Today's your last day to play Google Stadia before it's gone for good

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

You can just go to the Stadia website and play with keyboard / mouse or any modern controller: https://stadia.google.com/games

You don't even need to sign up, you can do trials that are 30 minutes or more. Enough time to try everything before the service is gone. 

There's a prototype there called "Worm Game" which is what they used to test the service. It might be lost to the sands of time after today or who knows. It's not that great but it's nice to see. Otherwise there's a bunch of games you've seen on every other platform but this is a cool way to try them out for free. 

[Tanooki | 4,933]

I don't want to mock anyone who grabbed this for the obvious reasons, but, anyone who decided this was a good idea, can the hardware be hacked/repurposed to have some after life use?

I'll leave it at this though, yet another perfect example why digital format only is rotten, the rug can be pulled out at any moment and there goes your investment into it.  Physical media may waste space and is more cumbersome by the nature of grabbing it, putting it in place, and starting it up vs a simple tap and go...but, it still works.

[BlackVega | 583]

4 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I'll leave it at this though, yet another perfect example why digital format only is rotten, the rug can be pulled out at any moment and there goes your investment into it.  Physical media may waste space and is more cumbersome by the nature of grabbing it, putting it in place, and starting it up vs a simple tap and go...but, it still works.

Not really because you are still supposed to download a 50GB update for many games and the servers for the update are still supposed to be up and running. Otherwise your physical medium becomes just a placeholder

[Tanooki | 4,933]

Depends on the format I guess.  Most Switch games due to the lack of internal storage just work out of the box fine.  There are cases where someone was a cheapo and did a half game on card half download or full download like Wolfenstein and they got raked for it, sales sucked too to no surprise.  But the trade off, it keeps some games off as people just won't bother then as well so it kind of goes both ways.  Same issue has persisted on 3DS, WiiU and Wii too with the minimal internal storage by default.  But yeah if you're into the MS and Sony stuff, most of it is just non-functional from the PS4 generation since.

[FireHazard51 | 2,043]

On 1/17/2023 at 12:32 PM, Tanooki said:

Depends on the format I guess.  Most Switch games due to the lack of internal storage just work out of the box fine.  There are cases where someone was a cheapo and did a half game on card half download or full download like Wolfenstein and they got raked for it, sales sucked too to no surprise.  But the trade off, it keeps some games off as people just won't bother then as well so it kind of goes both ways.  Same issue has persisted on 3DS, WiiU and Wii too with the minimal internal storage by default.  But yeah if you're into the MS and Sony stuff, most of it is just non-functional from the PS4 generation since.

Hackers and preservationist will save the day.  But I'm sure there will be gaps in complete collections.  But I don't think we are heading off a cliff where shit tons of games are lost forever.  Similar to early years of movies and how those were lost to history.  I have good faith that I'll be rocking PS3/4 games 20 years down the road.  

[MiamiSlice | 3,095]

On 1/17/2023 at 10:39 AM, Tanooki said:

I don't want to mock anyone who grabbed this for the obvious reasons, but, anyone who decided this was a good idea, can the hardware be hacked/repurposed to have some after life use?

I'll leave it at this though, yet another perfect example why digital format only is rotten, the rug can be pulled out at any moment and there goes your investment into it.  Physical media may waste space and is more cumbersome by the nature of grabbing it, putting it in place, and starting it up vs a simple tap and go...but, it still works.

People have managed to hack the OUYA and keep it going, even finding ways around the DRM on games. But the problem with Stadia is there’s no digital media. It’s cloud streaming. So no servers means no games. Maybe the hardware can be unlocked and used as a general TV box but you may as well just get a chromecast. The only thing that is useful is the controller.

[Tanooki | 4,933]

I guess the controller if you found one super cheap enough is likely standard bluetooth and would be fairly useful for something, but that's what I was thinking it was a streaming only device so you're kind of boned.