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The Elder Scrolls Online - Stadia vs Shadow
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Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
The Elder Scrolls Online - Stadia vs Shadow
Stadia vs Shadow - Which streaming service should you look into when streaming The Elder Scrolls Online if you don't have a dedicated PC handy, or lack the hardware to run it properly?
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I tried Stadia for 2 months. Didnt get to ESO on the service but the quality was not as good as GFN and the lag was constantly bad on Stadia on peek hours. Rarely did that happen on GFN. Matter of fact, I dont remember the last time I lagged out in GFN.
But i hate it so much that i have to wait, it can take a month or longer from what i've read...
I really like GFN, the video quality of the stream has improved quiet a bit, i don't see artifacts anymore and color banding has been reduced. And to me it feels like the latency has been improved by a small bit.
But i get the lag indicator quiet often lately, probably cause more people have joined.
I used to play Division 2 for hours without disconnecting or lag issues, but now it's not doable anymore and regularly GFN just quits my session cause of major lag.
I still think cloud stream gaming will be a big part in the future.
I'm not shocked Shadow won over Stadia, I've not heard good things about Stadia unless one has ideal conditions.
The whole you have to buy a game again you already own for Stadia is a big deterrent.
The fact that I can sit on my couch and be playing a game in under 10 seconds without log ins, 2FA, or any of the other potential garbage my shadow can run into sometimes means most of the time, I choose ease and reliability of Stadia over the graphics and performance of Shadow.
Stadia has games that release months after they've already hit the market, but they also have the ability to stream titles that they've negotiated specific deals with.
GeForce Now has an opt in program, and it still requires that they manage each title to appear on their service. GeForce Now is the least expensive service too, and lets you play games you already own rather than buy games made for the service.
Shadow lets you play games the day they release. It lets you play beta games, emulated games, anything you can play on your PC you can play on Shadow. But it comes with as much of a learning curve and time commitment as any other PC, and can be prone to you screwing up your game sessions through improper installations or downloading and installing questionable applications.
I use each service for certain things. I look forward to the day that I can buy one service that can do everything.
This guy gets it.
Each do have their own specific strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, for me, I don't really view GFN as a good middle point mostly because of where I'm located. GFN doesn't have a decent data center for someone who is in Florida like me, so the quality is almost worse than Stadia.
Stadia, however, has one in Atlanta. I get a consistent 20ms with Stadia. It's most like 50-55ms with Shadow and GFN for me.
And when I speak of accessibility with Stadia, it wasn't for lack of trying to get to that point with Shadow.
I tried multiple things. I made it so I didn't require a password during my login on my Shadow so when I select a game on the application, it doesn't ask me for it. I made it so it auto-launches an application called 'controller companion' which allows me to emulate the mouse with my joysticks when I needed it - and yet I still have issues with 'getting' to the point where my shadow is a good supplement to Stadia for accessibility but I just can't do it, it just always runs into some sort of issue.
Also, I'm aware of Stadia's issues. My best friend was a founder before it launched but has an iPhone and hasn't been able to play on the go yet. Once it becomes easily playable on iOS I think we'll see a lot more people playing on Stadia.
The appeal for a lot of people is being able to play games like ESO on the go. I was able to run dungeons with friends the other night while playing ESO on Stadia via my phone. Very convenient and accessible if Stadia supports your phone.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Shadow is a virtual PC so will work exactly like your own PC with the exception of storage space. You will still have to sit through updates and loading screens like you would on PC and you will likely have to uninstall games to make room for new games.
GFN is much the same as shadow with the exception of only optimized games being available and updates tend to take only a minute or so. Some people have mentioned playing ESO which is not available on GFN except by streaming it from your own PC with gamestream.
Stadia is a whole cloud system which is closer to GFN than Shadow will ever be but it runs more like console games in that there are almost no graphical/video settings that can be used to optimize the game. I think this will be better compared to project xcloud when it is released. Stadia has downtime when updates are being deployed to a game instead of having to download and install the updates which means you cannot play the game.
Because you can play it on a phone, the whole of gaming is being reoriented around the demands of smartphone users. We saw this start five or six years ago and now we have many games made for mobile before they come to the PC. But that's not enough, now PC's must be booted into history because you can't carry one around with you.
Streaming means lag and as yet very little internet bandwidth is being used by this service. If it really takes of the amount of bandwidth will explode and in a climate where people keep talking about the prioritising of data does anyone think gaming is going to take priority?