Engagdet: Google Stadia vs. Microsoft xCloud: Real-world comparison
- Thread starter Gowans
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Seems a fair balance and useful summary of the two services...would be really interested to see "hard" data on xCloud lag.
Yeah. Felt very even handed. I haven't tried Stadia, but since xCloud lag bothers me, at least on my home network it's got to be north of 200ms.
This is baffling to me. Stadia streams - really well - up to 4k/60fps while xCloud maxes out at 720p and is more sluggish (I mean, it runs off of Xbox One S blades). But xCloud is more of a success because they didn't say it'd be 4k/60...?
Like, I know Destiny 2 is 1080p upscaled on Stadia, not 4k. But that's still higher res than anything you'll get on xCloud or PS Now and there are native 4k games available on Stadia like Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I realise that it's annoying that they once said 'everything 4k!' or whatever. And it feels like a burn that some games, like RDR2, render lower than they should do on the hardware available. But RDR2 streamed from xCloud would be rendering at 1080p/30fps and sent to you via a 720p video at it's absolute best. On Stadia it's 1440p/30fps or 1080p/unlocked (targeting 60fps). I just can't fathom that one is more of a success than the other because someone once sent a bad tweet.
Reports have said its a very good controller, but it's very hard to disassemble and reassemble.
Also I think the "stream on the go, play local at home" is the far better proposal.
She's building in Fortnite, and she's actually moving so quickly you can't see her fingers move to tap the buttons.
Overcompensating for the input lag? Plus we all know if you push harder, you run faster and jump higher.
Yeah, I didn't find it a particularly good comparison to be honest. For example she was clearly quoting other sources for data, rather than capturing her own, hence no hard data on xCloud latency.
The subjective impression of xCloud being laggier than Stadia was interesting, but otherwise, there wasn't really a whole lot new here. We already have had reams of commentary on Stadia's unappealing business/content model.
Technically at least Stadia is offering something higher fidelity vs prior streaming services - in its higher resolution where supported by games - otherwise, technically, she could have been making this commentary years ago about PSNow and Gaikai/Onlive etc. Outside of Stadia's 4K streaming, it's the same old same old - 720p streams with notable lag. Which is fine, but a little surprising to see little apparent improvement on latency in the intervening years.
It is a very nice controller to hold and play with, although I personally don't like the feel of the triggers as much as Dualshock or XB controllers.
Because she is playing a game, some people put more energy into it then others.
How do you compare a mobile platform beta to a full tv release version of services? It's not hard to render better graphics at mobile phone sizes. Once they both have pc / tv clients and we see how it works in Real household I can decide.
I bought stadia and have been impressed with it as a 1080p service they lied about 4K/60 for all games and that's not right, but I see it's a viable alternative for some gamers who do t want the hassle of constant patching updates and constant tweaks we do in pc gaming.
I bought stadia and have been impressed with it as a 1080p service they lied about 4K/60 for all games and that's not right, but I see it's a viable alternative for some gamers who do t want the hassle of constant patching updates and constant tweaks we do in pc gaming.
Has a good weight and feels good to use, as Bojanglez mentions above though I would like more resistance on the triggers.
This is a really weird conclusion. Stadia is better but the messaging was bad so that this other service still in beta running at half the resolution with slightly worse performance is better?
I mean they shouldn't really be comparing them until Xcloud launches and they can properly test them out. As much as Google's messaging has been poor and how half baked Stadia has been in terms of features at launch, it's not exactly a shock that launch ports like Destiny and Read Dead aren't optimized very well for the Stadia blade.
I don't blame them for doing the comparison, but still a weird conclusion to come to.
I mean they shouldn't really be comparing them until Xcloud launches and they can properly test them out. As much as Google's messaging has been poor and how half baked Stadia has been in terms of features at launch, it's not exactly a shock that launch ports like Destiny and Read Dead aren't optimized very well for the Stadia blade.
I don't blame them for doing the comparison, but still a weird conclusion to come to.
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It should actually be easier to provide a lower latency experience, with 60hz games, on xcloud at the moment also - encode, transmission, and decode should all be lower. For Stadia to have lower perceived latency for this reviewer, with higher resolutions, doesn't flatter xCloud on a technical level.
However, of course, xCloud is in beta, and everyone could have a different experience depending on their own network locality with different services, and the power of each device they use for different services. But to the extent this reviewer wants to compare the two, I think she glossed over some things that could bear a bit more scrutiny once both services are 'out' and being charged for, if certain things remain the same between now and then.
That's the effect of a botched launch with false promises. It gets criticized for what they said not what was delivered. Stadia performs better but has a bunch of other albatrosses around it's neck.
If performance is the only metric then yeah Stadia is better. But time and again performance doesn't dictate market dominance.
I get the feeling xCloud will be in beta all through the better part of next year until the launch of Scarlett or just before or just after. I think that by the time of launch they would have upgraded most of the blades to ones based on Scarlett hardware and since it would be backward compatible with all the previous generations and play them at their best.
It feels pretty good. It's not revolutionary but I didn't feel like I had to get used to it from playing so much on on a dualshock. I much prefer symmetrical analog sticks.
The biggest difference between the two actually goes beyond the streaming itself.
Stadia is the product. Weather you're a Pro subscriber or not, you have to buy the games full price and streaming is the only way to consume them.
Content is severely lacking as well, at least for now.
Xcloud is a feature. A cool feature to use when you're on the go (break time at work, Hotel etc...). When you're at home you go back to playing locally
at the highest possible fidelity. Game saves travel back and forward. Massive library of games.
Stadia is the product. Weather you're a Pro subscriber or not, you have to buy the games full price and streaming is the only way to consume them.
Content is severely lacking as well, at least for now.
Xcloud is a feature. A cool feature to use when you're on the go (break time at work, Hotel etc...). When you're at home you go back to playing locally
at the highest possible fidelity. Game saves travel back and forward. Massive library of games.
I agree with this when they promised 4K 60FPS that was in relation to the video quality. Unless they said otherwise and I'm mistaken. The issue with the Destiny performance comes from them promising a blade more powerful than the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro put together and that's not what they're getting. That seems more of an issue with the Stadia version port (assuming their blade is all they said it is) than the streaming.
Google claimed Stadia would be playing games at 4k60 because of their vastly superior hardware and ability to recruit more hardware if needed.
The thing they didn't say is that meant the stream itself would be delivered at up to 4k60, the games themselves will render all over the place and upscale to meet it.
I haven't used xCloud, but I have used PSNow extensively, what I would say is that from experience Stadia is leagues ahead in how it functions and looks on a TV. Right now Stadia is the best streaming solution out there in terms of tech/user experience. I would say that's perhaps harder to pull off than the library and features, which I hope come with time.
This...a lot of folks don't realize they move the controllers a lot themselves when playing games. They just don't see it cuz they're looking at the screen.
I haven't seen any direct (same time, same location) comparisons between Stadia and PSNow, or xCloud and PSNow, tech wise.
The closest is Digital Foundry's Stadia tech article - in so far as they previously measured latency for PSNow also (and Gaikai and Onlive before it).
The input latency DF measured for Stadia is uncannily similar to the latency they measured a couple of years ago for PSNow, in 30 and 60fps games.
Stadia obviously has better resolution than PSNow, and is running on much more powerful hardware. xCloud does not have better resolution, and runs on base Xbox Ones currently.
PSNow is currently - I believe - available in more locations than either of the other two.
So... actually... I think tech wise it might be more complicated story than all that.
They key technical component - IMO - for game streaming is latency. And in that regard, it's impossible to make a general judgment. Which service offers the lowest latency may vary per person. It doesn't seem like either Stadia or xCloud have found a new silver bullet on that front though.
The thing is, one service is there so that you can play your games when your console isn't around. You don't need that much to be happy with that.
The other wants you to get rid of the console and buy games just for it. You need a stellar service to convince people to do that.
We are happy with xcloud because it's an addition to our ecosystem. We aren't happy with Stadia because, unlike Xcloud, it needs to be better than your home console.
The other wants you to get rid of the console and buy games just for it. You need a stellar service to convince people to do that.
We are happy with xcloud because it's an addition to our ecosystem. We aren't happy with Stadia because, unlike Xcloud, it needs to be better than your home console.
MK11 most likely. I just bought the game today and thats pretty much what i look like playing it.
xCloud has the Game Pass library which is the best subscription service without discussion.
Interesting. I was under the assumption psnow was way behind the others, even though it's older.
Any news whether that predictive streaming tech google talked about is already implemented in stadia or is that still on the way?
Yup. Every game streaming service I've used from OnLive to PSN to GeForce Now suffers from either lag or latency issues. I don't see the technology replacing consoles or PCs anytime soon and I'm glad because I love my hardware.
Xcloud are currently targeting mobile and tablet devices in this test though, right? There's no real need to push higher just yet.
It's certainly not implemented yet. I'm sure it's in research. It's a tricky problem.
On your first note - despite a lot of expectation that Stadia and xCloud would advance the technical state of the art in a way that would leave PSNow in the dust, latency wise that just doesn't seem to have manifested at all. Resolution wise Stadia is ahead for now.
In terms of low latency streaming at HD resolutions, though, beyond the x264 work done at Gaikai several years ago, it seems like no one has moved the needle much more since. Which is a shame, because by no means is it a perfect endpoint. Short of the network improving, maybe we'll have to get into hybrid solutions, with client side interaction processing, or predictive solutions, before we see a big step forward.