Hey, I'm Jewels, you know, that guy, Daniel Will, and our talk at on the Android Police podcast. Unfortunately, we're off for another week. Someone on our team had been dealing with a personal urgent matter this week, and we weren't able to get together to record. But we won't be leaving you empty handed, or empty eared, as it were. This episode will be a bit of a vignette revisiting the beginning and end of Stadia. Google's short-lived Game Streaming service.
We don't cover the middles because this podcast didn't simply exist then during all of 2020 and 2021. But we think it'll be something to chew on, especially as handheld consoles continue to eat up the 2024 landscape in mobile gaming. To start things off, let's head back to our show from November 18, 2019. Streaming games are almost here. Steady launches tomorrow to an expectant and hesitant audience. The big questions here, how big is the hitbox for success, and how many lives does Google have?
It's Monday, November 18, welcome. I'm Cody Tooms alongside Corbin Davenport. So anyone who's following Android Police has probably already seen our Stadia review. It's actually pretty positive in the sense of play experience is good.
Unfortunately, just about everything else looks like it's on shaky ground. Basically, there are missing features, there's a lot of kind of if-iness about the launch titles, and overall, it sounds like it could be good, but at least Taylor, the reviewer, basically felt like this is promised for the future, but not necessarily a must do right now.
Yeah, like there's a lot of things that are missing right now, but also this is sort of a test beta period where the only people who will be able to access it are the people who paid for the Founders edition. So it's not as big of a deal as something like kind of like when Google launched Aloe and it was just missing everything, and that was the real launch. This is sort of like a.
Well, it's still technically beta kind of right now. You can only use it through the Chromecast Ultra's that came with the Founders editions, not even the regular Chromecast Ultra can because it hasn't been updated for that. You can also play it on PC, also stuff like achievements, maybe people don't care about that as much, just a lot of little things that add up, but again, this isn't like the full launch yet, we're not quite there yet, so I'll give Google a little bit of legroom for that.
I mean, I'm always willing to give a little bit of space for your first launch, your first days out. I remember when the Xbox launched the original Xbox and certainly things there were not perfect. There was a lot of work to be done. They were missing features that play stations had had and there was just a lot there that you could say was missing.
On the other hand, it did feel more complete than this. For example, missing achievements apparently stadia is recording your achievements, but they haven't developed a screen to actually look at them yet. And I grant that that sounds like a simple thing and it really is actually a lot more complicated because you might be looking at achievements through a main interface versus looking at them through the game itself versus possibly even sharing them publicly.
There's a lot of ways you might actually access this and might want them sorted or categorized differently. So I kind of get why some of this stuff might be missing, but at the same time, it feels like maybe they just needed more people to push some of this stuff out on time. And it just feels weirdly empty at this stage.
Yeah. And like another thing that we only learned today was the pricing for all of the games. One of the big confusion points I'm seeing a lot with stadia is that people assume there is a required subscription and then you buy the games on top of that. But when stadia launches for realsies to everyone, not just the people who bought the founders edition, there will be a free tier that just limits your streaming to 1080p and 60 frames per second.
So the game pricing themselves, it's kind of interesting because most of the games are price similar to what you would expect from a console. So new big games are 60 bucks. Smaller games are 20 to 40 bucks. That kind of thing. There are a couple outliers, like games that have been out for a year to at this point that have become 20, $30 on consoles and are still full price on stadia, like Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
But you also have to factor in that again, there's no required subscription. So that price also goes into you being able to access Google servers at any given moment to play the games. It's not quite the same value you'd get from a console game. So almost in a way, it's it's remarkable that the games are priced very closely to the console versions. I wouldn't be surprised if Google might be taking a loss there, especially given what the developers probably want in terms of their cut.
Yeah, everything about stadia prevents it from being a real one to one comparison. The mere fact obviously as many people point out, you don't have to buy a console which is fantastic. This is saving you a lot on hardware. This is saving you from the inevitable problems of classic console failures like the red ring of death or any of the follow up issues that almost every console has had on the other hand.
It's really unclear what you're getting with the games in the long run. Obviously a lot of people bring up the classic issue, which has been talked to death of course that no one's really sure if Google would be sticking with stadia in the long term. And with pricing on games, it looks good for some and others. It's odd.
So again, we only have pricing right now for 12 out of the 22. I believe launch titles because last night, about the 11 hours, so to speak, Google updated the number of games that would be available at launch on stadia from 12 games to 22 games. So that's a pretty nice nice improvement. 12 was a little bit sparse, I think, even though some of the ones in that 12 like red dead redemption to like you could just play that for hours and hours.
I don't think it was lacking by any stretch, but the games that will be available on day one on stadia now include stuff like football manager 2020 Metro Exodus, which was a big one from early this year. Rage to from Bethesda trials rising will find study on blood, all those sorts of games. And of course stadia is still expected to get a lot, not a lot more, but more games before the end of the year.
A lot of these were previously scheduled to be available to some time before the end of 2019. So Google's pushing up the availability windows a little bit, which is nice. Yeah, I remember being a little skeptical when I saw the initial list because outside of red dead redemption to more combat 11 and maybe two or three of these others. Honestly, it was kind of a bleak list and also destiny to of course by adding some of the new ones, it does look a little bit more promising.
It does cover a little bit wider range of gamer with the new list, but yes, it's still not necessarily a show stopping list, especially when you've got some titles in here, there's several years old. So, you know, it's not bad. I mean, any console would launch with likely a weaker list than this, though typically they'd also be launching with actual launch titles, new purely new games, whereas this is again some older games.
Some that are, you know, a few months old is fine. A few years old does cast a bit of a shadow on it. Yes. So, Stadia, there's a lot about it, including the launch might have been a little bit rushed. We kind of touch on this earlier, but it's it's important to lay it all down. The state is having a few issues to start with.
We already touched on like achievements is missing and the ability to use existing Chromecast Ultra's for Stadia and it's just any Chromecast in general because eventually it's supposed to work on all of them anywhere you can cast is supposed to eventually work with Stadia.
Other stuff that's missing is like family sharing, Stadia is supposed to have a buddy pass that won't be available on day one, but it should be available within two weeks of the launch date. There's also no 4K HDR and 5.1 surround sound support on PCs until sometime in 2020.
Kind of stinks. Granted, I don't have a 4K monitor. So yeah. Yeah, I also have like stream connect state share, crowd play and also the the Stadia controller itself has been delayed for a lot of people and we'll get to that a little bit later.
Yeah, so when you look over the list of what's missing some of this stuff, I'm not surprised by some of it honestly makes a lot of sense. It's unfortunate that family sharing isn't there right from the start because as a lot of people brought up and I believe Russell Holly tweeted about this and got a lot of attention on it.
At launch, basically you have a situation where a lot of kids are going to be going in and playing and you're basically just expected to buy two copies of like a $60 game in order for them to play against each other and that just seems not just wrong. It actually seems like an really obvious failure.
But at the same time, I can also kind of see why they might be struggling with that not necessarily the easiest thing to work out with developers. The buddy past thing that was actually something that they set out right in the beginning would be available. Even if it's got a two week delay, there just should be no reason for that. It's things like this. You have to wonder why.
So I don't know. Again, it just keeps coming back to it's odd that they don't have more of this stuff worked out and it probably would have been better if they had just set a launch date further out. Yeah. Actually just hitting that feature list, I'll bring up one other thing that I think was really interesting. If you go back and rewatch the initial announcement for Stadia, one of the things they spent a lot of time talking about was basically how you'll be able to do it.
Basically how you'll be able to stream this to YouTube and how you'll be able to engage with followers and things like that. One of the things that they haven't mentioned is how streamers are going to project themselves on the screen.
No one's ever talked about setting up cameras or controlling chat rooms or anything like that through Stadia. And as mentioned, state share, stream connect any of those features. All of this stuff is just somewhere out there, but it's not really clear when or I'm sure there's no if it will be a win. But still it seems very strange that one of their biggest focuses was on streamers and it seems like get launched. They are completely out of the picture.
Yeah. And again, it's not exactly apples to apples, but twitch itself has been making pretty major strides to making it easier to stream from a traditional PC. So it does make Stadia's lack of any streaming features a little bit more apparent when now you can just download an app from twitch on your computer and start streaming a game on your PC.
Yeah. And I mean, it's not that it would be that hard to stream Stadia to twitch, which is kind of funny. It'll almost be easier to do that than to stream it to YouTube at this point. But it's an odd look when they courted so heavily towards being able to stream. And it seems like that's an app not just an afterthought it's literally a non thought at this stage.
So again, kind of an odd odd thing that seems to be missing from a launch, especially including if I recall I did not maybe I'm mistaken on this, but I think the PS4 actually launched with streaming support. Either there on day one or it was added like what a month in or something. It was really quick. I couldn't tell you I think I only my brother has a PS4 and he got it like two years after launch, so I don't recall.
Yeah, I got mine pretty far after launch to is a similar, but still things just looking odd. Other things that have gone kind of wrong, the Stadia controllers have been delayed, which did you mention that earlier? I just touched on it because I know we were going to go into detail about it. Almost everything involving the play store at this stage has gone a little haywire. People who pre-ordered the Founders Edition mini of art.
It's actually unclear how many. The Stadia reps claim that this was a very small number referencing it just as a few, whereas it seems Reddit threads actually quite a few people may have gone through this. Evidently ordering with PayPal, a number of people had their orders canceled when billing started to occur. And the Stadia has stepped up and basically said, listen if this happened to you, please contact us. We will make it right.
So this is a good side. They're actually being interactive about it. They're answering to it and responding, which also comes with the caveat that they're avoiding answering and responding to a lot of other things. But this is one they're taking care of. And the controller some selves. If you're purchasing a separate controller, it appears those are also being delayed. I did not see the exact reason, but they did commit to getting a response out very quickly about why or when.
Yeah, so this stinks. I don't really have any insightful commentary about this. It's just kind of a screw up. I do really appreciate one of the comments on the article where someone said the service isn't even out yet and Google is already canceling it.
That's funny. And also, of course, this sits on top of what was already a pretty well known issue where what had originally been committed to as a launch date of November 19th has basically become a two week period in which people will be receiving their starting kids.
People supposedly will be receiving it tomorrow, the 19th. Other people may not be receiving it until early December like myself. So it's going to be this protracted launch where some people just won't be able to start until later on.
And supposedly it's based on when they signed up for the founders edition, but again, you can look at Reddit threads and find numerous people who signed up almost immediately. And they are significantly out of order from other people who signed up hours or even months later. So lots of little oddities there too.
I know Taylor mentioned that he said he thinks that Stadia access codes will be emailed out starting tomorrow. So maybe people will be able to access Stadia before their physical kit showed up, but that's only on PC because again, the regular Chromecast can't do Stadia yet. So I did read a response from one of the Stadia reps that basically said what they're going to do. And this sounds plausible, but we'll see how it plays out.
Evidently, what they're going to do is when they ship the starter pack, they will email out the invite code at that time. And supposedly since they're going to be shipping in the order that you sign up for it, that means they should also be emailing out the invite codes in the order that you signed up for it.
So even if you're on slow shipping or there's a delay in your shipping, you should still supposedly get your invite code in that stage. So we'll see. I mean, the promise here is you'll be able to access it from your computer. And as many people care, you'll be able to get your username early.
These are the two big concerns a lot of people had. So at least for the username, I think that matters for access. We'll see obviously a lot of people don't really want to play this so much on the computer they want the TV experience, but at the very least this gives some opportunity to some people. Another words, if you signed up, keep an eye on your email because that's going to be hitting you before the actual starter kit.
And the thing is that at least one game developer we reported on is worried about the longevity of Stadia. So again, we touched on this earlier. This has been absolutely talked to death. So I have no desire to go over it again, but Google's long history of canceling things does give a shout out to Stadia's success.
Maybe it might be canceled sooner rather than later. Of course, nothing on this earth is eternal. Steam will eventually be shut down. Who knows when but Google is a bit more trigger happy on shutting things down than some other companies. So during packs west, which was a little bit a while ago, a site called games industry interviewed Gwen Fry, the developer of kind, which is one of the more indie games available on Stadia launch. I'll read their quote because it states it pretty well.
They said, the biggest complaint most developers have with Stadia is the fear that Google is just going to cancel it. No one says, oh, it's not going to work or streaming isn't the future. Everyone accepts that streaming is pretty much inevitable. The biggest concern with Stadia is that it might not exist.
And you think about it like that. That's kind of silly. Working in tech, you have to be willing to make bold moves and try things that could fail. And yeah, Google's canceled a lot of projects. Yeah. And it's obviously this has been probably the biggest talking point since Stadia was announced. You can go back to the initial announcement post that we did. And the comment section is just filled with people saying until it gets canceled.
So it's still full. Every time we write anything about Stadia, there's 10 people that jump in and make a Stadia's cancel joke. They're not for guys. I'm sorry. They were maybe funny the first time and that one I mentioned earlier, that was funny because I didn't expect that. Yeah, it was very fitting in its context. And this is a little reminiscent to all where every post that I wrote about all and anyone else for that matter, it was just constantly comments about stickers.
That was the inevitable joke everyone had to make about allos that every update was purely about stickers. And to be fair, many of them were so understandable. But yeah, it becomes a broken record is at a certain point. And the thing is though that is also significant to Google because when you've earned a reputation for canceling so many projects, many of which actually have a user base and real longevity behind them.
Obviously, I'm not talking about allo here. You pretty much end up with a situation where people are going to be less trusting of you. And Google has numerous times from multiple departments hyped up the message of fail early fail often. I'm sure that's actually a misquiet. It's fail early and something else. But anyway, it is very specifically a thing about canceling projects. And we have a very ambitious endeavor.
Stadia is not a small thing. It's not a simple thing, but it is a very big goal in that situation. And it's not hard to understand why people would be reluctant to spend money investing in games and wanting to pick up things that they are going to want to use for a long time. And then possibly down the road, they might actually be saying, whoops, that was a bad buy. That was a bad investment. Where did the things go that I spent money on?
Yeah, this kind of just ties more into not necessarily the Google kills everything crowd. But I think this mostly ties into the point that a lot of people who play games are more and more frustrated with the inability to tangibly own the games. Of course, you can still buy console games on disk or in the switches case, the little cartridge things. But even those rely on updates and some kind of server side checks a lot of the times.
And of course, on PC, the most popular way to buy games is through stores like steam and epic and origin. And on those, you don't really own anything. You own the right to play the games, but steam could completely shut down tomorrow. And everything would be gone because it's all DRM locked.
Again, there are some exceptions like there's the GOG store that sells DRM free games. But the point is that the stadium sort of like an escalation of the thing a lot of people who play games are already kind of sick of where not only do you not tangily have the games at least in like downloaded to your computer. Now you not only do not own the games, but you also do not own the hardware to run them. I get where people are coming from, but it's, you know, it is what it is.
Yeah, I mean, this is a discussion that really started or it keeps resurfacing ever since I want to say going as far back as Windows 95. You really don't own software anymore. You own licenses to software, which is your guarantee of usage or access to usage. But this does not inherently mean you will always and forever be able to play it.
And there are very justifiably arguments that we still want to be able to archive games, even setting aside the notion of ownership, the idea that you could have an exclusive on Stadia, you know, if Stadia were to shut down, you may never actually be able to play a certain game again. And that does suck.
The counter to this is think about any game that's fairly multiplayer oriented, what happens when the company that runs the servers decides to shut down those servers. We've seen this happen with Halo. We've seen it happen with. I'm drawing a blank on the rest of them, but every MMO ever that isn't road of work. Pretty much. Yeah, eventually those servers get shut down and all of your investment, all of your saved up character stats, everything else out there is eventually dead.
So it's very unfortunate, but there will never be a day that we get back certain games or certain multiplayer experiences. And then there are single player experiences, which are obviously very, very good and would be incredible and it'd be wonderful if we could archive a lot of those.
And some of those games will 30, 40, 50 years out still have incredible stories that are worth bringing back a granted at that stage, we're all going to be like, you, you have to use your hands. That's like a kids toy. But you know, back to the future to see. All right, I do not seriously hate you. I committed to that one. If you don't get that reference, you're a bad person or at least a bad movie watcher.
But yeah, unpolatured listeners, plebs. But seriously, there are going to be games that it'd be wonderful if we could archive and we obviously should be able to. But outside of that, we really need to kind of come to terms with the fact that nothing is really truly permanent. You can't keep all this stuff around indefinitely. And one of these days, you know, there's nothing saying a developer can't push those titles out through other means in the future.
Stadia is not a end of life for everything. Possibilities exist. Yeah, like a lot of games that start out as console exclusives eventually come to PC and vice versa. So here's hoping I do think at least it'd be nice to see all the steady exclusives eventually make their way to other platforms. Yeah, and outside of the ones that supposedly are going to require the impossible server resources that they've claimed outside of that, I think most of them probably will.
There's not much reason for anything to remain a true exclusive these days or those games do get released and you just kind of have to like network several PS4s together to play that. Oh, that'd be awesome. I think there have been a lot of unfair complaints about Stadia, especially from people who obviously would not have ever touched it or played it yet.
What stands out to me is I think a lot of people before Stadia was even announced they hadn't mind an idea for what they wanted to have in sort of the future of gaming. And Stadia seems to be the exact polar opposite of what so many people wanted ownership, archival, things like that were obviously big talking points. And I think that's going to be one of the biggest questions people continue to push on Stadia.
Like what is going to be the story for modding will people be able to upload mods will there be sort of like in an official or unofficial method for developing them. Will you have to apply things in some weird in between state how this happens is going to be a really big determiner for whether or not Stadia acquires a fan base. Yeah, so there will definitely be a lot more to talk about.
So Stadia related in the coming weeks and months because as we've said a hundred times it's cloud based it can get updates on a whim. So it will continue to change and get better. Hopefully as time goes on and you'll just have to keep listening to the podcast to find out what happens. And yeah, I have a funny feeling we're probably going to be talking about this quite a bit over the next few weeks sorry Corbin. I'll skip those episodes. So that's how it started.
Here's how it ends fast forward to October 9, 2022. Obviously this happened very suddenly last week for it happened after we recorded so we couldn't. I mean, we could have had an emergency podcast but we were preparing for this week. So we didn't it's shutting down in January 2023 until like the store is closed already. We currently don't have any details on exporting data. Google says that it'll be a part of the Google takeout.
So some companies will allow you to take that information and import them on other platforms. Ubisoft is going to make that a priority. And I think a few other developers have speaking of developers and publishers a lot of them came out that day basically saying. Holy shit, this is the first we're hearing of it. We had games coming out in a couple of months and now I guess they're not. So it appears that the communication happened very suddenly for the team too. For the team as well.
They were saying that like it was you know an hour before we found out or whatever. There was a all hands meeting you know email went out and that's how they learned. Right. I guess the silver lining for some stadium players is that it'll be everybody who's purchased the founders edition, the premier edition, any hardware and any games will be refunded all of those purchases. Right from the very beginning from like 2019 which is great.
A lot of people are saying we're going to put that money towards buying a PS5 or an Xbox Series X or or something a state a steam deck. But I mean, Zach laid law used to do partnerships and social for AP is like one of those stadium stands who just loved not just the service but like the community that he fostered from it. And hearing from those people that day was absolutely heartbreaking just like Google plus are all over again.
I don't bring that up. I have enough hurt in my heart right now, but yeah, I don't understand killing it so suddenly like if you had things that were still in the pipeline and games that have been in development for so long. It feels like the new head of Warner Discovery canning movies that were either in post production or still like at the tail end of production rather than letting them release it's you spent the money already.
It's back with this was this wasn't first party software though. These were third party devs that were that were like Google already gave up the ghost and first party software. Oh yeah, no, I know, but it's still developers that Google had been working with for sure.
Yeah, I think that that is different than like because like it's the same for their like they had bitterly just the day before rolled out a new UI on desktop for stadium like I mean like people like the team was still making changes to like how the service works.
So yeah, I mean look, it's expensive to run even though they had shut down their first party publisher that never made any games. It still was expensive right you had to buy access to the games you have to work with the developers on ports.
You had to maintain the front end the servers themselves that were powering stadia it's all expensive and Google is going through a significant retrenchment right now in both personnel and costs and Phil Harrison the head of stadia he's he just said like the underlying technology is a success but the product itself was not and a lot of people are sitting on him for not running stadia properly.
But a lot of analysts and stadia subscribers alike had been waiting for this it was not a matter of if it was a matter of when right. I mean people thought this was a matter of when in 2019 when they announced this and they were doing the roll up because like I remember a lot of people being like what is going to happen if slash when you shut down stadia because like Google has a reputation for this stuff and this is another.
I would not blame anyone if Google announces some cool new software feature next year or service rather if someone goes like now I got burned on Google plus I got burned on stadia I'm not even bothering with it they're just going to shut it down in two years or whatever and it'll unceremoniously die and maybe I'll get my money back but who knows and it's it's a problem I think for Google that they need to get under control.
Totally agree and this is different because most of Google's products are free right so when you use a product that eventually gets shut down it is what it is it's just the cost of doing business right another free project that you're not the customer you're the product right because Google is selling ads against you and your usage but for a paid service like stadia it's different it's a different value proposition right.
Google is making money as a direct consumer company in that in that situation and there aren't that many Google products like that and it's really unfortunate that it appears like Google can't stick the landing for anything that is direct to consumer that is subscription based that's not just add supported.
And we've seen that if they can hold out long enough eventually it'll get better like YouTube music was a dumpster fire when it first relaunched in 2018 but these days YouTube music is actually pretty good apart from that weird mini player whatever happened with Copa whenever they had to change things on YouTube for kids like YouTube music has a decent selection now it's not really buggy anymore algorithms have improved the mixes have improved we're finally getting.
More modern material you design if Google can stick it out long enough and actually put in the work they can improve things they just keep killing ship before they can but you to music came out of them killing Google play music. Yes, no I was that was already built up and it took them four years to get back to where they were basically like there's still not quite the future parity but yes no but like there were like look I still pay $8 a month for YouTube music slash.
YouTube premium that means I was on the first month of Google play music right like I have that grandfather plan I will hold on to it until I die or they take it away from me but like I switched to Spotify after like two months of trying to use you to music when it first launch because I was like this is terrible like they ruined it like in like maybe it'll get back to where it was and then better someday but it took forever to get there and like why why would I stick it out and like.
I don't think they'll kill you to music in two years and relaunch it again but maybe they will and like I don't feel confident in that like not in a way where I'm like I don't think Spotify is going to die tomorrow I don't you know they're just going to keep bothering me to buy audiobooks yeah well yeah you know I wouldn't even cause it say that the shutdown of stadiums a cautionary tale because like this has happened before and it will happen again but it will really make people think twice about signing up for Google products.
We have to give them money. The death of any Google product is never quite one as we found out about a month later in the meantime we have some news about stadium refunds are a we know a little bit more about when and where and how much and all that so walk us through what we know.
Well for stadium there's not really that much to tell since all the refunds are being applied automatically through stadium system so unless you changed credit cards I think everything just goes back to you eventually so there's nothing that stadium owners have to do I don't even think they have to send the equipment back right. Now what they do have to do is use the money that they made from the refunds purchase a steam deck I believe that's in the terms of service.
So I just want to say I am putting my entire stadium refund amount towards a steam deck so that will save me let me check a dollar and seven cents. I think it's the same around the same for me too I apparently bought Borderlands 3 ultimate addition when it was like 10 or 11 bucks and I'd a $10 off coupon. That is the only game that I spent money on stadium did not play it by the way I haven't touched it it's just there so.
I think I did I did the same thing and I did play it a little but it was too laggy for me to enjoy that's it I did start it and this was when I was on a spectrum and it just wouldn't work just did not want to play properly so I never went back to it. Yeah but that's basically my experience to yep all right. Anyway so you don't have to worry about it it'll just work it's all good. It would be the one thing about stadium that just work. Oh hell yeah God best should have been the head mine so good.
I mean look it's happening January 2023 is coming pretty quickly I think the interesting part about this is as we've talked about in previous weeks Google is making a bigger deal about cloud gaming on Chromebooks it is also making more of a big deal about.
Steam on Chromebooks natively it's just a funny time to be a gamer and also a Google user like it's just weird trying to get gaming right on Google for freaking years what was that because they had another cloud gaming idea what was it five six years ago and it almost got onto the stage at Google I. And then it just like everything got scrapped and then they started over and did stadium.
I'm trying to remember what the name of it was it wasn't just project cloud was was not that I mean project cloud was stadiums like beta. So internal materials about it got leaked and it showed like partners and potential pricing and everything was lined up and then it just didn't happen I like that's.
I think it's been trying this for a long time and can't get it right number really hoping at least by not being responsible for the streaming bit of it but being like okay we want to have systems that will be compatible with cloud gaming because cloud gaming is the future we want our hardware to support it we want you to be able to get back good experience while still using our products even if we can't get the games right.
Yeah it was called project stream not project cloud but it was you could play assassins creed like everybody who was part of it I remember Jerry at AC played it for a while really really liked it. But anyway I mean it's just it's interesting right like I'm sure once stadium goes away completely nobody will ever talk about it again the cloud gaming is is certainly not going away it's never I think going to be the default no no but it's not going to go away anytime soon.
Well I mean we're just used to being able to do everything we want at all times and cloud gaming is like the natural extension of that I just think it makes sense for the browser to be a place that you can do computing tasks right like obviously native apps are going to be more performance but we live in browsers we live in the browser in so many other ways Chromebooks have proven themselves to be adequate containers the web has proven itself to be an adequate container for so many things
like the Figma for instance the company that just sold to Adobe for 20 years trying to sell itself to Adobe for 20 billion dollars it's a web basis until everything it does in the browser increasingly you could do more of it like Google home the home app has launched a web portal now right it's just slowly but surely you're going to be able to replace native experiences with the web and while obviously there will be the need for native apps on mobile on phones and tablets if you're on a computer
it just increasingly feels like there is no need for a native app even when you're doing things like playing games and I know Microsoft made a big deal about it in certain areas of the Internet about improving streaming quality for game pass on the browser so that it plays better on iOS a place better on the steam deck it plays better in certain places where it's limited and basically the only reason it's limited on those platforms is you can't have a
native app on iOS you can't have a native app on steam deck so they have to try to make it work. Yeah, I don't know it's probably the last time we'll talk about the stadium the show so like RIP I'm willing to let it go but this is the last time I'm going to apologize for that crack earlier just because I don't want to be the last thing I
know you should know no absolutely not I refuse to let you say that you you stadium has gone out in like a blaze of I wouldn't say glory but it's gone out it's gone out in a blaze of infamy yeah and like you might as well just own it that like it was mishandles it was a good products that was never run well and well yeah commercial is coming right this was never a separate like I remember in 2019 when it became stadium it wasn't project stream anymore stream
was the right one yeah OK one of the most frequent questions when they did those like reddit AMA is like hey what happens if it dies because no one who wasn't a die hard I'm 100% in on the future of gaming let's go person was like we know you know you kill things you're literally it's self fulfilling prophecy it dies because nobody trust that it's not going to and that's just Google's fault that's nobody else's fault and it sucks that like a bunch of interesting ideas have died
because of that and will continue to die because if anything the stadium death hurts it even more it's probably the most impactful to that reputation as anything like it's a good for the most influential Google that this was like you were and I understand they're giving full refunds back but this was people giving like $60 for games versus like you paid eight to $10
a month for music streaming or like inbox you pay anything I'm a sad is anyone about inbox still but it wasn't like a financial transaction the way stadium was so now if in 2025 Google starts offering I don't know some other kind of web store where you are doing transactions but if the service shut down you would no longer be able to use it and you would lose at worst money or at least time and data
no one's going to want to sign up for it because stadiums there and we already know how that happened yeah finally D day here's our program from January 22nd of last year hello and welcome to the amber fleet podcast my name is Daniel Bader this week on the show stadium is no more and we are mourning our old friend that we lost too soon that we ignored that we made fun of true that we
occasionally hated on and now we regret doing all of these things because they're gone so let's more in stadium as quickly as evenly possible stadium shut down yesterday I know a lot of people are sad about this I don't want to minimize it I also want to say we were talking about this before
this is the way you shut down a service right you give people ample time to prepare you give them their money back you do right by them in terms of their saves in terms of their existing equipment you make them feel as good as possible about it so this week we got a converter for the stadium controller to turn it into just a generic bluetooth controller really really easy tool you plug it in you put it into bridge mode and you run it tool edit and
just converts it permanently into a bluetooth controller weirdly will it's only available until the end of the year for like what's going on there but you know it's it's the right thing to yeah I also think you lose rumble support I think I saw that on reddit which is kind of a bummer but you know if you have a
lot of the stadium controller lying around like obviously you've been able to use it wired with windows but it will be nice to have just like oh hey I have another bluetooth controller now like all of a sudden for windows or whatever or for you know Android if I want to like
parent there it's nice to just like not have it become a paperweight minus wired pairing but we all want wireless who wants to wired controller in 2023 yeah I mean it's also it's nice that I don't know how difficult it is but it's a little annoying putting the dual sense and the Xbox
controllers into bluetooth mode I agree and and like having to put them back it's yep it's fine it's it works but like having a dedicated bluetooth controller of this quality just like lying around is fantastic for the times that you want to you know put your
phone on a legend maybe play some hardcore vampire survivors or something honestly like even just steam remote play around the house like I will stream steam to both my TV and like my iPad and having to find my Xbox controller that I don't use for an Xbox is it for windows and then like I can't compare it with and figure out what it was paired to last was paired to my phone or my computer last or whatever and then like sing it to the right device like it
it doesn't take long but it's like a two minute hurdle now I have like I think I have two steady controllers like I will now have two less devices to have to think to because they can just use this controller instead you can play the co-op that's true I can I don't know how well that I mean I guess you know remote place well I don't use remote play I use moonlight but moonlight's pretty good and co-op would probably be fine over it
moonlight what is that moonlight is an unofficial steam remote play competitor that is built for any laptop or computer I guess but I'm using a laptop using an Nvidia GPU basically uses like Nvidia's tech to like sync with steam and it's such a better experience like that's wild remote play is
fine but I in my experience can be pretty buggy for no reason like I will sometimes just a session would go great and sometimes a session would be like I'm dropping frames every like 15 seconds or like I'm experiencing like massive latency and moonlight since I set it up a few months ago
I've had absolutely no issues with like streaming around my house like it's free it's open source yep that's amazing yeah I love you have an Nvidia GPU moonlight is like you should be using moonlight I also love that it's on its website it uses these a Nexus 5 yeah render as like the example pretty sure wasn't around in 2013 but maybe it was maybe they just love they just love the Nexus I mean who doesn't love the Nexus 5 it had an iconic shape it does yeah all right so
Stadia's going away we have the Bluetooth controller there were talks about like is this the end of streaming Luna lost people in Amazon's latest layoffs but really like what it means is I think streaming is still too early we're not there yet to hit critical mass I think the finance and don't make sense and we're seeing this play out GeForce now Nvidia just launched a 4080 compatible version of GeForce now clouds GeForce now ultimate it's expensive you know expensive in the sense that it's
$20 a month or $100 for six months but it's apparently exceptional I'm sure that it is but I want to argue the premise that it's still too early because we've had Xbox game pass and they're streaming for two years now has it been two years since we got that on Xbox yeah two years but it's still in beta it's still in beta but it's been pretty good for a while between that GeForce now and God what was the third one Luna no I'm trying to think of the other one there's the most
dismissive no I've ever no definitely no one has ever played Luna I don't know I believe that I think I've brought people that are basically been like since Luna development kits to make games compatible for it see I just want to do a lunar controller I want to change it into a regular Bluetooth controller and just use that with my Android TV for when I want to do fast forward and rewind since triggers on a controller
or just the best way to do that God that's the worst thing I I want to like we could spend 15 minutes yelling about watching Blue Rays with a PlayStation controller and how miserable it is but I'm not going to do it here's the thing though X Cloud does not have 4k support right so you talk about and I know this is not a huge deal smart no no it it but I'm saying like from an infrastructure perspective remember when Sadie was announced
and everybody in like Google said that it'll be 4k compatible in a year an 8k compatible of 5 years and like the infrastructure is going to get built up around it the reality is and we've talked about this before most people don't have internet connections fast enough to even close to what you require for a consistent experience and somehow I mean Nvidia is leaning into this it's like listen if you're willing to spend
200 dollars a year on the ultimate tier you're probably going to already be spending $100 a month on a gigabit fiber connection which will give you the latency that you acquire to play a 4k well the issue is you like in the US you might be spending $100 in your internet connection and still
might not have the speeds and necessary to achieve like I have big a bit internet through Fios and it's $90 a month which is great but at my apartment where I was living a year ago I was paying $75 a month for 200 down 20 up so like the big difference for $15 and that you know has not gotten a lot better I think spectrum has raised it to like I think it's 400 I still think it's 20 up I think it's 400 down 20 up still which is absolutely insane and like that upload speed is essential
I think that's like the issue when you know are to your point like yeah these services have been around for a long time relatively speaking but it's not in a place where it can be anything more than like a supplementary service like yes like Stadia had some die hard fans who were like I'm all in on this platform despite the fact the game library never really hit what you would see on an Xbox or a PlayStation 5 but for most people I think
something like GeForce now is the best you're gonna find because it's like I have my big custom built PC that I upgrade every few years or whatever but like maybe instead of trying to like track down a 4080 I'll just buy this and I'll either like stream right on my computer or I can stream on my TV or my phone and like you know if it's a little buggy I'll just go play in my office and like on the actual PC or whatever
I think having it as like a middle ground is like where cloud gaming is right now and will be for the foreseeable future until Internet improves in the US and beyond I think the ability to scale up and down the way that you describe it right like if you are at home on a PC with a wired connection
you're getting the latency that you need to hit those speeds like you can play at 120 frames per second 4K all the settings turning to max but then if you're traveling and you're on a 5G connection or you're on a solar Wi-Fi connection you can still load it up and get decent 720p performance with the same games and not worry that it's gonna be super shitty Nvidia has proven that I think fairly well so it's Microsoft to its credit but the max on Xbox cloud gaming just isn't there yet
and I think they're still in the process from not mistaken no no they upgraded the Xbox one X to Xbox Series S which is an invasive upgrade as the back hole I will say and like when I you know started this episode by saying I was going to bully Stadia like I don't mean it's fans or whatever I just mean that like I did not have a single good experience and even even after we moved here with gigabit Internet
I did not have a single good experience on Stadia it was always laggy or like it would crash sometimes for me and like the other cloud gaming service I've played around with is Xbox cloud gaming I really wish they had just left it as X cloud that's such a better name but I've had no issues with X cloud like at all obviously like we were saying it's not 4k it's running off a series S as I've just learned oh no I'm seeing it move to Series X in 2021
didn't move okay that's what I was trying to figure out whether they upgraded from the one X to the Series X or the Series X I'm on Wikipedia now the hardware at launch used Xbox one S play a based blade servers but began to transition to the Series X in June of 2021
anyway okay so I blame the fact that the the one and the Series have the same letters letters and I just got terrible brand this is Microsoft false Microsoft you made this segment more difficult to understand not my phone number just hey do you know what has never been confusing the PlayStation console series I wanted to specify console I'm not talking about the handhelds just the console
well is the PlayStation Series super simple because you have the X the PlayStation 5 PlayStation 5 slim or no no there's no more enforce slim and how many was just to read is they've done redesigns before the only PlayStation that ever was like a mid gen this is more powerful was the PlayStation 4 pro but even that was like easy to understand because it was like at that point the regular PlayStation 4 had gone away there was the I think it was a $300 slim that you could sometimes
get for 200 on sale that was how I got a PlayStation 4 and then there was the pro and that was it and it's like even that is like that is more understandable than Series S in X like that doesn't make it and so like with the PS 5 or back to just do you want a disc or not I still think that makes sense we will eventually get a PS 5 pro I am sure but yeah I still think that makes a lot more sense than anything Xbox is done since the 360 days even just I mean I mean I know the Xbox one was
10 years ago now but like God damn it what a terrible brand 10 years ago oh my God that's right no 2013 yeah that's crazy that's incredible I bought it I bought it the day came out it like I loved it although it didn't do half the things that Microsoft claimed it would do you bought it for all the TV yeah exactly I wanted it to be the thing that the Nexus Q never was sure either of them lived up to my expectations no now anyway all I was saying before went way
off is that I've had really good experiences of X cloud and I cannot say the same for my experience with it just they never really upgraded the back end to like have a smoother experience like and I think part of this is that like Google is not always willing to stick with platforms that need time right like the Google graveyard is a thing for a reason they are known to shut things down whether it's been two years or 10
years or whatever but like Stadia I don't think was ever going to be an overnight success I know they launched it three years ago they launched it at the end of 2019 but in between that there was like a year and a half of people being stuck at home where they didn't need the flexibility of cloud gaming so honestly subtract that year and a half and then like by then you're looking at like the PlayStation
5 and the Xbox series whatever is out right into like now there's excitement about consoles and people probably got into like PC gaming during the pandemic and what else are you going to do but builds exactly every
everybody did and therefore you couldn't buy components for exactly right everyone built a PC and got really in a crypto mining for like six months and they sold their GPUs on eBay my God that seems like so long you will be completely different world where no nft the crypto were the most important
thing now it's chat gpt making Hitler sound like a nice person it's just like the world is the world is the world is topsy tervey it's just like come on none of this makes sense if they had just if they had just not like if they had reflected on the fact that all the things I just said that we just said happened like this platform needed more time like all of these platforms are going to need more time it's not the same as launching a new gaming console where it's like we can show consumers
exactly what they're going to get in a store right we have retail space where it's like here's the hardware you're going to buy here are the games you're going to get like it needs time cloud gaming as a concept is not a widespread idea that my parents know about right my mom knows what a PlayStation is right like there's your mom play PlayStation my mom has been playing the PlayStation one the PlayStation one lately because she's revisiting the games that we that like I played with my
parents when we were kids so like is it Spyro the dragon I played Spyro 2 that was not a game I shared with my parents it was it was Spyro 2 was one of the first games I had but it was the tarzan game on the PlayStation one and I'm missing one more oh toy story 2 which is
actually like a weirdly good 3d platformer I remember that I played the toy story 2 game it was quite good honestly the tarzan games not bad either it's it but that is a 2d like platformer it's it's not terrible that like based on the Disney tarzan movie or yes I mean it's actually
kind of weird because this is the either does a game really really well or so bad it's memorable I think both of those are pretty I mean those are the only two late things not not the not the E.T. game back up there in the Delta right no that's not Disney that's that's universal that's true
yeah but my parents know that I have a PS5 for example right like they know the concept I remember like when I was 11 the PS3 it just came out I remember my parents coming home and like being like yeah I saw the PS3 at like Walmart that thing because it was like they were Christmas shopping
and they he was like that thing's really impressive and then I saw the price and I was like never never mind I'm buying that for $600 that long yeah I was stupid it was stupid but yeah so like I can't imagine either of my parents ever heard about stadium that brand awareness did not
exist and to succeed in gaming you kind of have to be there and like you have to like be reaching out beyond core gamers because core gamers honestly aren't going to be gamers weren't the ones that we're going to make stadium exactly but my biggest thing for stadiums that you keep saying
you need more time I need more time I need more marketing I think Google just rushes to get shit out the door and not give it the time to like start small and build and actually get a good product and then take it wider means like everything you keep saying about stadium just like yeah I said about YouTube music three years ago yeah that's what we've said about like so many other things because yeah I think Google like anything that is a product that people will have to spend money on
Google I think rushes out the door because they want the revenue as early as possible and they want to make a big splash but they aren't willing to have it start small or have it start in like more of like an open beta situation where it's like okay we have this it's not necessarily ready for everybody but if you try this the games are discounted or whatever and you can help us make this platform good enough so that way you could eventually play with your friends and hop into games for you
YouTube and all of that nonsense that we never really got because I mean it's like I hate to bring it back to YouTube music again but it's like YouTube music was a product that was not really ready but it got rushed into being Google's only music platform because some dumbass
executive cannot keep his mouth shut and said oh yeah this is replacing Google play music and said that at launch when it needed like another two years to get to the point that it needed to be yet like it is finally starting to get to where it needs to be right now
that one is like I agree with you it's it's not a bad comparison but like that one is a weird one because it's like also you are a music platform you didn't need to you could have just rebranded the existing one and relaunched it with like a new UI that already had all the features that were missing from YouTube music at launch but like because they wanted to move teams or whatever like we had to redo everything.
Well yeah because they wanted to capitalize on the YouTube branding but more importantly it's like there was already YouTube integration and Google play music like even from the inception from the first day if you had a song you could click on it and go to the YouTube music video if you want it like that was the day one feature okay if this was your big integration for YouTube what the hell guys well they milked that for all it it was worth so yeah it still didn't do much anyway
I think we should center our minds do some Shavasana trying to bring out my inner Miami I was gonna say dude you need to get out of that city in pronto and that's stadium other than attempting to push Chromebooks as a gaming medium
Google doesn't seem too eager to get back into the business of distributing video games then telekto property side of it as well as the pure mechanics of the form anytime soon it's AI all the way after all but never say never and that's the Android police podcast this week we hope you enjoyed it
we'll have a show all about CES next week wills in Las Vegas for that as I record this but there's plenty to look forward to for a chat we love getting mail from all our listeners please send your messages to podcast at AndroidPolice.com we read every letter and we appreciate your responses check the show notes for links to all of our relevant stadium coverage as well as our host social media pages take care and until next week bye bye that's gonna have to work