Google Cloud Games service is not worth it.
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “ GameRes Hot Money Network “(ID: GameRes_youziwang), author Puyang.
On November 19th, Stadia, a cloud game service developed by Google, was officially launched. As a technology that subverts the way people play, cloud gaming has been controversial since its inception, and it is also true for Stadia, even if it is the best cloud gaming service at present. For most people, however, their disappointment with Stadia is not due to a bad gaming experience, but to “not worth it” and “poor versatility.”
Staida: A game format anywhere, anytime
As introduced on the official website, users can freely choose the time, place, and device to run Stadia, provided that your region is within the scope of Stadia’s services.
Before getting rid of hardware requirements, you need to start with the following hardware first
TVs, computers, tablets, and mobile phones, as long as they have a high-speed and stable network environment and corresponding control equipment, they can all become game platforms, realizing anytime, anywhere. But at this stage, Stadia is clearly just a small step.
To run Stadia cloud gaming service via TV, you need:
Google account
Stadia Founder ’s Edition or Stadia Premiere or Stadia Pro subscription service + Stadia controller
Google Chromecast Ultra (included in the founding and Premiere editions)
Stadia handle
Chromecast Ultra, stadia’s streaming device, connected to TV via HDMI cable
To run Stadia cloud gaming service from your computer, you need:
Google account
Stadia founder edition or Stadia Premiere edition or Stadia Pro subscription service opened
A computer with the latest version of Google Chrome
Available controllers, such as keyboard and mouse, Stadia controller, PS4 controller, Xbox controller, etc.
Stadia controller is different from general game controllers. It has a 2.4GHz / 5GHz Wi-Fi module. The instructions entered by the player will be sent directly to the Stadia server. This method can reduce the input delay to a certain extent.
To run Stadia cloud game service from your mobile phone, you need to:
Google account
Stadia founder edition or Stadia Premiere edition or Stadia Pro subscription service opened
Google ’s Pixel 2, Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, or Pixel 4 phones
Stadia app can be downloaded from Google Play and App Store, but iOS is not supported at this time
Available controllers (wireless controllers other than Stadia are not currently supported)
Source: the verge
Except for TVs that require a dedicated Stadia controller, other devices can choose their own controllers. The mobile terminal currently only supports Google ’s Pixel series phones.Physically speaking, the PC platform is most in line with the concept of cloud gaming-just subscribe to Stadia Pro to play cloud games.
From the perspective of eliminating the cost of hardware upgrades, Stadia for TVs and computers has basically achieved this goal. Players can enjoy the 3A masterpiece gaming experience without purchasing a game console or configuring a high-end computer. However, in the concept of “anytime, anywhere”, Stadia, which is limited to the Pixel series mobile phones, clearly fails to meet the requirements. At present, it is only a service launched for some groups. Users need to purchase corresponding equipment to enjoy it. The launch of Stadia is more like a scoping test under the name of “Official Sale”.
The price is not cheaper than buying a host
First introduce the current payment model of Stadia:
StadiaPro
$ 9.99 per month
Up to 4K / 60 fps / HDR and 5.1 surround sound
Experience the free games provided by Stadia for free (you can open the Stadia Pro subscription service, the current gift game is Destiny 2: Collectible Edition)
Contains all features of the basic version
StadiaBase ( The service is not yet open, and it is expected to be online in 2020)
Free
Up to 1080p / 60fps and stereo
Support game experience on Chrome browser, PC, Pixel series phones
Since Google has not yet launched a separate Stadia Pro subscription service, consumers can only enjoy cloud gaming services by purchasing the Stadia Founder Edition or Stadia Premiere Edition. The founding version is priced at $ 129. The package includes the streaming device Chromecast Ultra, Stadia gamepad, and a three-month Stadia Pro membership. The Premiere version is basically the same as the founding version, except that the three-month membership service cannot be transferred others.
It is worth noting that Stadia Pro subscription service is not as free as the Microsoft subscription service XGP to play all the games in the game library for free. Except for the games that are given away regularly, players need to pay for the games themselves.
For core players, the founding edition of $ 129 + $ 9.9 per month subscription cost is not more cost-effective than buying a host, measured by a host priced at $ 399, stadia is equivalent to a use of 2.2 Years of host, and the average iteration time of the host is about 6 years, not to mention that stadia has no advantages in stability, game library and even preferential power.
But for players who only have the basic version of Stadia and do not have too much pursuit of game graphics, cloud gaming is undoubtedly a very good choice. They only need to buy games on Stadia and use any device at any time. Play downstream.
Stadia is good enough even at 1080P
According to the actual test by Digital Foundry, a well-known foreign evaluation agency, Stadia brings “the best picture and latency performance”. Although it can’t compare with the host, its performance in the living room and mobile terminal is sufficiently attractive.
Digital Foundry focused on the large screen in the evaluation, using a 180fps high-speed camera to shoot the test process, recording the time between pressing the joystick button to the screen feedback, and using the Xbox One X as a control group.
In order to achieve the best test results, Digital Foundry chose a 200Mbps network, and chose a wired connection to connect Chromecast to the router. After being evaluated by the Stadia speed measurement tool, the result was “excellent”.
Officially given network requirements
Delay
Take Tomb Raider: Shadow as an example. Stadia cloud games only have 50-56ms more delay than the Xbox One X running locally, and more importantly, Stadia shortens the delay time in the 60FPS performance mode. Better than Xbox.
In general, none of the games tested by Digital Foundry made them feel “unplayable” or “too stuck”, with an extra delay of 45-55ms, even for fast-paced games like Destiny 2 Shooting games also run smoothly.
From the experience of other consumers, in some scenes with many characters or complicated scenes such as explosions, the delay of Stadia cloud games has increased significantly. In some extreme cases, it may appear in online games. Teleport the picture. After all, a cloud game is not like a local game. It does not wait for the CPU to process the current screen before generating the next screen. A game running in the cloud does not hinder the performance of the machine. The smoothness of the game depends entirely on the network environment. Once the network appears The wave game will have a transient phenomenon-the cloud game transmitted in real time skips the picture of the network freeze, and the freeze problem of the cloud game is not smaller than that of the local game.
screen
According to Google ’s official introduction, the Stadia server uses a custom x86 processor with a 2.7GHz frequency and 16GB of memory. The graphics processing uses a custom AMD GPU with a performance of 10.7 teraflops. In theory, the hardware configuration is excellent. On Xbox One X. However, in the cloud game mode, the compressed video source’s picture quality will be significantly reduced.
Taking Tomb Raider: Shadow as an example, in the 60FPS performance mode, the picture details are obviously lost, but “Destiny 2” and “Red Dead Redemption 2” can not achieve the official claims 4K, 60fps.
Tomb Raider: Shadow
Red Dead Redemption 2
Digital Foundry guess, at the highest transmission quality, because of anti-aliasing algorithms and resolution of differences lead to Stadia compressed video looked somewhat vague, they will be to explore the differences Stadia picture processing through more testing Sex, such as visual effects.
But the shrinkage on the screen does not mean that Stadia is useless. The features of cloud games such as free downloading and short loading time still give it a certain advantage. Think of the PC version of Wilderness Redemption 2 with a capacity of 109.47GB. , You know the convenience of cloud game point to play.
Stadia is undoubtedly the best performing cloud game service at the current stage, whether it is compared with the picture and delay performance of the internal test, or with the more powerful GeForce Now and xCloud. The processing of the standard network environment is extremely bad, and the delay of xCloud is unsatisfactory. Stadia can provide high-quality game graphics within the delay range that players can accept, even if it is a highly realistic 3A masterpiece such as Red Dead Redemption 2. , Or FPS games such as “Destiny 2” that require high latency, it can run stably. But it still failed to achieve 4K, 60fps gameplay previous propaganda, compared to the more superior performance PS5, Xboxs Scarlett is it looks stretched.
Doing a game sales platform
The performance of Stadia cloud games is good enough, but it is not enough to match or surpass the local host and high-end PC. The core gamers may not be the main audience of Stadia (but Stadia is currently buying basically core gamers), with free version of Stadia base is the foundation that allows players to buy the game on that platform might be more attractive.
In an ideal situation, players only need to purchase games on the Stadia platform to enjoy the full-platform 1080P, 60fps gaming experience. No matter when and where you are, as long as the network conditions allow, you can The illusion of playing the game you have purchased on the device upstream is undoubtedly the biggest advantage of cloud games different from consoles and PCs: completely get rid of hardware restrictions.
But the premise of this fantasy is that it has enough game reserves, obviouslyStadia, a scarce number of old games, is far from meeting the requirements.
The lineup of games currently supported by Stadia
More defects and more possibilities
Some of the shipping problems that occurred during development and sales, Stadia at this stage still have many ridiculous flaws.
For example, a high amount of bandwidth usage, playing Destiny 2 for 30 minutes, the amount of data reached 6.2GB, and an hour up to 9.5GB. Even in accordance with Stadia’s minimum requirements of 720P, 60fps, and 5Mbps, it will require 2.25GB per hour, while theoretically the maximum bandwidth requirement of 4K and 60fps is 15GB, which is far higher than Netflix’s 4K video 3.5 ~ 7GB bandwidth.
Even though most homes currently use unlimited network services, there are still hidden traffic restrictions. 1TB of traffic a month is only enough for players to play 4K games for 65 hours and 1080P and 60fps games for 113 hours.
Of course, such a huge amount of data also brings another problem-machine cooling.
Although Stadia only transmits video streams, when the amount of streaming data is too large, it will increase the operating load of the device. The compact Chromecast Ultra obviously does not have a corresponding cooling accessory or a corresponding reminder function. Many consumers have said that the Chromecast Ultra is running too hot. This problem may even cause the game to automatically shut down (about 3-4 hours of continuous operation), and the game progress is naturally tortured.
Most netizens on Reddit indicate that the machine will automatically shut down when it overheats
Currently, the situation is mostly reflected on the Chromecast Ultra on the TV side, and similar problems may not occur on the mobile side., And even worse:
The real-time big data transmission causes the CPU to continue to run under high load. The heat dissipation problem and power consumption of the mobile phone are not enough to support long-term cloud games.
Another example is network problems. Although Google claims that the minimum network requirement for running Stadia is only 5Mbps, in fact, the network environment that can be used is not rich, at least in offices and public places can not meet the demand, even if its bandwidth is far beyond the official 20Mbps.
However, Stadia has shown the world the possibility of cloud games. It gives players a wonderful picture and brings “anytime, anywhere” to reality. At the same time, Google also claims that it will provide more functions for Stadia, such as the basic functions of a gaming platform-achievement system, screenshot sharing, etc. . Especially in the game mode associated with Youtube, players can click the button to play with the anchor while watching the live broadcast.
Conclusion
No matter from the media or personal evaluation, most of their evaluations of Stadia will mention “not worth it”, “not now”, “just a beta version”.
Most of the general reviews on Metacritic
Currently, Stadia is a lean game platform with only streaming functions. There is neither a rich game library nor sufficient platform functions. Even the controllers and supported mobile devices lack sufficient versatility. Sexually, just like Stadia’s main page. Although its bones as a cloud game are tough enough, it still lacks the indestructibility of a true 4K experience.
It has the advantages that cloud games should have, and it has better latency and screen performance than all current cloud games. It opens up all platforms and has enough capital to win more game licenses.
But it also has the inherent and inherent defects of cloud games. The stability of the network environment forces it to be unable to do it anytime, anywhere. The dry game library and uneconomical prices make players lose their desire to buy. With the optimization of streaming data and the cooling of the machine, players are also discouraged.
The biggest revolution in cloud gaming is that it lifts the restrictions on devices and places to play games.Control, but correspondingly, it is restricted by the network where control is not in its own hands. It does not solve the problems faced by the development of games, but provides a new way of playing games. Stadia has undoubtedly taken a big step, but it has obviously not yet reached the next stage of cloud games.
First introduce the current payment model of Stadia:
StadiaPro
$ 9.99 per month
Up to 4K / 60 fps / HDR and 5.1 surround sound
Experience the free games provided by Stadia for free (you can open the Stadia Pro subscription service, the current gift game is Destiny 2: Collectible Edition)
Contains all features of the basic version
StadiaBase ( The service is not yet open, and it is expected to be online in 2020)
Free
Up to 1080p / 60fps and stereo
Support game experience on Chrome browser, PC, Pixel series phones
Since Google has not yet launched a separate Stadia Pro subscription service, consumers can only enjoy cloud gaming services by purchasing the Stadia Founder Edition or Stadia Premiere Edition. The founding version is priced at $ 129. The package includes the streaming device Chromecast Ultra, Stadia gamepad, and a three-month Stadia Pro membership. The Premiere version is basically the same as the founding version, except that the three-month membership service cannot be transferred others.
It is worth noting that Stadia Pro subscription service is not as free as the Microsoft subscription service XGP to play all the games in the game library for free. Except for the games that are given away regularly, players need to pay for the games themselves.
For core players, the founding edition of $ 129 + $ 9.9 per month subscription cost is not more cost-effective than buying a host, measured by a host priced at $ 399, stadia is equivalent to a use of 2.2 Years of host, and the average iteration time of the host is about 6 years, not to mention that stadia has no advantages in stability, game library and even preferential power.
But for players who only have the basic version of Stadia and do not have too much pursuit of game graphics, cloud gaming is undoubtedly a very good choice. They only need to buy games on Stadia and use any device at any time. Play downstream.
Stadia is good enough even at 1080P
According to the actual test by Digital Foundry, a well-known foreign evaluation agency, Stadia brings “the best picture and latency performance”. Although it can’t compare with the host, its performance in the living room and mobile terminal is sufficiently attractive.
Digital Foundry focused on the large screen in the evaluation, using a 180fps high-speed camera to shoot the test process, recording the time between pressing the joystick button to the screen feedback, and using the Xbox One X as a control group.
In order to achieve the best test results, Digital Foundry chose a 200Mbps network, and chose a wired connection to connect Chromecast to the router. After being evaluated by the Stadia speed measurement tool, the result was “excellent”.
Officially given network requirements
Delay
Take Tomb Raider: Shadow as an example. Stadia cloud games only have 50-56ms more delay than the Xbox One X running locally, and more importantly, Stadia shortens the delay time in the 60FPS performance mode. Better than Xbox.
In general, none of the games tested by Digital Foundry made them feel “unplayable” or “too stuck”, with an extra delay of 45-55ms, even for fast-paced games like Destiny 2 Shooting games also run smoothly.
From the experience of other consumers, in some scenes with many characters or complicated scenes such as explosions, the delay of Stadia cloud games has increased significantly. In some extreme cases, it may appear in online games. Teleport the picture. After all, a cloud game is not like a local game. It does not wait for the CPU to process the current screen before generating the next screen. A game running in the cloud does not hinder the performance of the machine. The smoothness of the game depends entirely on the network environment. Once the network appears The wave game will have a transient phenomenon-the cloud game transmitted in real time skips the picture of the network freeze, and the freeze problem of the cloud game is not smaller than that of the local game.
screen
According to Google ’s official introduction, the Stadia server uses a custom x86 processor with a 2.7GHz frequency and 16GB of memory. The graphics processing uses a custom AMD GPU with a performance of 10.7 teraflops. In theory, the hardware configuration is excellent. On Xbox One X. However, in the cloud game mode, the compressed video source’s picture quality will be significantly reduced.
Taking Tomb Raider: Shadow as an example, in the 60FPS performance mode, the picture details are obviously lost, but “Destiny 2” and “Red Dead Redemption 2” can not achieve the official claims 4K, 60fps.
Tomb Raider: Shadow
Red Dead Redemption 2
Digital Foundry guess, at the highest transmission quality, because of anti-aliasing algorithms and resolution of differences lead to Stadia compressed video looked somewhat vague, they will be to explore the differences Stadia picture processing through more testing Sex, such as visual effects.
But the shrinkage on the screen does not mean that Stadia is useless. The features of cloud games such as free downloading and short loading time still give it a certain advantage. Think of the PC version of Wilderness Redemption 2 with a capacity of 109.47GB. , You know the convenience of cloud game point to play.
Stadia is undoubtedly the best performing cloud game service at the current stage, whether it is compared with the picture and delay performance of the internal test, or with the more powerful GeForce Now and xCloud. The processing of the standard network environment is extremely bad, and the delay of xCloud is unsatisfactory. Stadia can provide high-quality game graphics within the delay range that players can accept, even if it is a highly realistic 3A masterpiece such as Red Dead Redemption 2. , Or FPS games such as “Destiny 2” that require high latency, it can run stably. But it still failed to achieve 4K, 60fps gameplay previous propaganda, compared to the more superior performance PS5, Xboxs Scarlett is it looks stretched.
Doing a game sales platform
The performance of Stadia cloud games is good enough, but it is not enough to match or surpass the local host and high-end PC. The core gamers may not be the main audience of Stadia (but Stadia is currently buying basically core gamers), with free version of Stadia base is the foundation that allows players to buy the game on that platform might be more attractive.
In an ideal situation, players only need to purchase games on the Stadia platform to enjoy the full-platform 1080P, 60fps gaming experience. No matter when and where you are, as long as the network conditions allow, you can The illusion of playing the game you have purchased on the device upstream is undoubtedly the biggest advantage of cloud games different from consoles and PCs: completely get rid of hardware restrictions.
But the premise of this fantasy is that it has enough game reserves, obviouslyStadia, a scarce number of old games, is far from meeting the requirements.
The lineup of games currently supported by Stadia
More defects and more possibilities
Some of the shipping problems that occurred during development and sales, Stadia at this stage still have many ridiculous flaws.
For example, a high amount of bandwidth usage, playing Destiny 2 for 30 minutes, the amount of data reached 6.2GB, and an hour up to 9.5GB. Even in accordance with Stadia’s minimum requirements of 720P, 60fps, and 5Mbps, it will require 2.25GB per hour, while theoretically the maximum bandwidth requirement of 4K and 60fps is 15GB, which is far higher than Netflix’s 4K video 3.5 ~ 7GB bandwidth.
Even though most homes currently use unlimited network services, there are still hidden traffic restrictions. 1TB of traffic a month is only enough for players to play 4K games for 65 hours and 1080P and 60fps games for 113 hours.
Of course, such a huge amount of data also brings another problem-machine cooling.
Although Stadia only transmits video streams, when the amount of streaming data is too large, it will increase the operating load of the device. The compact Chromecast Ultra obviously does not have a corresponding cooling accessory or a corresponding reminder function. Many consumers have said that the Chromecast Ultra is running too hot. This problem may even cause the game to automatically shut down (about 3-4 hours of continuous operation), and the game progress is naturally tortured.
Most netizens on Reddit indicate that the machine will automatically shut down when it overheats
Currently, the situation is mostly reflected on the Chromecast Ultra on the TV side, and similar problems may not occur on the mobile side., And even worse:
The real-time big data transmission causes the CPU to continue to run under high load. The heat dissipation problem and power consumption of the mobile phone are not enough to support long-term cloud games.
Another example is network problems. Although Google claims that the minimum network requirement for running Stadia is only 5Mbps, in fact, the network environment that can be used is not rich, at least in offices and public places can not meet the demand, even if its bandwidth is far beyond the official 20Mbps.
However, Stadia has shown the world the possibility of cloud games. It gives players a wonderful picture and brings “anytime, anywhere” to reality. At the same time, Google also claims that it will provide more functions for Stadia, such as the basic functions of a gaming platform-achievement system, screenshot sharing, etc. . Especially in the game mode associated with Youtube, players can click the button to play with the anchor while watching the live broadcast.
Conclusion
No matter from the media or personal evaluation, most of their evaluations of Stadia will mention “not worth it”, “not now”, “just a beta version”.
Most of the general reviews on Metacritic
Currently, Stadia is a lean game platform with only streaming functions. There is neither a rich game library nor sufficient platform functions. Even the controllers and supported mobile devices lack sufficient versatility. Sexually, just like Stadia’s main page. Although its bones as a cloud game are tough enough, it still lacks the indestructibility of a true 4K experience.
It has the advantages that cloud games should have, and it has better latency and screen performance than all current cloud games. It opens up all platforms and has enough capital to win more game licenses.
But it also has the inherent and inherent defects of cloud games. The stability of the network environment forces it to be unable to do it anytime, anywhere. The dry game library and uneconomical prices make players lose their desire to buy. With the optimization of streaming data and the cooling of the machine, players are also discouraged.
The biggest revolution in cloud gaming is that it lifts the restrictions on devices and places to play games.Control, but correspondingly, it is restricted by the network where control is not in its own hands. It does not solve the problems faced by the development of games, but provides a new way of playing games. Stadia has undoubtedly taken a big step, but it has obviously not yet reached the next stage of cloud games.