The future is now, thanks to Google! Earlier this week the company announced the Stadia, a cloud streaming gaming platform designed to play AAA games across a variety of devices without the need for a box...although there is, of course, a controller, and the requirement of a constant internet connection. The company has an official site for the platform, and for those of you who are really interested, you can watch the (painfully long) announcement video here. What are your thoughts on Google's attempt to break into the gaming industry? Is the Stadia a good idea, or a terrible one? Will you be buying into the Stadia when it releases later this year?
Google Stadia does not interest me in the slightest. Any console with games played through cloud streaming will not age well, imo. I feel no need to get one, especially since I own a Switch and a PS4. I strongly believe that this platform will flop, given the information I've learned so far.
*laughs derisively at Google* Okay, in all seriousness, I feel really bad for the techs who were forced to work on this thing, because the only place it could ever work out is South Korea (and, to a lesser extent, Japan). The necessary infrastructure required for this monstrosity to function even remotely properly is impossible to implement here in the States because of the nation's sheer size.
Let's see... another method for Google to watch every little thing I do, another way for Google to force advertisements into every little thing I do, another way for Google to grow into even more of a financial monopoly because of every little thing I do... and meanwhile I get to deal with even more atrocious load-times than just installing the game onto my hard-drive after downloading it from a digital distributor once. As much as I dislike 90% of Google's practices, even if this wasn't connected to them at all but was hosted by someone I love (like Steam) and if I actually had good internet I still wouldn't like it. What is the practical, logistical reason for streaming games for my own consumption? Why is downloading 40GB which decompresses onto my computer as 60GB better than downloading (a wild guess) 500GB (most of which is redundant from also being loaded previously several times I've played this game) and having a 1GB footprint in my computer? Hard drives are mad cheap these days; I don't need to have more advertisements, longer load times, and a marginally higher electric bill just to save myself the one-time cost of another hard drive for my computer. I will not be a customer.
Yeah not interesting, I prefer not having to rely on internet connection for every single game and I already have other gaming options I know are more reliable because I don't need net connection to play even single player games.
I live in a rural town where the highest consistent internet speed is 14mb per second. Even if I was willing to not own my games, my area's lackluster WI-Fi would make it impossible to run. The fact that most people can't afford or live in places that have high speed internet makes me wonder why Google even thought this would work. Do they want their platform to be a luxury product only the wealthiest of urban people can access?
