For the last decade or so the main “core” gaming platforms have been Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo. Late last year Google tried to become one of these by launching Google Stadia, a streaming-only gaming platform. Recently Google has been giving out a lot of free codes for Google Stadia, so a certain video game blogger now has recently had the opportunity to try the service out.
The most important part of any gaming platform is what games it has. At the moment the only way to get into to Google Stadia requires at least buying a pro membership, which comes with some games. Assuming that this service is worth paying for in the first place, the selection is alright. The overall quality of the games is about as good as you could ask for and has a pretty good variety. Once you start looking at the games you don’t get for “free”, some serious problems start coming up. First of all, looking at the price tag basically everything is full price or hardly discounted compared to other services. Considering Google Stadia games are a rather bad value, since you don’t even get a digital file, let alone a physical object, just the right to play them, this is absolutely ridiculous. If you can get beyond the prices though, you will probably then notice how few prices there actually are. The only really big hitters here are NBA 2K20 and Red Dead Redemption 2 from Take-Two Interactive. Other than that you have a bunch of mostly second-rate (relative to the previously mentioned games) Western (developed) games, a few indie games, and a few Japanese games that aren’t even especially popular. Games like Call of Duty, Fifa, and Fortnite are all glaring omissions that make this service look like a joke compared to any of the other major ones. Basically, if you really care about what games you play Google Stadia is not for you.
As for how the service actually plays, there is unfortunately only more bad news. More than half the time, even when having only one device actively using the easily qualified Wifi signal used for this impressions article, Google Stadia is frankly unplayable. Destiny 2, the game tested most was the second worst offender. When it was actually working the game was perfectly playable, despite extremely common and obvious compression artifacts even when running on the highest quality setting. Other times there would be frequent spikes of added latency which made it pretty much unplayable since you couldn’t even adjust to the constantly changing amounts of latency. Other times the game was literally dozens of seconds behind (though strangely the audio was often still fine). One time the game even seemingly crashed, leaving the author with a black screen until restarting it. GRID was even worse. As a racing simulator (at least partially), you have to have extremely precise control to not hit walls or get sent sliding or gliding in the wrong direction. Google Stadia never once offered an experience close to precise enough to make this a reality. The game felt extremely inconsistent to control the entire time, like the author wasn’t even the one who was actually controlling the game. The last game tested SteamWorld Dig 2, fared the best by far. It was mostly playable, as one would hope for a game as simple as a 2D platformer. Still, there were some moments where the latency really shot up which is really never acceptable in a precise platformer of any kind. Overall Google Stadia is basically unplayable in the author’s experience. It may have been the fault of the author’s connection, but GeForce Now, another streaming service ran essentially absolutely perfectly under often worse conditions for the author.
As for everything else, it works well enough. The amount of compatibility with devices is really unimpressive right now though. Overall if you can afford the internet connection that makes this actually playable, just buy an Xbox, PlayStation, or Switch (if you want to play on the go like Google says you will be able to when portable devices people actually own will be supported). The games on these systems will be cheaper, play better, look better, and be better. You will also be able to play with other gamers who value their money (the vast majority of them) online. If you really want to stream games, try getting into the Project xCloud betas or try GeForce Now, which have been received much more positively right now.
