Chittagong
Gold Member
As keen Google Stadia followers may remember, I have been extremely sceptical towards gaming on the cloud, as the inherent obstacle of speed of light makes the idea of having an acceptable gaming experience on the cloud very challenging.
Still, I wanted to see it for myself - to see whether the character jumps half a second after I press the button like I have seen on that gif, or whether the stream drops into a pixelated mess every once in a while. So I bought a Stadia, just for the laughs. Here is what I found out.
Unboxing
Stadia comes in a slick box, even if barebones, with the essentials. The build quality feels a bit on the budget side for the chargers, cables and inlays, but the controller feels solid. Very similar to Switch Pro controller in feel, and not a million miles from the Xbox One controller.
Setup
Setting up Stadia was a nightmare.
Setting up Chromecast. First you have to download two apps from AppStore - Google Home and Stadia. Then you need to go through screens and screens of T&Cs, privacy settings, device access and such. And even after that, I couldn't connect to the Chromecast . I used an ethernet cable as instructed for a 'better experience', but my iPhone simply wouldn't find the Chromecast. I tried rebooting the Chromecast, setting my phone to airplane mode and back, but nothing helped. As last resort, I unplugged the Ethernet cable and - boom - finally connected to my phone.
Setting up the Stadia controller. The next hurdle was setting up the controller. Turns of out the controller needs to be in the same wifi as the Chromecast. No problem, same wifi I go. Then it asks me to press certain buttons on the controller to connect to the Chromecast. I press and press, and nothing. I reboot the controller, reconnect the controller, reboot the Chromecast. Nothing seems to work. Then I google for some help, and find advice to set my iPhone to airplane mode and back and - phew - the controller finally connected.
Connection
I sit literally on top of a fibre switch in London, so I have pretty much the optimal conditions for gameplay. While today I am probably in the 0.1% of connections, in 10-15 years my connection will surely be very commonplace.
Gaming experience
I picked two FPSs with the idea that they would be most unforgiving in terms of input lag. I started with Destiny 2. I was genuinely surprised how responsive the game felt. It does help that Bungie controls always feel a bit weightier and floatier than Call of Duty, for example. Also, it felt like there was some sort of prediction going on occasionally, but generally I was able to complete the first raid well and didn't feel at disadvantage due the responsiveness.
My second game was Wolfenstein: Young Blood. Here the floatier controls are more apparent, given that Wolfenstein is usually very responsive. It didn't hinder my gaming experience, but knowing the difference, I noticed it was there. Generally, I do now believe the lag is workable for the mainstream gamer, given a good connection.
I shot two videos showing the experience. Please excuse the vertical mode, I wanted to capture both the controller and the screen. It was a particularly sunny day in London (finally!), so there is quite a lot of glare on the screen.
Visual & Audio Experience
Resolution and frame rate. The visual quality was generally on the soft side. I would guess in the 1080P ballpark. Text feels a bit soft, but not distractingly so. The frame rate remained stable throughout my sessions, and to my surprise, I never encountered a drop in the stream quality or the pixellation I expected.
Details, effects and post processing. The games I played - Destiny 2 and Wolfenstein: Young Blood - didn't seem to run on anything near Ultra settings. To my untrained eye, the level of detail seemed about medium, and I saw visible aliasing. This was baffling, given that the games are supposed to run on powerful blades.
Audio. The audio quality is fantastic, I was impressed by the surround sound over a stream.
User Experience
No downloads, no forced updates. Being able to buy a game and boot it right away is really satisfying, as is knowing that you'll never see any update downloads or reboots.
But not truly pick-up-and-play yet, either. The games are currently hindered by the fact that they are simply rewrapped console games. I was expecting that when I quit Wolfenstein I could just jump in to where I left it and continue playing. This is currently not the case. The game reboots with all the publisher, developer and tools logos and menus - and it doesn't even seem to autosave very often. If games would be natively made for streaming platforms I would expect that to change. Given that there are virtually no loading times you should be able to jump right back into the game, but naturally the games need to be designed for this. I believe this will be a big theme in the next few years - pick up and play.
Barebones shopping experience. Currently you have to shop on your phone, which is not optimal - should be in the core experience. Also interestingly, it seems Google has managed to bypass Apple rev share on the iPhone app - I don't expect that to last very long.
Reflection
Perhaps because my expectations could not have been lower, I came away impressed and convinced. It's interesting to think that the experience I had today is probably the worst it will ever be, because the onboarding, internet speeds, net code and user experience will all keep evolving. It's already a playable product, so I expect next 5 years can make the experience compelling for the masses.
I haven't seen my consoles in 10 years as they are inside my cabinet. Also, I have bought games only online in this generation on PS4, Xbox One and Switch. So buying and streaming them from an online service is not conceptually that different from what I currently do. If I am offline on a console, I can't even start many new console games for the first time. And if Xbox or PlayStation pull the plug, I will lose my games library. Naturally, Google has poor history in supporting anything, so I would rather trust Xbox with my money.
What I think the future holds
Cloud native games will become a jump-in experience. Games will be packaged and experienced differently than they are today - no loading screens, title screens or menus, but a jump-in experience. This can be a big differentiator, depending on how realising the same idea on the new SSD consoles pan out.
TVs with native cloud gaming apps may bridge the input lag gap. The current beta quality experience of plugging in a Chromecast will be history soon. Creating TVs with native gaming apps will cut the input lag from the HDMI input, a downside consoles can never overcome. This means 20-60ms depending on TV. Native cloud gaming apps on TVs may bring the input lag difference between consoles and cloud gaming to a nearly negligible level.
Mainstream games quietly become 'floatier'. Developers will quietly steer away from fast twitch controls to give streaming platforms an equal experience. Fortnite, Destiny and others will work well in the new future, whereas the likes of Call of Duty may be less fitting.
There may be no PS6 / Xbox Three generation. It will become increasingly hard to explain the benefits of buyinga $400 box to the mainstream consumer. When you can boot Fortnite at 4K with max details on your smart TV, the convenience of an ever-so-slightly more responsive gaming experience on a console will be lost for most.
Democratised access brings about a new heyday of AAA gaming. As the barrier of buying a console will be removed, and console quality games will be accessible to anyone with a tablet or TV, the gaming population will radically expand. People who were interested in games but not interested enough to buy a console will join in. People who could never afford a console will join in.
PlayStation's and Nintendo's changing role. As hardware and platforms become irrelevant, Sony loses it's lock on the market. Whether it can launch its own service successfully, or will become a third party to the other platforms remains to be seen. In all likelihood we will have a number of cloud gaming apps - Xbox, PlayStation, Google and Apple would be my bets. I expect Nintendo's content to live on most of these.
EDIT:
Extended impressions after two hours of gameplay.
I tried to connect the ethernet cable, but it doesn't work at all, since Chromecast and the controller have to be in the same wifi. Even worse, it kicked off the controller connection hell again. Had to reset everything after unplugging the ethernet cable to get the controller play ball again.
Completed a couple of missions in Wolfenstein. I want to finish the game so that I can say I have completed a full game from the cloud. Gameplay wise it will be fine, I don't mind playing it at all, but let's see if I can stand the cringe.
In my two hours of gameplay I had three hitches. Instead of becoming unresponsive, Stadia seems to do frame freezes.
Took some more videos.
Detail / Fidelity
Zoomed out
Zoomed in medium
Zoomed in close
Gameplay / action
Input lag test
tl;dr - it wasn't as shit as I thought it'd be
Still, I wanted to see it for myself - to see whether the character jumps half a second after I press the button like I have seen on that gif, or whether the stream drops into a pixelated mess every once in a while. So I bought a Stadia, just for the laughs. Here is what I found out.
Unboxing
Stadia comes in a slick box, even if barebones, with the essentials. The build quality feels a bit on the budget side for the chargers, cables and inlays, but the controller feels solid. Very similar to Switch Pro controller in feel, and not a million miles from the Xbox One controller.
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Setup
Setting up Stadia was a nightmare.
Setting up Chromecast. First you have to download two apps from AppStore - Google Home and Stadia. Then you need to go through screens and screens of T&Cs, privacy settings, device access and such. And even after that, I couldn't connect to the Chromecast . I used an ethernet cable as instructed for a 'better experience', but my iPhone simply wouldn't find the Chromecast. I tried rebooting the Chromecast, setting my phone to airplane mode and back, but nothing helped. As last resort, I unplugged the Ethernet cable and - boom - finally connected to my phone.
Setting up the Stadia controller. The next hurdle was setting up the controller. Turns of out the controller needs to be in the same wifi as the Chromecast. No problem, same wifi I go. Then it asks me to press certain buttons on the controller to connect to the Chromecast. I press and press, and nothing. I reboot the controller, reconnect the controller, reboot the Chromecast. Nothing seems to work. Then I google for some help, and find advice to set my iPhone to airplane mode and back and - phew - the controller finally connected.
Connection
I sit literally on top of a fibre switch in London, so I have pretty much the optimal conditions for gameplay. While today I am probably in the 0.1% of connections, in 10-15 years my connection will surely be very commonplace.

Gaming experience
I picked two FPSs with the idea that they would be most unforgiving in terms of input lag. I started with Destiny 2. I was genuinely surprised how responsive the game felt. It does help that Bungie controls always feel a bit weightier and floatier than Call of Duty, for example. Also, it felt like there was some sort of prediction going on occasionally, but generally I was able to complete the first raid well and didn't feel at disadvantage due the responsiveness.
My second game was Wolfenstein: Young Blood. Here the floatier controls are more apparent, given that Wolfenstein is usually very responsive. It didn't hinder my gaming experience, but knowing the difference, I noticed it was there. Generally, I do now believe the lag is workable for the mainstream gamer, given a good connection.
I shot two videos showing the experience. Please excuse the vertical mode, I wanted to capture both the controller and the screen. It was a particularly sunny day in London (finally!), so there is quite a lot of glare on the screen.
Visual & Audio Experience
Resolution and frame rate. The visual quality was generally on the soft side. I would guess in the 1080P ballpark. Text feels a bit soft, but not distractingly so. The frame rate remained stable throughout my sessions, and to my surprise, I never encountered a drop in the stream quality or the pixellation I expected.
Details, effects and post processing. The games I played - Destiny 2 and Wolfenstein: Young Blood - didn't seem to run on anything near Ultra settings. To my untrained eye, the level of detail seemed about medium, and I saw visible aliasing. This was baffling, given that the games are supposed to run on powerful blades.
Audio. The audio quality is fantastic, I was impressed by the surround sound over a stream.
User Experience
No downloads, no forced updates. Being able to buy a game and boot it right away is really satisfying, as is knowing that you'll never see any update downloads or reboots.
But not truly pick-up-and-play yet, either. The games are currently hindered by the fact that they are simply rewrapped console games. I was expecting that when I quit Wolfenstein I could just jump in to where I left it and continue playing. This is currently not the case. The game reboots with all the publisher, developer and tools logos and menus - and it doesn't even seem to autosave very often. If games would be natively made for streaming platforms I would expect that to change. Given that there are virtually no loading times you should be able to jump right back into the game, but naturally the games need to be designed for this. I believe this will be a big theme in the next few years - pick up and play.
Barebones shopping experience. Currently you have to shop on your phone, which is not optimal - should be in the core experience. Also interestingly, it seems Google has managed to bypass Apple rev share on the iPhone app - I don't expect that to last very long.
Reflection
Perhaps because my expectations could not have been lower, I came away impressed and convinced. It's interesting to think that the experience I had today is probably the worst it will ever be, because the onboarding, internet speeds, net code and user experience will all keep evolving. It's already a playable product, so I expect next 5 years can make the experience compelling for the masses.
I haven't seen my consoles in 10 years as they are inside my cabinet. Also, I have bought games only online in this generation on PS4, Xbox One and Switch. So buying and streaming them from an online service is not conceptually that different from what I currently do. If I am offline on a console, I can't even start many new console games for the first time. And if Xbox or PlayStation pull the plug, I will lose my games library. Naturally, Google has poor history in supporting anything, so I would rather trust Xbox with my money.
What I think the future holds
Cloud native games will become a jump-in experience. Games will be packaged and experienced differently than they are today - no loading screens, title screens or menus, but a jump-in experience. This can be a big differentiator, depending on how realising the same idea on the new SSD consoles pan out.
TVs with native cloud gaming apps may bridge the input lag gap. The current beta quality experience of plugging in a Chromecast will be history soon. Creating TVs with native gaming apps will cut the input lag from the HDMI input, a downside consoles can never overcome. This means 20-60ms depending on TV. Native cloud gaming apps on TVs may bring the input lag difference between consoles and cloud gaming to a nearly negligible level.
Mainstream games quietly become 'floatier'. Developers will quietly steer away from fast twitch controls to give streaming platforms an equal experience. Fortnite, Destiny and others will work well in the new future, whereas the likes of Call of Duty may be less fitting.
There may be no PS6 / Xbox Three generation. It will become increasingly hard to explain the benefits of buyinga $400 box to the mainstream consumer. When you can boot Fortnite at 4K with max details on your smart TV, the convenience of an ever-so-slightly more responsive gaming experience on a console will be lost for most.
Democratised access brings about a new heyday of AAA gaming. As the barrier of buying a console will be removed, and console quality games will be accessible to anyone with a tablet or TV, the gaming population will radically expand. People who were interested in games but not interested enough to buy a console will join in. People who could never afford a console will join in.
PlayStation's and Nintendo's changing role. As hardware and platforms become irrelevant, Sony loses it's lock on the market. Whether it can launch its own service successfully, or will become a third party to the other platforms remains to be seen. In all likelihood we will have a number of cloud gaming apps - Xbox, PlayStation, Google and Apple would be my bets. I expect Nintendo's content to live on most of these.
EDIT:
Extended impressions after two hours of gameplay.
I tried to connect the ethernet cable, but it doesn't work at all, since Chromecast and the controller have to be in the same wifi. Even worse, it kicked off the controller connection hell again. Had to reset everything after unplugging the ethernet cable to get the controller play ball again.
Completed a couple of missions in Wolfenstein. I want to finish the game so that I can say I have completed a full game from the cloud. Gameplay wise it will be fine, I don't mind playing it at all, but let's see if I can stand the cringe.
In my two hours of gameplay I had three hitches. Instead of becoming unresponsive, Stadia seems to do frame freezes.
Took some more videos.
Detail / Fidelity
Zoomed out
Zoomed in medium
Zoomed in close
Gameplay / action
Input lag test
tl;dr - it wasn't as shit as I thought it'd be
Last edited: