Stadia thoughts
Google’s latest attempt to jump into gaming is a streaming service called stadia. Stadia is the name of the service and also the datacenter hardware which the games are built for. It works kind of like a console where (after signing up for a free trial of “Stadia Pro”, their version of PS+ Xbox Live Gold or Nintendo Switch Online,) you buy games and stream them. What’s so good about Stadia is that it works on any latop or desktop with a chromium based browser. It’s not so great if you wanted to use an iphone or ipad or even most android phones, but you can use google play money to buy games. From my testing it works if you have a fast enough connection, which won’t be true for most people. Also, I can’t even get it to work if I change the settings from balanced(1080p) to low(720p). When it works stadia is great and let’s me or anybody play games without downloads, updates, or taking up 60GB or more on a hard drive. Unfortunately if you don’t have a device connection speed of at 5mbps or higher don’t expect to work at all, and if less than 10mpbs expect input lag. What surprises me is which games I’ve gotten to work and which games I’ve had an issue with. Destiny 2 is an MMOFPS which means lots of players and enemies, but it’s the game I’ve been able to play more than the others and it works pretty well. GYLT is a stealth horror game which is not my favorite genre, but input lag was very noticeable. Thumper is a rhythm game with almost one button controls, and it’s also had the lag problem occaisionally. It’s probably just my connection being too slow or unstable to play but it is odd to see which games seem to have more problems than others. Honestly I think stadia could use more turn based games like Civilization so lag isn’t getting in the way, and more games in general. I’d recommend stadia but only to people with really fast connections and a reason like money or space that they can’t get a game console. Home