Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Stadia review! This is the future of gaming (if you have a high data cap)”.
So this is Google stadia and it’s Google’s reaction to the future of gaming. Now first, I just want to clear up exactly how Google stadia works, because I feel like there’s a lot of confusion in the gaming community right now. A lot of people think that Google stadia is like Netflix for video games, where you can just select a list of video games and play it for a monthly fee, but that’s not actually how stadia works stadia. Unlike Microsoft, Project X cloud is something in which you basically pay for games at full price, and then it renders the games on their servers and pulls down the data to you.
Think of Google stadia kind of like a console in the cloud that can render things at full resolution up to 4k 60fps. If you have the pro tier and then you’re, basically streaming it back to your TV. So it is like Netflix in that you’re streaming it.
But it’s not like Netflix and that you still have to buy most of the games at full price. Now, at lunch, there’s only gon na be a pro tier for Google stadia, which is ten dollars a month, and that gets you up to 4k streaming on a chromecast at 60fps with 5.1 surround sound, but later in 2020 there will be a free tier. So you’ll be able to just use the surface and still buy the games at full price, but that is limited to 1080p streaming now, if you’re gon na play on your phone on your laptop, that’s limited to 1080 be streaming anyway, so it seems like the free Tier is kind of a good option, though, like I said it’s not gon na be available until 2020 at some point.
So this is the stadia controller and you don’t necessarily need it to play stadia on your phone or your laptop, because you can actually use any USB compliant controller to play. In fact, you can pretty much play any game on your laptop with just a mouse and keyboard, but I think that Google really wants you to use the stadia controller, because there’s a few benefits that the stadia controller has that other controllers, just don’t have now. First of all, you’re gon na need the stadia controller to play on your chromecast of ultra. There is a stadia button in the center, which is basically used to power it on, and then you’ve got a Google assistant button which can be used to help you throughout the game. You can take a screenshot and Google assistant will be able to pull up a YouTube video and show you where you’re at in the game and kind of pull up a walkthrough right now, Google assistant doesn’t work on Google stadia. So that’s a feature.
That’S coming in the future other than that you’ve got your standard. D-Pad you’ve got your X a Y B array and you’ve got your triggers. It’S not really a complicated controller, but it is a pretty cool controller and it feels really nice in the hand, and it is a u.s., be compliant controller.
But Google hasn’t said whether or not they’re actually going to let you use it on other games yet. But we’re hoping that they do in a future software patch. So this is actually a Wi-Fi controller. So the stadia controller uses Bluetooth to connect to your comcast ultra, which basically just gives it the Wi-Fi information, and then it sends the data up into the Wi-Fi to Google servers and then your chromecast ultra pulls that back down. So unfortunately, you can’t just use this as a standard, Bluetooth, controller right now and I kind of understand why I think Google is trying to reduce the amount of latency through the gameplay as much as possible and if they had bluetooth to Wi-Fi. That would add an extra layer.
We can hope that maybe Google will enable Bluetooth control later down the line, because this is a really nice controller and I’d love to play this on Steam, or something like that now, there’s, a few really big benefits of stadia and play on multiple displays is one Of them, you can actually just be playing on your chromecast in your living room and then, if you want, you can move into your room. Go on your laptop and pick up right where you left off, because the games are basically being rendered on. Google servers you don’t actually have to use any of your own hardware and the safe state or the state you’re at in the game, is in Google server. So when you pull it up on your computer you’re, exactly where you left off on your chromecast, so right now we’re playing on a chromecast ultra, and I also have state yet open on my pixel book.
So if I just hit play still playing on the chromecast and read them reddit, that is booting and bouncing keyboard, we’re exactly where we left off on the TV now. You can also use this on pixel phones, pixels, two through four, basically so pixel to pixel three pixel, three, a in pixel, four and you’re, probably wondering if you can just play the game on your pixel wherever you are and no, you can’t use mobile data to Play but you can use a tethered connection, so if you have another phone that has data technically, you could connect to that hotspot and then play on your pixel phone. But I’ve got to warn you. Google stadia uses a lot of data even for like a 720p to 1080p connection.
I was getting about two point: five to three megabytes per second of download, so you’re – probably not going to want to use this on a hotspot for reference. That’S about seven gigs, an hour which is just a ton of data if you’re streaming, something like Netflix that’ll, also use something like 2.5 to 3 megabytes per second, but it’ll, actually buffer. The content with Google stadia. It’S constantly pulling down information every second and it can’t actually buffer content, so you’re going to be pulling tons of data while you’re playing with stadia now. This is kind of a problem because over here on the west coast, comcast has a data cap of a thousand gigabytes per month and yeah. This seems like a lot and you’d have to play a lot of stadia to use this much, but for reference, if you were to play stadia for three hours a day, for example, and you played every single day of the month, that’s over 600 gigabytes that you’re Using for the full month – and that doesn’t include anything else that you’re doing on your internet connection so be prepared to use a lot of data for stadia. But there are a lot of benefits to cloud gaming.
For example, you can just be playing on your chromecast and then shift over to your laptop. If you want to, you, can go to your dentist office and bring your chromebook and suddenly you’re playing destiny. 2 on your Chromebook, while you’re waiting for your appointment.
If you’re not paying for that data, this is pretty cool, because you’re actually rendering all that information in the cloud and pulling it down to you. You don’t need a gaming computer or a high-end console to actually play these Triple A titles alright, but enough about the amount of data that Stadio uses. How does it actually feel to play? A lot of people were worried about input, lag or latency while they were playing stadia, and there definitely is some there. Even on a weaker connection, I could still feel it you’re playing a slower game like kind then it’s not really an issue, but if you’re playing a faster pace, twitch game like maybe Mortal Kombat or destiny, it’s probably going to be a little bit more of a Problem now, if you’re just a kind of a casual player and you’re on a good internet connection, really I didn’t feel that much latency like I was playing on a pretty fast internet connection, playing Mortal Kombat and it didn’t feel like. There was a lot more latency than there would just be from a Bluetooth controller to a console. Now, if you’re, a more hardcore player – and you play competitively – that’s probably going to be more of an issue, and I can’t see hardcore players transferring to stadia anytime soon.
Now, speaking of games is a pretty good launch library of games coming out for stadia, and I’m not going to talk about them all so, instead I’ll just throw them up on the screen, so go ahead and pause the YouTube video. If you want to check that out now, if you do want to play on your phone, Google’s gon na be selling this clip that clips to the front of the Google stadia controller, it’s not the greatest quality, but I mean it works and they’re gon na be Selling it on the Google store now currently, you do have to use a USBC to USBC cable, to connect the stadia controller, to either your phone or to a laptop and that’s a little bit annoying, because it would be nice if you could just use bluetooth. But I’m assuming that Google wants to continue with this Wi-Fi thing and send the inputs directly from the controller to the Internet, so for now they’re only allowing a direct connection. Now the controller also has a headset and mic jack, so you can plug in a regular gaming headset and you can do voice chat and Google stadia has voice chat built-in. Another feature that they want to come in. The future is if you’re live streaming directly through stadia other people who are watching.
You are able to drop into your safe state and play from exactly where you are and that’s a pretty cool feature, but right now it’s also not available. So there’s just kind of a few features that Google is kind of headlining for stadia, but they’re not available yet so we can’t exactly review them. So is Google stadia worth it? Well, I think that depends on two things: one, the stability of your internet connection and two, how much data you’re willing to use in a given. Now I think the concept is amazing.
Game streaming is really cool because, if you’re playing a game like Red, Dead, Redemption, 2 or cyberpunk 2077, which are really really difficult to run – and you need either a really good gaming computer or a console to play, it’s awesome that you can just have. Someone else render that you can just pull down the data and you could play on a Chromebook. You could play on a Windows laptop on a MacBook. You could play on your phone. You can play it on your TV.
It’S pretty amazing that you can play on pretty much any screen now. Their manufacturers clearly also understand that game streaming is kind of the future of gaming, and so there’s other things like Microsoft’s Project X cloud, which pretty much is a Netflix for gaming. You play a monthly fee and you can play any of their titles from the cloud they get render than cloud and you can play them on multiple different devices.
But Google stadia is more just trying to be that console gaming computer in the cloud that you can play on your TV on your pixel book or on your phone. Now it does kind of suck that you have to buy these games at full retail value. You know if you do have the stadium pro tier. You are gon na get a couple of free games every month through Google and there’s going to be exclusive prices for certain games at different variables of time. So there will be sales and stuff it’s just contained within the stadia ecosystem, so Google stadia is really really cool. There are a ton of benefits for it if you’re willing to put up with the extremely high data usage and the fact that you need a really good internet connection for it to work properly.
Now, of course, Project X, cloud and other games streaming. Services are also going to use a lot of data, so if you think that game streaming is the future, you really have to consider the fact that you need a lot of data and a fast internet connection for this all to work. But if those are things that you can put up with and live with, then game streaming is a really amazing service.
Alright guys so, like I said before, there’s a lot of features of Google stadia that haven’t actually come out yet so we’re going to have to continue evaluating the service over a period of time make sure you stay tuned to Android or thorium. I have a written review over there with some metrics statistics, pictures of the different pieces of hardware and all that nice stuff. So until next time, I’ll catch you in the next article, you .