Netflix’s test of streaming games is small, but it’s poised to be a big deal

enu@lemm.eemod to Technology@lemmy.world – 58 points –
Netflix’s test of streaming games is small, but it’s poised to be a big deal
arstechnica.com
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Oh, because Google Stadia was such a roaring success, I'm sure that Netflix will totally not turn that into a sinking ship either.

Stadia failed because of their business model. Xbox cloud gaming is working fine. If Netflix can offer a good catalog at no additional cost, it will become mainstream in no time.

Stadia was amazing, google couldn't fucking wrap their head around the fact they needed to package it with other things. Why I. The flying fuck they didn't have a storage + stadia + YouTube + music plan k have NO fucking idea but if they did it would have been a roaring success

Anyone that used it can tell you the service was immaculate - they just would never stick to a fucking plan or properly advertise it.

Google doesn't understand products that don't 'change the world'. There are no decent successes to them, there's YouTube, then there's Google play music, even though the second is good it doesn't get widespread acclaim so it's garbage to them.

YouTube music is amazing - if it had mir podcasts, it would be my goto player for everything. I can get real weird music on YT music I can find anywhere else

Google play music was better imho, had everything, better interface, none of the annoying youtube-ness, it literally just worked.

And when yt music came out many of the files were at terrible quality because they were basically reencodes of uploads instead of official releases.

My library went from sounding beautiful to painful to the ears overnight. It's gotten better but I havent forgotten, that's a dick move.

Stadia was really good. I'd prefer to pay a bit more to avoid the vendor lock-in and have some portability, but what they offered was fairly priced.

In fact the only reason I stopped using Stadia - or any cloud gaming for that matter - is that I like to build and have my own machine and was fortunate to be able to afford one.

IIRC, you had to buy the games to play them. A subscription service would work much better

That was the perfect thing about stadia - there was no subscription needed. You bought the game. You could play the game. That was it. No need to have monthly fees, you just got to play the games you owned.

Which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever for a cloud gaming platform.

If you don’t own the hardware the game is stored in, you don’t own the game. Which was shown when they closed stadia down and everyone lost all of their games.

Google has gone ahead and provided full refunds to all, encompassing not only the game costs but also expenses related to controllers, stadia devices, and purchased games. Developers of the few online games that have been available on stadia, have implemented a cost-free method for transferring accounts.

Not excusing the fiasco that Google Stadia was, but credit where credit's due.

They're one of the very few companies that even could afford to do that, and they didn't have to. I think people who invested into Stadia lucked out that it was Google and not some other company.

I would be reluctant to sign up for a similar clone service unless you also get a key to another store.

We didn't luck out it was Google, if it had been a small startup I wouldn't have trusted buying any games for it, neither would many others.

So again, you didn’t actually own the game. You just bought a license to play it on Google’s servers.

Sure give them credit for doing the bare minimum and refunding people. But if you don’t own whatever the game is stored on, you don’t own the game.

Yes but we got refunded and some publishers even gave licenses on other platforms for their games even though it was refunded

One of the selling points of cloud gaming is exactly to be able to play it right after purchasing it without all that hassle. No more downloads, installs, game and driver updates, and hardware limitations.

We don't have that much control over steam games either. Whether the game is in our storage or not doesn't matter at all. Being able to play it it's what matters.

Which is why a game streaming service makes sense.

But that’s all it is. A service. You don’t own anything about it. You pay a few bucks a month and get to play games without having the hassle of having a console or pc.

Cloud gaming makes sense and I’m not arguing against that. But not from an ownership perspective. Cloud gaming is gaming as a service in its purest form. A subscription system is perfect for that.

We have never owned any creative work, we are granted the rights to use a copy. It's always been this way.

Owning was never the important part, it's about being able to play/use/enjoy it.

Didn't you need to pay a sub to access Stadia & purchase the game on top of that? Or was that just for a more premium tier of Stadia.

Like buying expansions to WoW, pay for the expansions & pay the sub to play the game.

The cyberpunk fiasco was a perfect time to have pushed it, too bad they didn't try to ride the waves of being the best place to play one of the most anticipated games of the decade (I know it was a disastrous launch, but the hype leading up to it for years was on a whole other dimension).

No, you buy the game you play it for free. You sub if you want to receive free games every month or have some premium features like hdr or 4k.