Since launch, many people have called Stadia a bit of a mess. Yet, in reality it's worked perfectly fine from day one. For someone with a solid internet connection, the service really democratizes the ability to play good-looking games without huge up-front costs. In this video, we show how Stadia works, describe how well the service performs, and lament on the reasons why it's not the smash hit Google may have originally wanted.
(Disclaimer: If you end up purchasing a Pro subscription after using the link, we also get a free month. That's not really a huge incentive for us though.)
Technical Notes:
Video captures were done either through on-device screen capturing or via OBS. Gameplay using mobile data was capped at 720p, while WiFi-enabled streaming on mobile and desktop were capped at 1080p and 4K, respectively. Additionally, the only two controllers used for gameplay were the GameSir x2 attached to the Surface Duo 2 in the video and Google's Stadia Controller. Input lag captured for this video represents a single use case at low connection speeds. Using wireless controllers or increasing connection bandwidth may cause worse or better lag. From personal experience, we don't expect the average person to be able to notice under normal conditions unless they go looking for it.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro 01:31 What is Stadia? 03:35 The Stadia Business Model 06:13 Streaming Limits 08:35 Performance 11:41 The Stadia Controller 13:10 Connection Issues 16:02 Public Perception 19:24 My Position 21:07 Final Recommendation 22:42 Outro
