Stadia - first impressions

Right, so, I get it, there are a lot of people out there who Very Much Dislike the new Google Stadia service and some of what it may represent, particularly the death knell of game "ownership" (for all software licensing has been a thing for decades).  If you're in that camp, you might as well move on, since I'm not here to pile on.  Outside of that, I'm also not going to go into any of the various controversies over features missing at launch, pricing concerns, or stream/screen resolution shenanigans.  This is purely my experience so far, over the course of a few hours' playtime over the past day.  That said, I'm not above being nit-picky here... after all, this is a paid service.

So, first, the "founder's kit" hardware... nice little package, with the bare essentials to get started (outside of a phone that's required to go through initial setup on both the Chromecast Ultra and Stadia controller, the need for which is understandable but unfortunate).  I don't care for how the Chromecast dangles from my TV's HDMI port, but, for as often as I muck about behind the TV, it's not horrible, I suppose.  The controller I generally like... very similar layout to an XBox controller, and it's a decent weight in my hands.  However, it's got two differences that annoy me.  First, no removable batteries, which means Yet Another Charger in the house, and, without knowing the lifespan of the included battery, that means charging it after every play session (and removing it from the charger promptly to preserve battery life, per Google's instructions), or risk losing your ability to play midway through a session, for as long as it takes to recharge.  Second, they added buttons for Google Assistant (which is thankfully non-functional at the moment) and taking screenshots (which unfortunately does work)... and they were added below their equivalents of start and select buttons on the face of the controller, meaning that I often press one of the new buttons if I'm trying to press one of the old buttons blindly.  If any Google hardware engineer is out there, do a vertical swap of those buttons in future, please!

But enough about the hardware, you want to know how it plays, right?  I'm not getting into "X milliseconds of lag" territory here, there's plenty of that elsewhere.  But it's worth noting mitigating factors that might matter to you before I go into too much detail.  First, I'm older (Gen-X old, not Boomer old or older), so I literally might not notice fine differences in input delays and the like.  Second, I'm in an urban setting, so I have decent internet (if you can ever call Comcast "decent"), but not so thoroughly packed that the local network is severely oversubscribed, so Your Mileage May Vary.

Let's start with the Chromecast/Stadia controller option.  For all the combined setup of things took me the better part of an hour, once it was set up everything worked well.  Of particular note, since I know how much trying to stream anything interactive over wireless sucks from my past experiences with Steam Link, I made sure to use a wired connection for my Chromecast.  Well, let's say "wired" connection, since it's going through an ethernet hub and a through-the-house-wiring adapter before it reaches my router, but any timing issues added by that combination should still be vastly better than what I know of wireless streaming for this purpose.

As for individual game experiences, I have only tried the "free" games with the Pro subscription to this point.  Destiny 2 was quite playable, with no framerate issues and responsive controls (outside of being maybe "over-responsive" when using the analog stick as a mouse pointer in some menu screens)... it was very much like having a local console to play on.  I had more issues with Samurai Shodown... not on the display side so much, but the controls weren't doing it for me.  Basically, I could pull off "regular" maneuvers without any great grief, but some of the more advanced things were all but beyond me, even in the tutorial screens.  However, I can't swear that that's a Stadia thing and not a game thing... for me, Samurai Shodown is a sprite-based affair from the '90s, and the current version felt much more ponderous than I was expecting.  Whether that's something about the game itself changing over 20+ years, or Stadia input lag causing havoc, or me just getting older, that I can't narrow down without playing the game on another system.  Maybe I'll revisit that when Shodown hits XBox Game Pass (since I figure that's all but inevitable, now that it's been a free game on Stadia).

The other thing I've tried so far is playing Destiny 2 on my ethernet-wired PC with a wired XBox controller for about an hour.  Generally, no major problems there, but I did see a couple of frame skips briefly at one point in a mission, so it's not nearly flawless yet.  Still, again, it was an entirely playable and enjoyable experience.

Long story short, I actually like it so far... depending on things like how the pricing structure evolves with competition, I could see myself using Stadia as my "main" gaming system, with Steam for cheap/odd games and Switch for on the road and/or "twitchy" games, but we'll see how this all pans out in the coming months.