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Google have confirmed the Stadia launch date is November 19

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Stadia, Google's new fancy Linux-powered game streaming service is officially set to launch on November 19, that is if you forked out for the expensive Stadia Founder's Edition.

In the blog post over on Google, written by John Justice the "Vice President of Product, Stadia", they mention that the Founder's Edition should start arriving on doorsteps on November 19. From then, you will be able to buy and play games beginning at 4PM UTC and it will work across devices right away (so you don't need to use that fancy Chromecast Ultra). As long as your Linux PC has a Chrome browser installed, it should work fine.

However, there's an important note included to say that they will be shipped out "in the same order that pre-orders were received". So if your country still had them available yesterday and you ordered, you're probably in for a wait. Justice said once your package ships, you will then get an email and sometime shortly after a code to activate it all.

As a reminder, while Stadia is a game streaming service it's not like Netflix since you do still need to buy the games just like you would on Steam or GOG. The "Pro" subscription at around £8.99 / $9.99 a month gives you 4K, surround sound, discounts and the occasional free game. The Base Stadia account is not a subscription but it's not free, since again you buy games.

We have a Stadia Founder's Edition ordered to cover here, so keep an eye out later next month to see what we think of it. Well, whenever our unit arrives anyway, we're probably way back in the queue due to when we confirmed our order.

Google also put out a quick overview video today too:

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There was a note in the video that you can only use the Stadia Controller in wireless mode with the Chromecast Ultra on a TV at launch, although wired mode and other gamepads/keyboard will work fine on PC.

Apart from the launch date and the note about shipping based on the order queue, no other info was given out. They also didn't mention if anyone can buy a Stadia Pro subscription then or if everyone else just has to wait until next year when Stadia rolls out fully.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Skipperro Oct 16, 2019
@Kimyrielle

Well, partially true - high-end sector probably won't be affected by Stadia (at least for next 10 years), as there is a group of people, that want to play in 144 FPS, they know their PCs well, customize them, have water-cooling ect. In fact - our strategy to stay relevant in the future is to shift more into those high-end needs and offer a unique, custom, work-of-art PCs.

Lag... will have to test it, but if you believe Goggle's marketing team - compared to current consoles, it could actually be lower. It's technically possible. Don't forget that frame processing also takes time. Even mouse connected to your PC have about 12 ms lag.

Moore's Law ending... this is the reason why in the long run (10+ years) streaming will have massive advantage over desktop PCs. Right now all the big players like Microsoft, NVIDIA and Google knows, that current way of computing stuff in a small tower case it at its limits. If you want to have a game, that have hundreds of enemies (or players) at once in one place and simultaneously offers photo-realistic graphic, you won't be able to do it on a single CPU. Forget it. Your only option is a server cluster running massively multi-threaded API like Vulkan, using branch predictions (calculating possible frames before user input) and other advanced techy-stuff.
That's why Microsoft have their streaming service, Sony and NVIDIA too. They all already look for the 10 years+ future and they all see the same. If we want more complex, prettier games, streaming is not the best way - it's the only way.

You will soon start to see games, that are designed for Stadia and will run only as a streaming with no local version available, because of technical reasons.


Last edited by Skipperro on 16 October 2019 at 3:05 pm UTC
iiari Oct 16, 2019
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Quoting: SkipperroIf we want more complex, prettier games, streaming is not the best way - it's the only way.
Couldn't agree more....
Kimyrielle Oct 16, 2019
Quoting: SkipperroIf you want to have a game, that have hundreds of enemies (or players) at once in one place and simultaneously offers photo-realistic graphic, you won't be able to do it on a single CPU. Forget it. Your only option is a server cluster running massively multi-threaded API like Vulkan, using branch predictions (calculating possible frames before user input) and other advanced techy-stuff.

That's a truly good point! For some games, even modern day computing power won't be enough, and I guess the only way that kind of game can be realized is by it running in a cloud. Microsoft's Flight Simulator is a good example of that already happening.

My counterpoint to that would be that there is no reason for EVERY game to be cloud hosted. While a photo-realistic flight simulator has to be, Stardew Valley profits exactly not at all from being remotely hosted. Cloud hosted gaming isn't exactly a new thing anyway. My favorite genre is MMORPGs, and these have been remotely hosted even back in the days when they didn't re-brand the thing we used to call a cluster-server to "cloud". I think you're totally right that we're going to see more and more cloud-based games actually making USE of the cloud other than just being a DRM scheme. But while games like MS Flight might do that, streaming these games in their entirety is not a necessity, still. Personally I foresee more a future that will use the cloud for performance-heavy operations and let the local client process what makes sense to do there, which is probably the best of both worlds. That's what MS Flight is doing, after all.

Time will tell, I guess.
Purple Library Guy Oct 16, 2019
Quoting: iiari
Quoting: [email protected]It's not the Netflix of gaming. You don't get a catalog of games to deal with.

You still have to buy your games on Stadia. Stadia simply helps offload it off the hardware.
That was my point, it wont' be the Netflix of gaming, which I think was a huge opportunity lost. As I posted above, I'm really surprised for how great the tech is that Google isn't being more aggressive with positioning this, because I think they're only, say, 85% confident in the tech status right now, not 100%. And as a long time Google fan and purchaser, they're honestly terrible at marketing and positioning their products...
They do seem to have this approach along the lines of "Build it and they will come, and then we'll, um, monetize it somehow." Then when it works, it works big, and when it doesn't, they fold the tent.
From a consumer perspective this can be good and bad. Seems like sometimes the answer comes back, "Looks like we have a way to monetize this, but it's pretty evil." and the response is "Oh well, pity we have to do that, but the next cool product won't make itself." So where say Microsoft in the old days was pretty much based on the model "Plan and commit evil acts to profit", Google may stumble into evil at times precisely because it doesn't have a plan outside the technology itself.
I may be way off base, this is just an impression.
Purple Library Guy Oct 16, 2019
Quoting: iiariI actually think the bigger future threat to your company, though, is still the next generation's love affair with mobile. My kids, for example, love Minecraft, and prefer to play it on mobile phones to computers with big monitors... They just love the touchscreen UI and want absolutely nothing to do with mice or keyboards.
The younger generation may well move away from dinky little screens as they, and more specifically, their eyes, get older. I've always felt doing much gaming on phones is a recipe for eyestrain.
We may see stuff to let them have a UI similar to a phone one while still using a bigger screen. Either big touchscreens or, hey, maybe you could do a dual screen setup where one screen is a small touchscreen, or even your phone itself, which you use for UI control, while actual documents, games etc. show on the big screen/s.
elmapul Oct 18, 2019
Quoting: DesumOh goodie. The ultimate DRM and censorship scheme. I'm so excited this is being warmly received because the servers happen to be running on Linux.

i'm worried about DRM and censorship too, but lets take it easy for now.
just remember that chromeOS was online only too when it launched, i think stadia is just an temporary solution until they can get more marketshare for their chromeOS, then they will be able to entice more developers to add offline capabilities too.
actually, chromeOS may be the reason why they are doing stadia anyway, its the only way to make it grow, without games it would strugle to grow otherwise.
also, i'm pretty sure that sony or microsoft will attack that disadvantage that stadia has to attack it, so they will have to respond.

also: onlive is not alive anymore, not because the company was bankrupt but because they where acquired by sony to use their technology on psnow...
lets just remember that before they shut down their servers they offered the option to download your games from they. (cloud lift)

in any case.
be the future an utopy or an distopy, there is NOTHING we can do about it.


Last edited by elmapul on 18 October 2019 at 7:18 am UTC
elmapul Oct 18, 2019
Quoting: chancho_zombie
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: chancho_zombie
Quoteand it will work across devices right away (so you don't need to use that fancy Chromecast Ultra). As long as your Linux PC has a Chrome browser installed, it should work fine.

I don't get this it should work on normal chrome browser even on android phones??. So then it should work in a normal Chromecast UH?
From what I read somewhere, it's because the original Chromecast doesn't support VP9.

I still don't get it. Wasn't stadia supposed to be interconnected with youtube?? I can stream from my linux pc with chrome or from my android phone to my chromecast, why should it be any different? I guess will have to wait to know the details why this is not possible.

you need to decode things fast in order to get an good experience, they only way to do that is with either an good processor, video card or asic.
chromecast 3 probably has an asic for vp9, and new phones can do that either by an asic on the cpu, the gpu or by bruthe force (without an dedicated hardware extension, using more cycles to process the same information, but still doing it fast enough)


Last edited by elmapul on 18 October 2019 at 7:14 am UTC
Eike Oct 18, 2019
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Quoting: elmapulyou need to decode things fast in order to get an good experience, they only way to do that is with either an good processor, video card or asic.

Current integrated graphics have built-in VP9 support.
elmapul Oct 19, 2019
[quote=chancho_zombie]
Quoting: Linuxwarperhttps://opensource.google/projects/explore/featured
android, chromium, go language, dart language, fuchsia os, kubernetes, webrtc, webm and many many more. And coincidentally some of those projects have benefited their competitors like amazon using the android fork, fireos ;

actually fuchsia may be a bad thing, it will be just like linux, except that the licence allow it to not be open source in the future

and fireos was not able to compete, competing is not as easy as to make a fork, especially when a lot of games use google play service and a lot of purchases of apps are done withing google play services, its a lock-in, an disguised one, but still an lock-in.
iiari Oct 20, 2019
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Quoting: elmapulactually fuchsia may be a bad thing...
Whoa, I'll believe Fuschia when I see it... Who know what, if anything, they'll do with that. I've long considered myself a Google fan, but I'm getting jaded after seeing head-scratching move after move... Especially after this bewildering Google hardware launch (Pixel 4 expensive and missing features, Pixelbook GO with WTF spec choices, no movement on Chrome OS in a while, killing services I use left and right, etc) I'm losing faith in their ability to read the market and to see things through to a satisfactory conclusion. Perpetually keeping everything in beta and treating things as disposable experiments that hundreds of millions of people around the world use every day is getting old... As a fan and early adopter of smartwatches and someone for whom that kind of notification system really fits with my workflow, their complete near abandonment of Wear OS has felt particularly insulting and betraying. It seems like Google is naval gazing too much and not plugged into their customers.

Quoting: elmapul...fireos was not able to compete
Considering the number of Fire devices Amazon has sold and how ubiquitous they are, and their likely level of investment (or lack thereof) in FireOS, I'm guessing they've been pretty happy with it....


Last edited by iiari on 20 October 2019 at 5:33 am UTC
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