#oneaday Day 183: Stadihahahahahaha

Hello! Sorry about yesterday. I was absolutely convinced I'd already written a post yesterday, but it turns out I was just remembering the previous day. Evidently all the days are melting into one another. Never mind eh.

Anyway, now seems like a good time to talk about Google Stadia, which revealed a bunch of new information yesterday. Remember, this is the thing that some people were arguing was going to be the "future of gaming".

Here are some facts and my thoughts.

It's launching in November of this year. Attempting to hit the Christmas rush is… theoretically a good idea, but I feel there's something inherently less exciting about something that doesn't actually have any real dedicated hardware. Also releasing in November means it's going up against Pokemon. Good luck with that!

There will be a "starter pack" available for £119, which includes a controller, a Chromecast Ultra and a three-month subscription to the "Stadia Pro" service, which allows 4K/60fps video… assuming you have the 35Mbps+ connection required to make this work. Again, this feels rather expensive for what it is… perhaps it's just me. The Chromecast is a nice device, but you can pick one of those up by itself for £30 or less; presumably the "Ultra" offers something extra (4K?) but given how cheap TV sticks are these days, this feels like a lot of money for not very much.

The controllers will be available separately for £59 in 2020. Hahahaha. Get real. I know controllers have been creeping up in price for the last couple of generations, but £60 is insane.

Stadia Pro will cost £8.99 a month, and will not include all the games in the library. This is, I think, the most hilarious thing. The biggest potential selling point of Stadia during the "conjecture" period was the possibility of a Netflix-style gaming library, where you could just click on a new release and immediately be playing it. But it seems that's not going to happen; while some games will be included as part of the subscription, new releases will have to be "bought" separately, meaning you're paying for something and ending up not owning either a physical or digital copy of it.

There will be a free option. You'll be limited to 1080p and 30fps using this free account, which removes two of the main selling points from the initial announcement. Presumably you also won't have access to any of the included "subscription" games, meaning you'll have to buy anything you want to play. Individual pricing for games hasn't been announced, but they better be cheaper than full download or packaged releases of games, since, to reiterate, you're paying to not own anything.

Some big names are on board. Games confirmed include Doom, Destiny 2, Final Fantasy XV, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed Odyssey and The Division 2. Boooooring… and all games that have been out for a while, more to the point. Neither Activision (Overwatch) or Epic (Fortnite) have signed up to the platform, meaning that, at the time of writing, two of the most popular games in the world are not available on Stadia.

The system will have the ability to search YouTube for relevant content, and for you to see what your friends are doing while you're playing. No. I already get distracted by notification spam on modern consoles; I really don't need picture-in-picture of my friend playing a totally different game when I'm trying to concentrate on something. Searching for relevant YouTube content is potentially interesting… but it does also sort of encourage behaviour where people don't try to discover things for themselves, and instead go straight to YouTube to get the solutions. Also video guides suck; bring back text!

To summarise, there are some interesting ideas here, but I don't see it working, at all — and I sincerely hope that people don't support this. I'd perhaps be more receptive to the idea if the subscription offered a complete "Netflix of games" type situation, but asking people to buy games on top of a subscription fee is just laughable… not to mention it is one of the many reasons OnLive, an earlier attempt to do pretty much exactly all this, failed miserably.

As I've mentioned before, my biggest concern with Stadia is that if it takes off, it will normalise the non-ownership of games, and that's a serious concern for preservation and archival. I'd much rather the games of the world be distributed across a wide variety of collectors' libraries than centralised with one single corporation… plus a centralised streaming solution means that games can easily be removed from existence when, say, a licensing deal expires, or even a newer version of an existing game releases.

You know me, I don't normally like to be overly negative about things, but there is absolutely nothing desirable about Stadia for me, and I hope it is a miserable flop. If successful, it has the potential to do irreversible damage to the gaming medium, and I want no part of that. Thankfully, with all the bizarre and stupid decisions that seem to have been made during development, the likelihood of that happening seems to have gotten significantly less… and I have to say, I'm happy about that.

This is probably the last I'll say about Stadia, since so far as I'm concerned, it doesn't exist from this point onwards. I will continue to support the things I believe in!