Opinion of Stadia latency and image quality after trying Xcloud

[Alucardx23]

Now that a lot more people can try Xcloud, I would like to see how Stadia compares for you. Below you can see two free to play games on Stadia.

Destiny 2

Stadia service is no longer available. Thanks for playing.

Stadia service is no longer available. Thanks for playing.

stadia.google.com

SUPER BOMBERMAN R ONLINE

Stadia service is no longer available. Thanks for playing.

Stadia service is no longer available. Thanks for playing.

stadia.google.com

 

[Clive]

I've only tried out xCloud briefly but the latency is definitely worse for me than Stadia. Heck, it's even worse than PS Now. Image quality was great though for the little I played although I don't use Stadia or xCloud on a 4K display. I have occasional artifacting with Stadia but xCloud looked great. To be fair, the reason the image was flawless could be that I didn't play much while I have played more Stadia to notice its flaws.

Also, don't the second and last poll option mean the same thing?

 

[Scottoest]

Stadia currently has the superior technical streaming implementation. I don't think anyone could seriously deny that.

Stadia's problem is that it's kinda shit at just about everything else.

 

[COCONUT]

For me in Spain, Stadia is way ahead of XCloud, image quality and of course input lag, you forget you are playing in the Cloud with Stadia. With x Cloud the input is very noticeable.

 

[Brooms_are_cool]

In every metric regarding performance, Stadia is superior and it's not even close

 

[Dedazen]

xCloud is stuttery mess for me right now.
Stadia has better image quality and better latency.

 

[Kyuuji]

Stadia remains ahead for me. For all its faults the tech backing it up has never been the issue imo.

 

[Deleted member 5129]

xCloud is significantly worse than Stadia.

Stadia looks better, and there is no noticeable latency for me with Stadia but a ton of it with xCloud... it sucks because xCloud has so many games included while Stadia costs sooo much money to buy the games - but you get what you pay for I guess :/

 

[InfinityDOK]

For me atleast xCloud and Stadia for latency are about the same, I know some people here are having issues so I guess I am located close to their servers. But stadia has better image quality

Edit: Also want to point out that I am kinda weird, where most have issues in certain products, I haven't had any. For example, I use game pass store on PC, never had a download fail on me, or really any issue besides it signing me out once in a while.

 

[Snarfington]

Stadia is a technical marvel compared to practically all of its competition but the lineup and product strategy is terrible beyond all understanding.

Stadia is essentially always "like local" for me, I actually played Doom Eternal on it and had a great experience. XCloud is sometimes good but sometimes super choppy and always noticeably worse than native. But then the XCloud product is on another planet from Stadia so.... Wish they would get together sometime, to be honest.

 

[CloudsFromSpace]

The value of xcloud right now is the library and connection to Game Pass, more than the quality of streaming itself. There's a reason it's a perk to a broader service instead of a standalone service.

 

[ShinAmano]

Haven't tried stadia...but xcloud works like a native console for me.

 

[Fantastical]

Stadia is better in image quality and latency. With Stadia, 99% of the time it runs really well and looks great. I very clearly tell I'm streaming something with XCloud, and latency is unplayable.

 

[Alucardx23]

Haven't tried stadia...but xcloud works like a native console for me.

Click to shrink...

If Stadia is supported on your region, you can try the free games on the OP.

 

[Dringus]

I only briefly messed with both and Stadia seemed superior, which didn't surprise me.

 

[FeenixRisen]

I was just complaining about XCloud's latency last night, so I just tried Destiny 2 via Stadia and it worked damn near natively. And I was on a mobile connection at that

 

[Springy]

Stadia is pretty seamless, whereas what I tried of xCloud had issues that rendered it unplayable for me.

 

[Mesoian]

Now that the X Blades upgrade has gone through, I'd say that XCloud now is about as good as Stadia was in Beta. The image quality is VERY good, and the input lag isn't too too bad, but it is still very noticeable.

 

[JasoNsider]

Stadia is pretty seamless, whereas what I tried of xCloud had issues that rendered it unplayable for me.

Click to shrink...

Pretty much this, word for word.

Though I also thought the compression on stadia was a bit blech in darker areas.

 

[WhtR88t]

Stadia and PSNow are both on par for me for latency (and are both completely playable).

Sadly xCloud's latency makes it unplayable for me. :(

 

[Vinc]

Stadia definitely works a lot better for me. I found xCloud quite literally unplayable due to latency. Image quality seemed about on par on xCloud as Stadia's free version, maybe a little better on Stadia. Compression is visible for both. No contest that Stadia looks better in 4K though. The latency is what kills xCloud for me, I can't play Halo or Doom on that, it was not enjoyable at all.

 

[ShinAmano]

If Stadia is supported on your region, you can try the free games on the OP.

Click to shrink...

It is...just have no desire. There is nothing there I want or haven't played.

 

[vixolus]

Video quality is about the same for me (even though I have a 3 month Pro sub which allows 4k HDR I haven't experienced that yet), which is to say it looks really good with some macroblocking in dark areas on both.

Stadia has slightly better latency though. xCloud is MUCH better now though.

 

[TheGhost]

They both pretty much work the same for me, it's cool to try out but both left me wanting to turn on my console instead.

 

[Peek-a-boo!]

For me:

• Performance = Stadia, and by a significant margin actually — the latency is superior and the image quality is surprisingly very clean too.
• Wealth of games/choice = xCloud, because of Game Pass.

I wouldn't have any qualms if Microsoft teams up with Google and borrow their Stadia technology instead!

 

[Chip Chanceworth]

Xcloud is bad. Straight up.

 

[Alucardx23]

It is...just have no desire. There is nothing there I want or haven't played.

Click to shrink...

It would be just to test the image quality and latency of the service. You can have a good idea after 5 minutes of gameplay.

 

[Frustrated_Grunt]

Before the server upgrades, Stadia beat it and it wasn't even close. Afterwards, Stadia still has a slight edge, but it's actually very playable experience now on xCloud.

 

[Exposure]

Stadia's technically better re: latency and image quality but xCloud's way better than I was expecting from how like half of streaming Era was complaining how garbage it was.

And like Stadia's got the huge image problem both on the level everybody knows about, and on the personal level for me where it nearly completely ruined my interest in Humankind because Stadia just could not stop crashing when I was trying to play the demo and I was starting to resent everybody involved for making Stadia my only way of playing it.

 

[ShinAmano]

It would be just to test the image quality and latency of the service. You can have a good idea after 5 minutes of gameplay.

Click to shrink...

Maybe if I get some free time. I assume it works as good or better (based on comments here) as xcloud. I have pretty solid internet connection and I am close to large hubs.

 

[Remeran]

Just tried destiny on Stadia, latency is much better than xcloud, on the other hand the library is just so much better on xcloud and the seamless transition between saves from my series x and the cloud games just makes it no contest in that regard. I use xcloud as a supplement (playing when on break at work or when my wife wants to play on the large tv) so for now it's not a problem for me. I do think they need to get much better (of course they will) since Stadia is ahead of them in just how good the cloud service is. Image quality didn't seem much better on Stadia than xcloud for me though. Again, latency was much much better.

 

[C.Mongler]

Stadia usually works pretty well for me. xCloud seems to have major issues that render it unplayable half the time I try to use it, and even when it does work, the image quality is never on par with Stadia.

That said, there's hardly anything on Stadia I actually want to use it for lol

 

[Disco Infernal]

Stadia is playable. Xcloud isn't. Huge difference for me.

 

[InfinityDOK]

For me:

• Performance = Stadia, and by a significant margin actually — the latency is superior and the image quality is surprisingly very clean too.
• Wealth of games/choice = xCloud, because of Game Pass.

I wouldn't have any qualms if Microsoft teams up with Google and borrow their Stadia technology instead!

Click to shrink...

Google seems to hate Microsoft and the feeling seems pretty mutual so I don't see that happening. They do own bethesda which has their own streaming tech as well, it supposedly works really well. Curious on when or if that is being implemented, the tech was created by id so it should be good.

 

[Zomba13]

Stadia is better than xcloud. But maybe geforce now is as good or better than stadia?

 

[dunkzilla]

I haven't tried Stadia. But PS Now was playable for me. I just tried XCloud for the first time today and had a pretty bad experience, though I wasn't playing wired.

 

[Zebesian-X]

Stadia does work a lot better in my case. I just have more faith in MS addressing xcloud's shortcomings than I do google and stadia.

 

[We_care_a_lot]

For me atleast xCloud and Stadia for latency are about the same, I know some people here are having issues so I guess I am located close to their servers. But stadia has better image quality

Edit: Also want to point out that I am kinda weird, where most have issues in certain products, I haven't had any. For example, I use game pass store on PC, never had a download fail on me, or really any issue besides it signing me out once in a while.

Click to shrink...

Ooooh failing downloads is a thing? that happens to me more frequently than it should! it will even happen with games I've been playing for weeks, all of a sudden it will say 'download failed' and the game won't work anymore lol.

i have a lightning fast connection and nothing like this ever happens with any of my other game libraries. Glad to know I'm not alone lol

 

[Bigkrev]

From my experience, Playstation Now (of all things) has far and away the best latency/lack of stutters and lag, but tends to have the worst image quality/more drops to low image quality. Stadia is the second best, and Xcloud is usually the worst of the 3, especially when it comes to latency

 

[Reckheim]

surprised about xcloud, I figured it would be on par with it.

 

[Jroc]

XCloud for me feel like I'm streaming someone's desktop while they remote play into their Xbox One.

 

[Hernan532]

Well like Stadia, XCloud will only be available for some regions of US , i live in Argentina so i have not a chance to try it.
But my two cents , after working with Google , AWS and Azure I have to say that Azure is the "worst" of the 3 so i expect Stadia doing better than XCloud
It's clear that the problem is the connectivity and not the processing Power, of course it matter a lot but you know what i mean.
But i see this going better in the future if MS invest on this. But like i said this is very limited to US, Canada(?) and maybe another country of EU.

 

[plow]

Forza Horizon 4 was "badish", had a lot of artifact and input lag was there. It was playable though.

Tried out Oblivion and that played incredibly smooth and without any artifacts. Not sure if there is a difference between the versions.
Also played on my Dual Sense ontroller, that shit was really cool.

I live in germany btw.

 

[Machine Law]

I've played Destiny Stadia on my TV and on my phone and it's night and day compared to xCloud. It's basically native with my internet connection. Not that xCloud is bad since I've played a lot on it, but I hope it gets to Stadia levels soon.

 

[panda-zebra]

Where do the 12 people who voted for the first option live? Nobody who has posted seems to have any input on that at all.

Here in NW England Stadia is better on all fronts, only heard the same from friends around the world. Neither is any use to me either way, but the quality of the service from Stadia (with a 3 month trial) was surprisingly great, xcloud was just OK (tried Destiny and Outriders with my GPU).

 

[formasymphonic]

I'm completely surprised that at the reception to Stadia in comparison to Xcloud so far. Given the way I hear people talk about Xcloud & Stadia here and in other places, I would have thought that the results would be the other way around.

Is this something to do with the Stadia XCloud blades (currently) being One S units vs Stadia hardware being (relatively) beefy hardware?

 

[Fezan]

For me

Latency Geforcenow >Stadia > PSnow>Xcloud
Image quality Geforcenow=stadia>Psnow=>xcloud.

 

[Pasha]

Given that Stadia is running on custom hardware and requires native ports of the games that run on it, while xCloud is just a bunch of Xbox Ones in a server rack, it's not really a surprise that it's technically better right now.

But honestly all of that is irrelevant at this point, xCloud will grow and the software and hardware tech stack will steadily improve with time, while Stadia, well we all know where it's heading.

 

[The Albatross]

I've played both a fair amount.

Stadia is obviously, clearly better in both latency and image quality, it's really not close. Stadia was pretty damn close to native on a lot of the games I tried. There were times I wouldn't have known I was playing a streaming service. With xCloud, there's never any doubt I'm playing a streaming service.

The disappointing thing about Stadia is how fucking good the tech is, and how abandoned the service is. It's a fucking shame. For that reason I log into xCloud about once a day to do something online, usually like complete a daily objective in Red Dead Online in between meetings or something, and I haven't launched stadia once in ... 6+ months because the catalog is practically the same as it was 6 months before. xCloud keeps getting better and better, and with games adde to gamepass I have a legit reason to play the service. And with Stadia I have zero reason to login ever.

 

[Valentonis]

Stadia for me, xCloud still has some kinks. Especially with controllers, for some reason whenever I pressed the ZL button on my pro controller, xCloud would react as if I right-clicked on my browser.