

Two new Xboxes are in the works, most likely aiming at a Christmas 2020 release. Neither appear to be a streaming box, but rather an S/X type setup.

There was talk of a streaming box, but things have gone quiet on that front. I think that the discless S that’s rumoured to be out this year might have been what people have confused for that, mayber.

djchump

Some stadia tech details: https://stadia.dev/about/
Debian linux and Vulkan
Looks to be Vega 56 GPU
No detail on how many cores on cpu, but presume 4 or more for it to be clocked at 2.7ghz

djchump

Not hugely impressive tbh. 2 year old pc tech. I’d expect next gen of consoles to comfortably leapfrog it, but then Google can refresh their hardware clusters as well, maybe as a tiered sub when they start touting 120fps, 8k and all that nonsense.

mistercrayon

GurtTractor wrote:

Never understood the criticism of symmetrical sticks but whatever grandpasimpson.gif

Obviously if you find symmetrical sticks fine then that’s cool. To me though the natural place for the thumbs to land is the same on both sides of the controller (my hands are roughly the same) so it makes sense to have the principle controllers (left analogue and fire buttons) in those places.

The Sony solution is the worse because it’s also mostly cramped. The Wii U pro pad at least had the sticks in the upper area which is the same feiextion your thumbs point.

retroking1981

But for a lot of games now fire is on the triggers so having your thumbs naturally on both sticks makes sense.

GurtTractor

Dunno, never had an issue with any Dualshock, I do have lankier hands than most I think, so perhaps that has some bearing on it. If anything I find the Xbox controller left stick position to be a slight stretch.

dynamiteReady

I want to see prices before I'm in any way bovved'.

dynamiteReady

My guess would be £30p/m, all you can eat.
They'd have no fear of wedging/forcing ads into some productions either. But I'd still go for it...

But then I also wonder what this will do to the current DLC publishing model...

mistercrayon

They explicitly mentioned a stadia store so I imagine it’ll be buying games on an individual basis. Not really sure how that would work with a sub.

LivDiv

mistercrayon wrote:

They explicitly mentioned a stadia store so I imagine it’ll be buying games on an individual basis. Not really sure how that would work with a sub.

Theres a host of possibilities I guess.

Xbox Live Gold for a long time was just a service with no games attached.

I think as a minimum they may have to give away games like with Games with Gold as that has become the standard consumers expect.

Like I say above, I think it may be more than that, a Gold plus Gamepass combo, along with a traditional store.

As for DLC, that isn't going anywhere, pubs wont be dropping microtransactions any time soon.

GurtTractor

Apparently there will be a thing where if you're watching a Youtube video about a game, at the end it will give the option to "Play Now", and then in theory it should just load up in the browser window where you can start playing. Can see that getting them a bit of traction.

Vela

Sounds shit; entirely internet dependent.

digi

https://youtu.be/VG06H7IQ9Aw

Digital foundry on it.

Dark Soldier

I've a feeling if they play this right this is gonna be very big. I'll be in if its worth it.

Blue Swirl

I need another box under my TV like I need another hole in my head. If there's a Stadia app for XboxPSOne4, colour me intrigued. Otherwise... meh. Good luck to 'em, but I'm happy with my Switch atm.

RedDave2

Blue Swirl wrote:

I need another box under my TV like I need another hole in my head. If there's a Stadia app for XboxPSOne4, colour me intrigued. Otherwise... meh. Good luck to 'em, but I'm happy with my Switch atm.

There is no box. I'm thinking you could maybe use a chromecast from your phone to your TV?

Cant see other consoles having this as an app though.

mk64

The article states they have huge experience in delivering streaming services like YouTube.

That pauses on my phone all the time.

Blue Swirl

RedDave2 wrote:

Blue Swirl wrote:

I need another box under my TV like I need another hole in my head. If there's a Stadia app for XboxPSOne4, colour me intrigued. Otherwise... meh. Good luck to 'em, but I'm happy with my Switch atm.

There is no box. I'm thinking you could maybe use a chromecast from your phone to your TV?

Cant see other consoles having this as an app though.

I can't find a better picture at the moment, but this appears to be a dedicated Stadia box. I might be wrong, I haven't done a whole heap of research.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=pTVzbDOd&id=714FE222E93548D9A2EA411DD0B976D19A654B2A&thid=OIF.lyO7xf8747jGGryuFB7H6A&mediaurl=https://images.everyeye.it/img-notizie/ubisoft-google-stadia-sara-complementare-pc-console-v3-369543.jpg&exph=720&expw=1280&q=Google+stadia&simid=222707227661&selectedindex=39&ajaxhist=0&vt=4&eim=1,3,4,6

Agreed on the app, though. Seems like a pipe dream.

retroking1981

Dark Soldier wrote:

I've a feeling if they play this right this is gonna be very big.

Agreed.

I think this is the future, isn't it basically how Resi 7 and Assassins Creed Odyssey run on Switch in Japan?

It's just if the time is right. In some ways 3DO was too early because its tech to be priced competitively, PS later dominated to market.

Dreamcast was too early to strike the balance of price/service of online gaming, MS created the industry standard of XBL shortly after.

Timing is everything.

acemuzzy

mk64 wrote:

The article states they have huge experience in delivering streaming services like YouTube.

That pauses on my phone all the time.

YouTube also doesn't care about lag, it take two seconds to start the video cos it's buffering up the wazoo.

But we've had that conversation before. Shit will asymptotically slide towards the laws of physics. The question is at what rate they'll get to 60FPS being viable with nominal lag. And if course how it's all priced/marketed/productized...

djchump

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Just saying.

afgavinstan

I'm staying glass half full with this. Spotify, YouTube, Netflix etc all felt like strange witchcraft when they first came along, and weren't perfect. Give it time. Could be cool.

Vela

If its an unsuccessful google product it will be canned after everyones privacy settings and passwords leak. If its a successful google product it will promote neo nazi content.

Diluted Dante

afgavinstan wrote:

I'm staying glass half full with this. Spotify, YouTube, Netflix etc all felt like strange witchcraft when they first came along, and weren't perfect. Give it time. Could be cool.

Yeah, I read that tweet, but don't agree. None of them felt like strange witchcraft to me. It also mentioned gmail, which was really weird, because that felt like... Hotmail.

The key difference with Stadia is that the others are all passive services. Press play and then sit back. Stadia requires constant 2 way communication. I don't know that there are many people saying this will never work, the main view seems to be that we aren't there yet.

cockbeard

Vela wrote:

Sounds shit; entirely internet dependent.

he says, writing on the internet

I would agree if this was a black box but it sounds like it isn't, it also sounds like they haven't discussed funding model yet. So let's look at their existing business model, here's a load of free stuff with adverts, pay us a bit and you get better/more stuff and no adverts. I can't see how that can fail to work

However I do think there's a good point in there, as we pay more and more for services dependent on an internet connection, along with the ruling in Finland about 6 years or so back that access to data was considered by them to be a human right, then maybe we need ISPs to start facing some liability for service downtime, even to us little old consumers. Someone who knows can fix my numbers or add other services but let's say:
Spotify Family £15
Netflix £12
YouTube/GoogleMusic £18
Playstation £8
XBox Live £7
So a couple of days of downtime can be expensive, in terms of unusable services

afgavinstan

One hundo. But at least they're setting off, and trying.

@dante

cockbeard

Diluted Dante wrote:

afgavinstan wrote:

I'm staying glass half full with this. Spotify, YouTube, Netflix etc all felt like strange witchcraft when they first came along, and weren't perfect. Give it time. Could be cool.

Yeah, I read that tweet, but don't agree. None of them felt like strange witchcraft to me. It also mentioned gmail, which was really weird, because that felt like... Hotmail. The key difference with Stadia is that the others are all passive services. Press play and then sit back. Stadia requires constant 2 way communication. I don't know that there are many people saying this will never work, the main view seems to be that we aren't there yet.

Not meaning to chip piss but video streaming required two way communication as well. Also a 4k 60fps image going one way and someones controller inputs going the other way, well that's going to look like one way traffic anyway. Issue will be latency, but Mugen got fightmen working pretty well online in the early days of ADSL. Let's be honest fightmen and shmups are the acid test of any of these services

Diluted Dante

In what way is video streaming requiring two way communication?

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