[vhab]

Unfortunately this doesn't surprise me.

We worked on a Stadia title before launch. We were constantly reminded by Google how big the YouTube integration would be, which unique killer features we absolutely had to integrate with, and more.

And non of that ever materialized after launch. If Google can't even convince their own internal teams to cooperate, how do they expect studios and consumers to care the slightest for their product.

It also didn't help that supporting Stadia was equivalent to supporting an entirely different new console in scope, except less battle tested and much more buggy. Meanwhile all their competitors allow existing console or Windows builds to be shipped to their platforms.

And while we're sharing anecdotes, this was a fun one. For the longest time devkits were limited to 1080p, but at least the output was streamed from rack mounted servers that supported a couple of concurrent sessions. A few months before launch, they finally made 4k devkits available, except they supported only a single session, couldn't stream, and instead had to sit at a developer's desk with a monitor hooked up...

Let that sink in, a streaming service's devkits couldn't stream :)

[dougmwne]

From the consumer perspective, this reminds me of the new chromecast that was released without Stadia support, even though the previous chromecast supported it. Get that! A streaming stick that couldn’t stream the company’s own paid service. Preposterous!

[traspler]

Do you think the YouTube integration and the other "killer features" you mentioned would have made Stadia more popular if they actually came to fruition?

Personally I believe if the YouTube integration was ready at launch the whole Stadia story would have been very, very different. I do believe that a frictionless way to jump into a game that you are currently watching a video/stream for or even join a streamer in multiplayer with a click would have been an amazing thing!

[postalrat]

IMO streaming games still has a lot of potential. Too bad Google couldn't pull it off.

The Youtube stuff is only the surface of what would be possible.

[iLoveOncall]

> IMO streaming games still has a lot of potential.

Not with the current internet speed.

The vast majority of people is below anything that would play "okay", and almost everyone is below a speed that would play well (1 GBPS).

Until 1 GBPS is the default EVERYWHERE, streaming games has 0 potential.

[drusepth]

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.

[iLoveOncall]

It does not run well at 50mbps, you have artifacts all over the screen, it's unbearable. And as people are moving more towards 1440p or 4k monitors, it's even more untolerable.

[SXX]

Streaming problem is not about bandwidth, but about latency. With current technology and physics there nothing you can do about latency.

[rieTohgh6]

It is both. I tried GeForce NOW and it required only about 60Mbps - it was just a fraction of Gbit connection. Still, I sometimes struggled to keep it at that minimum. Variable bandwidth doesn't matter for file downloads or video streaming(where there is few seconds of buffer) but it makes game streaming almost unplayable.

[ancientworldnow]

Nah, if you can stream Netflix in 1080p or better and have low latency then game streaming works fine. I know people who do it off LTE without issue even for non competitive games.

[iLoveOncall]

I encourage you to watch a Netflix movie and a live video game side by side and you will see how nonsensical the comparison is.

[drusepth]

Doing this now... what are you expecting to be obvious from this experiment? Obviously the video game has some upstream requirements (just user input), but neither are stuttering or having any issues.

[iLoveOncall]

The quality is simply incomparable. A 4K movie streamed wouldn't even compared to a 1080p game being ran.

You're putting side by side compressed and raw visuals, it just doesn't compare at all.

[p1necone]

You can get high quality streaming video with much less than 1GBPS, low latency and consistent speed + latency are the important parts.

(Needed bandwidth will still be higher than regular video streaming though, as you have to compress in real time)

[staticman2]

I Stream locally from my gaming PC to Nvidia Shield in 4k with around 80 mbps and it looks as good as an HDMI hookup.(and less than that would look fine)

[iLoveOncall]

Yeah streaming locally you don't even need internet buddy, the speed of your connection is totally irrelevant if you are on the same local network.

[synicalx]

> a streaming service's devkits couldn't stream

That is just mind boggling - how on earth were you meant to test anything properly?

[JyB]

> how big the YouTube integration would be, which unique killer features

Exactly, this was advertised so much even to regular users/consumers and it genuinely seemed like it could be really cool. I'm baffled that nothing really came out in the end.