Returning to Stadia in 2022

Cloud gaming has been around for a few years now, with Google Stadia alongside Xbox being two of the bigger names. I was a little hesitant in the past when it came to cloud gaming, especially around quality and controller latency.

Although cloud gaming probably is not for everyone, having it as an option and making gaming more accessible, has been one reason Stadia got my initial attention.

My first experience with cloud gaming

I was always interested in Stadia, being able to play triple-A games, on any laptop or tablet? What’s not to like?

Back in 2019, I signed up for a free month of Google Stadia, just to test the waters, and those waters were rough. I spent maybe a few hours trying a couple of different games, and from my personal experience, it was almost unplayable. There was a large amount of input lag, and the quality was sub-par.

Done and dusted I thought, I returned to playing on my PS4 and Switch, and to be honest forgot all about Stadia, until now…

Returning to Google Stadia in 2022

Over the last few years, as I have grown older, I have started to downsize my game collection, selling off older consoles, and sticking to those I play the most, which for me are my Switch, Vita, and Retroid Pocket. There are several reasons for this, but that’s a story for another time.

The problem was I still had an itch to play certain triple-A games such as Cyberpunk 2077, but with no way to play such titles, I decided to look into Stadia and give it one last shot.

I started by testing one of their free games Destiny 2, just to see whether the service had improved at least for me, and boy was I pleasantly surprised. Not only did it work, but it worked pretty well!

More choice in gaming is a good thing

Having played Stadia fairly regularly over the past few weeks, I really have started to have more of an appreciation for it, and being able to hop in and play Cyberpunk and Red Dead Redemption on my tablet is something 10-year-old me would only ever dream of.

Sadly in today’s economy, not everyone has the luxury of spending hundreds of pounds on the latest gaming hardware and games, which is where Stadia offers a good alternative, if you want to play a game, but not invest hundreds, let’s be honest is not overly necessary with the rising price of food, gas, electric and more.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows

Although for me Stadia has become one of my go-to ways to game, at least for a selection of titles it is far from perfect. Firstly you are going to need a fairly decent broadband speed to even be able to play the games.

As of writing this, my current speed is in and around 150Mbps, which for some areas of the world might not be much, but I know for others is a luxury.

Another nitpick is the game collection, Although there is a fair amount of triple-A games ranging from Avengers to Red Dead Redemption and The Last Jedi, there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of games to choose from, compared to other services such as Xbox’s cloud streaming service.

Is this the future of Gaming?

Although I believe that like with other forms of entertainment, cloud gaming is likely going to be the future. Especially when you look at Microsoft and how they are evolving the Xbox brand, I am not confident that this means Stadia is the future, at least in its current state.

We all know Google has a habit of killing off products quicker than a Game of Thrones episode, but I am now at least a little bit more hopeful of what the future of cloud gaming will look like.