Google Stadia Revisited – Is it any better?

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Since I reviewed Google’s Stadia platform a little over 7 months ago, a few things have changed. Apparently, some things are improved too, so in this video I want to revisit Stadia, see what’s new, what’s improved, and if it’s worth using or not. But first, if you haven’t already, consider subscribing for more videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!

So, what’s new? Well, they’ve got a free tier available now – it’s “only” up to 1080p, instead of 4K, and you don’t get any free games, nor any discounts, but once you own the games you can play them whenever you like with practically the same experience as a pro user. 

They’ve also improved compatibility, from both a playing-on-your-phone perspective, and from a controller pairing perspective. I can now play games on my Oneplus 7T Pro, and can now link the controller wirelessly to a web browser session, not just the chromecast. 

And finally, they’ve added some more games, not all that many, but definitely some. There are now 69 games on Stadia in total, not including the DLC pack/ultimate versions, which while not bad, is nothing compared to Steam’s 30,000. 

Now, an important question with these streaming services is latency, so since it’s been over half a year since I last checked, let’s test that again and see if it has improved. Starting with Stadia on Chrome, playing on my Ryzen desktop with the same monitor, and testing total system input lag, ie from a mouse click to a gun firing in game, and recording at 980 FPS giving a test resolution of just over 1ms, it averaged 72ms in Destiny 2. For context, last time I tested this it was 75ms, and playing on locally on my PC it was just 35ms. So, it’s improved, but not by much. 

Interestingly, I ran the same test on NVIDIA’s GeForce Now service – on the free tier on Balanced mode – and that took near on 100ms, a sizeable disadvantage compared to stadia, although neither compare well to the desktop. In “Competitive” mode, it does drop to 70ms average, at what looks like 144p.. More like 720p really, but it does not look great.

What about playing with the controller? Well, playing with it using the Chromecast, it’s just as slow as when it launched. The Chromecast was connected via Ethernet, and with me being kind on my estimates, it took 152ms to register a response. That’s really, really slow. 

So it’s still a slow mess, but at least they have 4K available now, right? Well, yes, and no. On a 1440p display, it’ll render at 1080p and that’s it, which ends up looking more like 720p and left me wanting to play on a console or on my PC instead. When i hooked up the chromecast ultra to a 4K display, it did eventually kick in to 4K, and it did look nice, but I did notice the odd stutter and hitch suggesting the server running my instance was a little underpowered for the task. I can’t imagine any of the games on Stadia truly benefit from 4K, and you’ll need at least 40Mbps internet to facilitate that – and even then it might still decide your connection isn’t good enough and drop you to 1080p instead. 

Of course on the free tier you don’t get that option, but while we are talking about the free tier I have to mention the game pricing. If you pay for pro, £9 per month, you get access to not only like half the library for “free”, but also sales on a number of titles. If you don’t pay for Pro, you don’t get those sales. For example, The Crew 2 Gold edition, that is £16 if you pay for pro, or £73 for free. That’s the most extreme example, but put it this way. You’ll spend more in upfront game costs alone than you would ever save by not using pro instead.

I should also note that when I went to try using the free tier, specifically by playing Destiny 2, a free to play title, it forced me to “Reactivate Pro to play”. In fact none of the “free” games that I had claimed while I had Pro at launch were on my account any more. I had no games at all. I imagine if I had purchased some outright, they would be there but still. Also if you purchase a game with the “pro discount”, I can’t be sure that if you then cancel your pro subscription you get to play that game. I assume you will, but it seems possible it’ll make you “reactivate pro to play”.

This furthers my issues with the game library on Stadia. It’s a closed platform, you don’t own the games outright, you can only ever play them on Stadia and you can’t transfer existing copies or accounts over. If Stadia shuts down, which with Google’s track record it very well could, you will have spent a lot of money on something you have no control over. Say you own PUBG on Steam and have an older gaming PC that can just about play it, so you have a pretty built up account on it, but you want to play on Stadia for the better frame rates and quality. You have to buy the game AGAIN, and start fresh. You can’t link your steam account, it’s locked to Stadia, and if you do decide to swap from Stadia you will have to leave your account there too.

At least with the other cloud gaming platforms like NVIDIA’s GeForce now or Shadow, they use your existing libraries and let you play a lot more games, and you actually own them meaning they are transferable to any other platform or system you want to play on. With Shadow in particular, it’s just a Windows VPS so if you want to stream from it, edit videos or anything else you’d want to do on a powerful PC you can. Sure Shadow is more expensive, but you pay a lot, lot less for the games and they are actually yours too. 

The overarching feeling I had while playing with Stadia was, “I’d rather play this on a console”. It’s ultimately just as convenient, but more responsive, better quality, and the games are yours to keep. If you play on PC, you can even easily stream to your TV or phone. 

For me, Stadia has a number of fundamental flaws that I’m not sure can be addressed well enough to ever have me interested in signing up. It’s not even about the latency, which is still pretty terrible, or the quality that varies wildly throughout a session, but the core business model itself. The lack of transferability of games, with no way to link to existing accounts and a total “walled garden” approach to using the service, means I still can’t recommend this to anyone. If you must have cloud gaming service, NVIDIA’s GeForce now, or Shadow, seem like much better options, even if they aren’t quite as snappy or quality rich as Stadia.