Google Stadia went live this week, Tuesday the 19th, if you somehow missed the flood of posts about it, and I didn't buy in. I almost did back in March when they first showed it off at GDC, but by the time actual launch day rolled around I'd talked myself out of it about four separate times.
Here's the thing that's bugging me, and it isn't really about the tech itself. The Founder's Edition runs $129 and gets you a Chromecast Ultra, a Stadia controller in that odd blue they're calling Night Blue, and three months of Stadia Pro. That's not a terrible deal on paper. But you need that Chromecast Ultra or a fairly recent Pixel phone to actually use it at launch, and the list of playable games on day one is something like a dozen, not the sprawling library they demoed back in the spring. Destiny 2 is on there, which I already own on PS4, so that's not much of a reason to switch.
Mostly though I keep thinking about my Pixel 3a (two years old now, still perfectly happy with it) and what happens if Google decides in three years that Stadia isn't hitting whatever internal metric matters and just turns it off. Ive lost track of how many Google products Ive used and then watched get killed off. Google Reader in 2013 still stings if Im honest, and Inbox got shut down back in the spring. Im not trying to be the guy who brings up Google Reader in every single post, but when a company has that track record, putting your games permanently onto someone else's servers is a genuinely different kind of bet than trying out a new email client for a year.
There's a practical problem too. My upload speed is fine, but my downstream during peak evening hours (roughly 7 to 10pm, when everyone on my street is apparently streaming something) gets inconsistent enough that YouTube has dropped to 480p mid-video more than once this month. Cloud gaming needs steady, low-latency bandwidth in a way that Netflix buffering just does not. If my connection stutters watching a sitcom, I dont love the idea of paying $60 for a game and finding out the hard way that Tuesday-night neighborhood congestion is now a controller-input problem.
None of this is me saying Stadia is bad, exactly, because I havent used it and cant really say that with a straight face. Reviewers who did get hands-on time this week are reporting real, noticeable input lag on some titles and a UI that's rougher than youd expect from a company with Google's resources. That's enough for me to sit this one out. Ive been burned before by getting excited early about a service that's entirely dependent on one company's continued willingness to pay for server time, and honestly this blog is basically a running record of me relearning that lesson every couple of years since 2011.
What I will say is Im curious what this looks like in three years if it actually works. A world where you dont need a console, dont need to download an 80GB patch overnight, and can just click a link someone sends you and be playing within a minute, that's genuinely appealing, and it's the pitch Google has been selling since March. Im just not going to be the one financing that experiment with my own hardware budget this particular month. Ill let the Pro subscribers hash out whether it drops frames on a Tuesday night before I hand over a card number.
If youre one of the people who did preorder the Founder's Edition, I wont pretend Im not a little curious how the controller feels in hand. From what Ive read it's meant to talk to Google's servers directly over WiFi instead of routing through your phone or TV, which is a neat trick if it actually holds up under real conditions. Drop me a line if youve got opinions on it, Im easy enough to find.