Google promotes cloud gaming Chromebooks mere days after killing Stadia, its cloud gaming service
Oh, the irony. When Google announced the end of its cloud gaming service Stadia, barely anyone thought that the company would promote anything cloud gaming related in the near future.
Announced on September 30, Google told the world and all five Stadia users that it would shut down the service at the end of the year. Customers would receive refunds for bought hardware and games, but Google did not offer any options to transfer game saves or give customers any other comfortable exporting options.
Just 11 days later, Google published an article on its main The Keyword blog, in which it promotes "the world's first laptops built for cloud gaming". The three Chromebooks that Google advertised on October 11, 2022, are made by Acer, ASUS and Lenovo.
The promotional article provides basic answers to two pressing questions that most users may have:
- What makes the Chromebook "the best" for cloud gaming.
- Which cloud gaming services are en-vogue?
What makes these devices specialized for cloud gaming?
Google highlights the 120Hz+ display, support for RGB gaming keyboards on some devices, and WiFi 6 or 6E support. Cloud gaming does not require super-fast state of the art graphics cards or processors. All systems come with at least 8 gigabytes of RAM and at least an Intel Core i3 or i5 processor. Google fails to provide detailed specs that are important for gaming. Information that is missing includes the display resolution, size of the device, battery runtime, hard drive space and speed, or the exact model of the processor.
You have to follow the links to BestBuy or Walmart to look up the information.
Are these devices really the world's first devices built for cloud gaming, as Google Vice President, ChromeOS Product, Engineering and UX, John Maletis claims they are? If you look at Chromebooks, these new devices may appeal to gamers because of the features that Google highlighted. Other Chromebooks may offer some of the features as well.
They cost between $399 and $650, which is a price range that Windows laptops with similar features may also be offered in.
No Stadia, but three other cloud gaming services advertised
With Stadia out of the picture, Google announced that it teamed up with NVIDIA to bring GeForce NOW's "highest performance RTX 3080 tier to cloud gaming Chromebooks". The membership is included with the purchase of the Chromebook according to Google. Further down in the article, Google clarifies that a three-month trial to NVIDIA GeForce NOW's RTX3080 tier and to Amazon Luna+ is included with the purchase.
NVIDIA NOW is having a free plan, which supports gaming on a basic system for up to an hour at a time.
Google revealed that it worked with Microsoft to bring the beta of Xbox Cloud Gaming to the Chromebook as well. It comes as a web app that users need to install on their devices to play hundreds of XBOX games on the Chromebook.
Amazon's Luna service, which is only available in the United States, is also included as a three-month free trial.
Closing Words
With Stadia as good as gone, Google has to rely on third-party game streaming services to get gaming functionality on Chromebooks. It must pain some of the engineers who worked on Stadia that Google is now promoting the competition. Still, it may be less likely that the three promoted companies will kill their game streaming services in the near future. After all, the death of Stadia may have pushed Stadia users towards their services, giving them a boost in customers.
Now you: what is your take on cloud gaming?
Sounds like Alphabet needs a properties coordination czar.
Why not just purchase a Windows laptop at this point? Why restrict yourself to using their inferior Chrome OS? I suppose the BIOS is locked, preventing you from installing a better OS? I would never suggest using Chromebooks to anyone, not even my worst enemy. Things will only get worse with the upcoming release of manifest v3.
Cloud gaming is proven to be a failure because you don’t actually own anything. They may decide to prohibit specific games or terminate your online account because you said the F word to someone, causing you to lose all of your games. Having everything on the cloud is these tech giants wet dream. It serves as a technique of stealing money from you each month and selling your personal information at the same time. Prior to now, they would sell your personal information while giving you the product for free. They now expect payment while selling your information.
I can’t take Google seriously anymore. The only useful thing they offer is Google Search, Gmail, and Youtube. Aside from that, they can’t be trusted to keep a product more than a few years.
Android is another thing that they will keep working on. YouTube for me has been pretty bad lately. Buffering videos seems to be an issue for me for some reason. If I use alternatives like Invidious or Piped, it’s better, but default YouTube has been bad. For the past few years loading videos on desktop has been a hit and miss.
@Jek
Might be your ISP is blocking Youtube or some extensions hindering the video function? I use Youtube with 2 PCs and 2 phones but never have problem with it before.
At times like this, Google alias Alphabet, is an excellent advertisement for not allowing corporations to become near monopolies or just so big. Killing its streaming platform and days (a day?) later advertising gamer chromebooks…
You’d think that Google’s first tentacle doesn’t know what its 6th tentacle is doing. Though it’s more a case og having torn off its own tentacle. One wonders which Google peoduct or division is the next to be executed and sent to the graveyard.
Sell something, cancel it, sell something else which does the same thing. Taking the p out of consumerism. Google’s motto.
I was dumb enough to comment on r/Google “I told you so” and not only I was downvoted as hell, people started going through my whole history and downvoting my years old posts lol.
Whether these were bots or real human it’s up for debate, but I should have known that no one in their right mind follows that subreddit
‘Announced on September 30, Google told the world and all five Stadia users that it would shut down the service at the end of the year.’
Lol. German humour is the best.
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I think this estimate is overly optimistic.