It's not what I want from gaming — emphatically so, for numerous reasons I'll talk about in a moment — but in terms of performance, it was actually pretty impressive. I had Panzer Dragoon Remake running at a solid 60fps at 1080p (my TV will do 4K, but I have Windows set to 1080p because 4K was proving to be more trouble than it was worth in terms of my existing software) and there didn't appear to be any particularly discernible latency, lag, dropped frames or anything; there was some mild artifacting here and there, but I think that was mostly due to a sequence being video rather than real-time footage. All in all, it was actually rather impressive from a tech perspective.
Let me rewind a moment. Why was I trying Stadia in the first place? Well, because I have a YouTube Premium membership, and if you have a YouTube Premium membership, you can currently claim a Stadia bundle with a controller and a Chromecast Ultra (£90 worth) for free. And I haven't paid for that YouTube Premium membership because I got that for free as a "gift" from Google to make up for the fact that they ditched their actually-good music service Google Play Music in favour of the not-anywhere-near-as-good YouTube Music. Effectively I'm getting a Chromecast Ultra (which is something I actually do want) for the price of a month's Google Play Music/YouTube Music subscription. Which is nice.
My brief foray this evening confirmed that Stadia is definitely not what I want from gaming long-term, though. I do not like its pricing model. Stadia Pro gives you access to actually quite a decent selection of "free" games right from the get-go… but the caveat is, much like PlayStation Plus, if you cancel your subscription you lose access to all of those games. I would much rather they follow a model similar to Xbox's "Games With Gold" (do they still do that in an age of Game Pass?) or the Humble Monthly bundles, where you have to be signed up for a particular month to get access to specific things, but once you have access to said things you can keep them, even if your subscription lapses.
The bigger issue for me, however, is not really owning anything. Stadia's storefront has new releases up for the same price as brand new games — Assassin's Creed Valhalla is £59.99 — and for that price, I'm really not happy with just having access to the ability to stream that game for as long as Stadia lasts, or as long as Ubisoft decides they want to offer it on Stadia… or for as long as Google decides it can be on their platform. I have the same hesitation about digital purchases of that price, but at least in that situation you can download and back up the game in most cases — that way if it does happen to go kaputt on the live servers, you've still got a playable copy. (Unless it's Darkspore. Fuck EA.)
At the moment, I can perhaps see the value of Stadia for trying out the "Pro" games ahead of picking up an actual copy for PC or console, but there's no way I would ever spend actual money on a game on that platform. It's just antithetical to everything I value about gaming, and the important memories I come to attach to various experiences I have. It turns a game into just another form of content to consume rather than something to be savoured, experienced, appreciated. And I'm not a fan of that.
But in terms of tech, Stadia isn't shit. Which is something, I suppose.
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