My Thoughts on Google Stadia

It's undeniable that gaming (and probably every other form of entertainment) is going in the way of streaming. When Google announced their entrance into the gaming front, Google Stadia, on Tuesday, I was both intrigued and skeptical. There are parts that are genuinely cool, but a lot felt like fluffed up PR talk. I felt a lot of the vibes that I get when I think of Apple's service-centric event coming this week. "You're great as a company at X, so why try going into Y, when you should be focusing more on X?" That being said, here are my thoughts.

The Good

The idea of taking the focus of gaming away from hardware and instead realizing that games can be cloud streamed is a cool premise, at least in a perfect world with no input lag. But for now, let's pretend that there are no connection issues with Stadia at all. Suddenly, your phone or low-end laptop has the graphics and rendering power of a high-end PC, because all it needs to do is stream what is essentially a video stream. The idea of this evolving without the need to upgrade hardware sounds like a dream. You can look at the same game running on a Nintendo Switch and a PS4, and the graphical capabilities are night and day, but the Switch gives up the extra power for portability. With Stadia, you get the best of both worlds, where you can have portability and great looking visuals, because all of the processing is done on one of Google's servers. The continuity features with the controller are also very Apple-esque. Some of the in-game features are also pretty cool. Share states, anti-cheating, and 4K are nice touches provided the product works as advertised.

The Bad

The main issue with this event is what we don't know. We don't know what games will be on this service, aside from a select few. We don't know how much it will cost. We don't know if this will even catch on. Aside from their grasp on the internet, what makes Google qualified to run the gaming service that is supposed to revolutionize video games? I'd rather have a company that didn't have a smartphone OS bias, so iOS users don't miss out on certain features. That's not to say I want Apple to do this by any means. Sundar Pichai began the conference stating, "I'm not actually a big gamer." But then you see the Konami code on the bottom of Google's controller, which is cringy at best. It feels like Google is stepping into the gaming arena because market research shows that it's becoming bigger by the second.

Moving on, what Google had to show at their event wasn't super impressive. I'm all for not giving me a false perception of a product, but if what they showed in their controlled environment is average performance to best case performance, I'm not looking forward to how it works on my network. I've tried PS4 Remote Play on my phone, and as cool as it is, the input lag on my local network was frustrating for any game that wasn't a button masher. So, if that didn't work on my local network, who's to say Google can pull that off with internet involved? Don't get me wrong, I'd love for them to prove me wrong. I'm sure Google invested more into Stadia than Sony into the PS4 Remote Play app. A big hurdle for Stadia is the network performance aspect.

Also, the fact that Google's controller has an always-on microphone is a turn off for me, though I'm glad they let me use my own controller.

It's hard to see Stadia being what Google hypes it up to be. It isn't like movie streaming where movies are significantly cheaper than most games. If we put games to a streaming model, I think that could set a bad precedent for game developers. I'm by no means knowledgable on how video game economics work, but here's my interpretation. If they make their money from someone clicking a play button, would developers feel as incentivized to put as much quality and content in their games? A lot of games that don't live up to the $60 price point usually go on sale pretty quickly and eventually end up in the bargain bin, but when there's no price tag attached to any specific game, there's no depreciation to be had. 

In Summary

Google Stadia could be revolutionary, or it could be the next Ouya. I can't give a full conclusion until we hear more about Stadia in a few months. I can definitely say it has captured my interest way more than this news subscription thing Apple has been drumming up these past few months. I will continue to follow Stadia up to its launch to see if they make any revolutionary announcements.