The Reviews Are Out For Stadia: It's a Bit of a Disappointment

On November 19th, 2019, Google's new video game streaming service, Stadia, officially launched. As it released, reviews of the new streaming service came pouring out and many of them are mixed. Critics praised Stadia for achieving what was thought to be nearly impossible, streaming high-quality games seamlessly on your TV, computer, phone, and tablet. Most critics have also noted that Google Stadia is by far the best video game streaming service out there, but it still suffers from a lot of issues. While Stadia was able to stream games at a good quality, many critics noticed that a few of the games they played didn't stream at a 4K resolution and 60 fps despite having a very fast internet speed and playing on a 4K TV. This disappointed some critics as the ability to stream at that quality were a promise from Google and a big selling point for the product. Some reviewers even reported that they experienced a lot of latency issues and stutters from a game despite having good internet speed, which shows that Google is still working on the kinks of streaming games through their private servers without lag. Now, having some latency issues doesn't sound like a big deal if it's a video streaming service like Netflix, but for video games, it matters a lot especially when you are playing online with other players.

The Washington Post's, Gene Park, shows off the "horrendous" input lag he faced while playing Destiny 2 on his PC using Stadia. In this GIF, it takes about 2 seconds for his character to jump after pressing the spacebar.

Another issue that critics had with Google's Stadia was its lineup of games. Although Stadia had over 20 games available to purchase and play on its launch date, many critics were quick to take note that for a platform that's supposed to be a cheaper alternative, many of the games offered are at least over a year old and cost $60 each, which made people question what audience Google was actually marketing this towards. It didn't make sense as all these games can easily be bought for a much lower price on traditional consoles, which makes Stadia ($130) feel more expensive than it was advertised to be. Overall, Google Stadia shows a lot of potential into the future of video game streaming, but ultimately, it feels incomplete and not worth it especially if you already own a traditional game console.

In my opinion, I was always skeptical about Stadia ever since its announcement. One question that pondered over everyone's head including mine was, what audience was Google trying to market this towards? It felt like they were trying to bring "pro gamers" to transition or at least purchase their product, but it was jarring to me as their lineup had no exclusives (at launch) and only games that most gamers have most likely already played. Also, if they were trying to market this towards "casual gamers" and people who can't afford a $300 or so console, then why only add old AAA games that cost $60 each on a platform that already requires really good internet speeds to play the game at the same resolution as a console? The more questions I have about these kinds of decisions, the more I wonder about how Google thought that selling Stadia the way they did was a good idea. However, I do admit that the release of Stadia shows that the future of gaming will be streaming it, but it may be at least another decade or so to see that work flawlessly.

Sources:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-11-21-google-stadia-critical-consensus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/stadia-performance-has-improved-since-launch-case-service-hasnt/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/unplayable-times-magical-others-stadias-dream-is-still-clouds/
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-11-27-google-im-not-sure-thats-how-stadia-is-supposed-to-work
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2019/11/26/google-stadia-review-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/#420fa78c6cc1