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    Google Stadia launches today to mixed reception over input lag

    Chary
    By Krista Noren (Chary)
    Chief Editor
    Cs27bXBGecHazmPcY5R3HX-320-80.jpg ​

    Google Stadia has finally kicked off its launch today, releasing eight months after its announcement back in March of this year. Google planned to create a "Netflix" of gaming, of sorts, by allowing players to stream games to any device, be it a netbook laptop's browser, a phone mobile app, or a TV's Chromecast, removing the need to own an expensive gaming console. Theoretically, Google would lower the barrier of entry, and allow millions to play the latest and greatest that gaming had to offer, in a simple and casual manner.

    Initially, many took issue with the idea of streaming video games across the country, as data caps, input lag, and slow connections would likely stand in the way of consistent performance. A month prior to launch, in October, Google promised that latency would not be a problem with Stadia, as they claimed their servers and technology would be able to easily handle streaming 4K 60FPS video games to its customers, without issue. There was even an official statement of how Google Stadia would have "negative" latency, and would offer a more responsive experience than playing games locally, in the coming future.

    This only served to create more controversy for the service, with many skeptical of such a concept even being possible. Those claims are looking to be even more impossible in the near future, as Stadia is having issues with streaming games upon its first day of release.

    For many, this isn't a surprise at all. Digital Foundry, and its parent publication, Eurogamer, took Stadia out for a test drive with the Founder's Pack, describing their time with the service as "incomplete", and "basic". More importantly, though, they measured the exact input lag, comparing Stadia against an Xbox One X.

    [​IMG]
    ​
    While the above chart shows a definite amount of difference in terms of input lag, Eurogamer admitted that the games they played, at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second on a 200mbps wired connection, felt fine, overall, still being considered playable to the masses who likely wouldn't notice any major input lag.

    [​IMG]
    ​
    Other sites, however, were not as pleased. Forbes' writers reported massive amounts of input lag, making the 22 launch titles impossible to play or control.

    What many have already likely seen, is the above GIF, which comes from The Washington Post. In their trial, Destiny 2 had full seconds of latency, between pressing a button and the intended action occurring.

    It's important to consider that this is all still technically an early access soft launch for Stadia--those who are making use of the service now, are playing with technology that still has much room to improve and change, especially before its separate base release, slated for 2020. But while Google can certainly try to reduce input lag, develop better codecs, and innovate their streaming technology as a whole, many have a fear of if Stadia is actually really here to stay, with Google's infamous track record of creating services, investing into them for a handful of years, and then tossing them aside in favor of new projects looming in the back of our minds.
     
    Refriger8tor, tyrantnyx, brenokk and 13 others like this.

    2. Discussion (136 replies)

  2. DinohScene

    DinohScene hail p1ngpong
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    What happens to the games once Google decides to stop this?
     
    THYPLEX, jimmyj, Cyanopsis and 13 others like this.
  3. Tom Bombadildo

    Tom Bombadildo Dick, With Balls
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    Literally not surprising in any sense. Game streaming simply isn't a feasible service right now, the infrastructure just isn't there.

    Gg Google, can't wait for you to cancel the service in a year or two and fuck over everyone who bought games on it
     
    THYPLEX, jimmyj, AlexMCS and 10 others like this.
  4. Chary

    OP Chary Never sleeps
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    Relevant.

    At least I don't have data caps ;O;
     
    Trash_Bandatcoot, AlexMCS, Xabring and 10 others like this.
  5. Jiehfeng

    Jiehfeng Netti Netti
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    The biggest issue of all is that you need to buy each game, making it a night and day difference from a Netflix-esque subscription.
     
    AlexMCS, McBing, XxShalevElimelechxX and 8 others like this.
  6. Costello

    Costello Headmaster
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    What I dont get is, everyone knew this was going to happen, so why did they do it anyway unless they had an actual solution ?

    I always thought they were going to come up with some magic trick where latency would be extremely low. Today here we are, and it’s worse than anything else that’s already on the market. What am I missing ?
     
    Last edited by Costello, Nov 19, 2019
    THYPLEX, Deleted User, AlexMCS and 15 others like this.
  7. emmanu888

    emmanu888 6 years and still going strong
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    Onlive tried and failed. The only way game streaming can work is if its done over LAN and if the game is running from another PC in the house
     
    THYPLEX likes this.
  8. CallmeBerto

    CallmeBerto The Lone Wanderer
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    Expected tbh. The infrastructure is just not there. (both on the user end and Google's end) My hope that is improves a bit before it opens up to everyone in 2020 as I do want to give this a try and test for myself.
     
    x65943 likes this.
  9. Jiehfeng

    Jiehfeng Netti Netti
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    Ignorance is the key plan here I'm sure. They're going to try cashing in on people who know nothing about what the term input lag even means, and ride on the hype of "future cloud gaming". Not everyone researches before buying something, and such people you don't see discussing on the internet. They're mostly on Instagram and Facebook.
     
    THYPLEX and graeme122 like this.
  10. AdenTheThird

    AdenTheThird GBATemp's official Weedle fan-HAT-ic!
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    Honestly, can't say I didn't see this coming. Google is a massive company, but even that seemed too good to be true. Hoping for improvements to Stadia but for now, I don want to play something with a future that seems almost damned. Best of luck to both the players and developers.
     
  11. Nerdtendo

    Nerdtendo Your friendly neighborhood idiot
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    I wonder if this is a "we just launched and we need a second to iron everything out" issue like Disney+ had, or a "Oops we have a bad service" issue.
     
    Monado_III likes this.
  12. Costello

    Costello Headmaster
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    maybe...
    sounds like a bad decision from shit management boards who think the word "cloud" turns everything into gold...
     
    THYPLEX, Ryccardo, Xzi and 2 others like this.
  13. Godofcheese

    Godofcheese Insane
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    They said something that the Stadia controller was going to have learn your "inputs" to reduce input lag and with it being "directly connected" to the server will also reduce latency.
    Reviewers says it reduced it "a little" but it's still visibly present :)
     
    THYPLEX likes this.
  14. Ericzander

    Ericzander GBAtemp's residential attorney
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    Honestly I don't really understand who is this for. Stealing from Reddit:
     
    THYPLEX, DarthDub, Orangy57 and 3 others like this.
  15. Costello

    Costello Headmaster
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    exactly what I was telling @Chary the other day
     
    MarkDarkness, Orangy57 and FoxMcloud5655 like this.
  16. Jiehfeng

    Jiehfeng Netti Netti
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    Yeah I've no clue if this will work, time will tell. In any case there lies plenty of people who just buy consoles cause there are other people and friends who play games as well, they just want to play. If the casual market cannot notice this lag, there is a very good chance of success.
     
    THYPLEX likes this.
  17. Reecey

    Reecey Mario 64 (favorite game of all time)
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    Latency is expected on any connection even on a gigabit line there’s no such thing as zero latency in game! So what google say is bollocks basically and if your fibre connection is pretty overall bad anyway don’t even bother with this.. it’s another sad case for a giant company ie Google’s new platform to base the problems occurring on everyone else’s connection being poor, not them of course!
     
    Last edited by Reecey, Nov 19, 2019
    MarkDarkness, Orangy57 and IncredulousP like this.
  18. Viri

    Viri GBAtemp Psycho!
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    Oh, I'm sure Google will strike a deal with Steam and b- BUHAHAHAHAHA! You'll lose all your games, obv. Best case scenario, they'll give you some Google bux to buy stuff from their shop, and tell you to deal with it, and fuck off.
     
    THYPLEX, the_randomizer and Orangy57 like this.
  19. Techjunky90

    Techjunky90 GBAtemp Fan
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    Why not go ahead and throw the bandwidth usage numbers up there too? I believe data consumption is 7-15gb per hour, depending on if it's 720/1080/4k
     
    MarkDarkness likes this.
  20. ninjafrog658

    ninjafrog658 Member
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    Oh my! Color me suprised!

    /s
     
    Orangy57 likes this.
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