They still work as wired USB controllers, and could potentially be made compatible with regular Bluetooth through a firmware update, if Google can be persuaded to push such an update before abandoning the project entirely. So they're not necessarily completely useless.

Yeah I saw that just now. Then maybe I'd grab me some since it looks kinda comfy to hold.

A PC with games for purposes of LAN or whatnot. That's actually a good question. There's internet cafes in other countries, 30-60 machines. For basic machines or what you'd get in the library, no more than $5/hr. Hell you might get away with $1/hr for barebones systems for surfing.

I know a store nearby to me where you go for $2-$3/hr. This includes the SNES console (with the 100 something built-in games), N64, Xbox360, also includes access to a pool table, and like 6 arcade machines (machines you could buy at Walmart for $300 i think, with like 3-4 games on them, full mini arcade machines), pinball machine, as well as pingpong table. That part of the business caters to school kids who want to hang out. But then again the hardware isn't expensive.

Back when VHS stores were still up, you'd rent the consoles for $10/day, so that isn't too far off. And games were like $3.50/day per cartridge on top of it.

Renting say a full rig? Let's assume renting a full month would do the entire machine, and say it's a $500 rig (built at home so $1000 in value). 1000 / 30 = 33, so $30-$35 per a day.

Wow, really? That seems absurdly expensive. I wouldn't have expected it to cost more than 100$ per month, since at that price you can save your money for less than a year and get your own console or PC, pretty much. At that price you'd be competing with actually buying the system, heck you can probably pay for a PC or console in monthly installments and get a better deal.

Ikea, Rent to own, and morgages you tend to pay twice the amount of the original item, but you don't see the money you lost unless you do the math.

Also depends on the budget you have to work with vs the cost of the machine and fixing/replacing when something goes wrong, i know there's people who throw controllers when they get angry. You might get away with a smaller fee if they put a deposit on the hardware to ensure they don't damage it, but somehow i see that as unlikely. Most people who are going to get a machine will just buy it at walmart or elsewhere prebuilt. Maybe it has gaming ability but probably doesn't. Why? They aren't technical. You aren't just paying for the hardware when renting, you're also paying for all the fixing that may have to go into it later, be it wiping the OS, reinstalling drivers, removing viruses, wear and tear. You also expect the game(s) and system to work out of the gate, not have to do it yourself. Most people don't even know how to install programs or what icon to activate to start an exe file.

But i suppose it's the difference, of people who play Candy Crush on their phones vs people who buy $60 games.

Let's take the example on komplett.no (GeForce RTX 3060, Ryzen 5 5600X, 16GB, 1TB SSD); about 60USD per month.
https://www.komplett.no/product/1179192/gaming/gaming-pc/gaming-pc-stasjonaer/komplett-a135-epic-gaming-pc

Or here a much cheaper one, with Radeon RX 6400, Ryzen 3 4100, 8GB, 500GB SSD, for about 32USD:
https://www.komplett.no/product/1204337/gaming/gaming-pc/gaming-pc-stasjonaer/komplett-a15-epic-gaming-pc

(There are several models after that, one is as high as 112 per month but I can't fathom why people would want to drown their own money like that...)

Or a laptop with GeForce RTX 3060, Core i5-11400H, 16GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, for 34USD:
https://www.komplett.no/product/1211365/gaming/gaming-pc/gaming-laptop/acer-nitro-5-an515-57-156-fhd-144-hz

This is leasing so after 24 months you either decide to continue to pay out the rest each month for +1 year or change to a newer model. It's somewhat expensive if you want to own it after a while (though, everything today is) but it's ok I guess if you don't mind renting it like that.

#YouWillOwnNothingAndStillBeHappy <-- Brought to you by the World Economical Forum...

EDIT: Actually, it's a pretty decent way to get a gaming pc without paying a lot of money right now as it's rent free, and then comes renting a gaming service on top of that.

And about Stadia; According to Twitter and other places, no one outside of Stadia knew anything about this, so naturally game developers are furious since they happily prepared to launch their game in a few months. That's horrible but considering this is Google and how many times they've scrapped project before, I'm not surprised. I just hope developers will think twice before even consider talking to Google about any kind of deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzONqIgZs0k
https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/30/23381106/google-stadia-shutdown-shocked-developers-too

These numbers seem more along the line what I would expect, thank you for sharing. Stadia wasn't exactly a great value proposition, when you really consider all your options, if comparable prices can be found around the world. Sure, it was cheaper, but you also weren't paying to ever actually own the hardware, and a PC can do much more than a streaming console.

Google truly is a trash company, uh? Not that I wasn't aware before, but it's truly remarkable how they handle things as soon as there is some pressure on them.

But really. Video streaming is still far, far inferior in quality compared to a Blu-Ray. Brutal compression and sucking GBs of data from people with limited data plans.

Thinking that you can feasibly stream games is outright lunacy. Because not only will it provide worse image quality, but you also introduce input lag, which can be outright unplayable in fast paced games.

I still remember this video and laughing about the supposed "future of gaming":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6pf988yFSc

True. As a supplementary service to normal game ownership, it's great and I have no qualms about GFN for example, which does it right. It's nice to have streaming as an option for example when I don't have access to my PC.

What's Stadia?

Sometimes the necroposts are so early that they appear years before they are supposed to - even appearing contemporary.

It's someone that has studied so intensely, and much more than others that have also studied, which in-turn, makes them Stadia...

An American company making a SaaS with games in America, a country known to have poor internet in rural places (which is just as bad in most places on Tellus), and where there is a hard cap on download/upload, you'd think they would start connecting the dots BEFORE coming up with the name Stadia...

People aren't stupid, unlike these companies thinking it's a great idea to make people even more hooked on drugs with an injection cap... I mean games.

Then adding the latency from a-z and being able to handle massive amounts of requests at the same time without kneeling. Plenty of game launches that have gone into the mud because some leader(s) didn't have the foresight to see the massive unforeseen consequences of eagerly gamers. (Wouldn't that be called a legal DDoS?)

Right, the infrastructure really isn't there, at least not today. Maybe not for many decades.

Huh?