Comparatively, I play a fair bit on Google Stadia, a similar Gaming-in-the-cloud service powered by Google.
My experience with Stadia has been pretty great. Since November 2020 I've been playing Destiny 2, an MMO FPS, so perhaps the worst-case latency-requiring kind of game, and it's been pretty great, at least for PvE activities. (PvP has been less great, but perhaps that's more the fault of my aging reflexes than near-imperceptible network latency)
When traveling, I've been playing Destiny on Stadia on an iPad (!) with an Xbox controller paired, using the host Wifi.
That, alone, was enough to sell me on the value of Stadia. I'm gladly paying the $10/mo (half that of GeForce Now) for the Pro tier, which gives me 4k HDR, and a bunch of games free each month.
People like to harp on Stadia, and it's true that their player numbers are low. In fact, a couple of days ago Destiny announced availability on the Epic Games Store, and apparently on Day 1 the number of players via the Epic Games Store outnumbered the number of Stadia players by 10x. There was a promotion on Epic which helped, but still, 10x!
Google has certainly tarnished their brand by killing well-loved products, but I also feel like they're under-promoting what they have. For example, if I try to go to stadia.com right now from this mac/safari, I'll just get a page that says "Stadia requires Chrome", with no promotional content to entice the user.
The main problem with Stadia is that I have to buy games exclusively for it. That makes it far more comparable to a game console than to Geforce Now, which is basically rent a PC, a - for me - far more customer friendly approach.
None of these instill any confidence in me that Stadia has tolerable input latency. Geforce Now certainly doesn't. A mouse has a much lower tolerable input latency than a controller. Then again gimped experiences like aiming on a controller are just as bad so you do you.
> 4K HDR
HDR could mean a lot of things. Geforce Now substantially cuts the color depth even when using only a small fraction of the available bandwidth. It's night and day. I'm sure Stadia does the same (otherwise adds more lag).
>For example, if I try to go to stadia.com right now from this mac/safari, I'll just get a page that says "Stadia requires Chrome",
Not exactly encouraging that Googles cares about the service. Google IOT seemed like it had a lot more revenue promise (probably cheaper to host as well), and even that could not survive the graveyard.
Of all the things speaking against Stadia, this is probably the least important one. It doesn't surprise me that Google would stipulate a client they have (more or less) complete control over. Geforce Now also uses their own client and no one bats an eye.
My experience with Stadia has been pretty great. Since November 2020 I've been playing Destiny 2, an MMO FPS, so perhaps the worst-case latency-requiring kind of game, and it's been pretty great, at least for PvE activities. (PvP has been less great, but perhaps that's more the fault of my aging reflexes than near-imperceptible network latency)
When traveling, I've been playing Destiny on Stadia on an iPad (!) with an Xbox controller paired, using the host Wifi.
That, alone, was enough to sell me on the value of Stadia. I'm gladly paying the $10/mo (half that of GeForce Now) for the Pro tier, which gives me 4k HDR, and a bunch of games free each month.
People like to harp on Stadia, and it's true that their player numbers are low. In fact, a couple of days ago Destiny announced availability on the Epic Games Store, and apparently on Day 1 the number of players via the Epic Games Store outnumbered the number of Stadia players by 10x. There was a promotion on Epic which helped, but still, 10x!
Google has certainly tarnished their brand by killing well-loved products, but I also feel like they're under-promoting what they have. For example, if I try to go to stadia.com right now from this mac/safari, I'll just get a page that says "Stadia requires Chrome", with no promotional content to entice the user.