The Hypocrisy Surrounding Google Stadia Coverage - The Nerf Report Ep. 157

Since the launch of Google Stadia the narrative surrounding Google Stadia has been one of bias and hypocrisy, however this week with the announcement of xCloud the hypocrisy became so much louder.

#Stadia

#GoogleStadia

#Google

[firsttenor]

Earned a sub, thanks for being one of only a few honest YouTubers out there.

[firsttenor]

Agreed. So many YouTuber's were selling negativity to gain views. There were definitely some issues in the beginning with Stadia, but it runs as smooth as butter now, and in fact only weeks after release. Stadia definitely got crapped on, even though the technology is amazing, works well, and is continually making improvements. Thanks for speaking truth.

[CliveIllenden]

Wow. Excellent piece. Imagine that, using actual facts and educated nuance to call out the blatant hypocrisy in the Stadia reporting. 👍

[frati]

Wow refreshing, nice to see sane people still exist. Good job.

[BURNTRBR]

This bias against cloud gaming dates back to the OnLive days and I was one of those people who played with that system and it even worked back then with a wired connection.

They simply could use Destiny 2 as a test game because it is free to play on the PC, Xbox One, and PS4 in addition to being part of Stadia Pro. That is what they should have been using to compare platforms. I deleted Destiny 2 from my PS4 Pro HDD because Stadia's loading times for that game blows the PS4 Pro out of the water. Wouldn't people want to be able to jump into a game faster than before? That is where you can tell that people are obviously having bias against Stadia.

[ashmayonaise]

One thing I want to add to this is the time it takes for a platform to grow. When Google stadia launched it flopped harder than my arm does when I have been sleeping on it all night long. Many promises that were not met and so little games were in the library, you could play through them all in a week. But if I look that stadia now... Getting pro instantly gets you 18 games orso, you can play stadia on almost any devices with a browser or stadia app, you have many AA games that are coming to stadia and cool indie games exclusively for stadia.

There are some bad parts about stadia too, not many games, a poor UI/UX design in the home menu when you have many games and the fact that you NEED internet to play. And as you can tell 2/3 things can be fixed by Google. And the last point weights of against not having to upgrade stadia every 5-6 years orso in my opinion.

Stadia is objectively a solid gaming console, you get high FPS with quite minimal input lag (especially when using a chromecast ultra and the stadia controller). When the game is optimised you get amazing visuals. The loading times are fast and the game downloads are instant. So yeah I think you hit the nail on the head when you call people out on calling stadia "bad" without any objective points.

[BillyTheMinion]

What "journalists" forget about posting blatantly false material out of ignorance and bias, is that you can lose a lot of potential consumers.

Nothing makes me a lose respect for an organization more quickly then repeating uninformed false opinions that they've heard as fact. I've completely written off so many sources because of behavior like this.

Stadia is free to try, and easy to set up. As an apparent source of information, it's their literal job to personally experience new gaming platforms. And yet they so often won't even try it let alone actually understand how it works.

If you can't be bothered to understand what you're talking about at all, how can we respect what you say? There are no excuses.

Great video!

[incompetentlyplayinggames]

I subbed sir, I am glad one of my friends retweeted your article and I did as well. Great video sir. Honestly this could be applied to all “Journalism” as well not just gaming as I have seen so many articles like that showing up in every facet of life.

[RichardWalls]

Knocked it out of the park with this video!! Nice work!!! 🙌🙌

[iceissteve]

Man, that was such a great video and I hope that as many people as possible see it. I'm glad that finally some of those "journalists" are called out for what they are not. There were headlines that have hurt Stadia a lot, it's not to say that Stadia doesn't have its share of problems but it works, it's fun and it has great games. Thanks for this outstanding video.

[Nojintt]

I love Stadia, but I want other cloud platforms to succeed as well. The problem is, xCloud is not a legitimate cloud based gaming platform. xCloud is at most a companion app, which is used by Microsoft to sell more Xbox consoles. "You like your Xbox games? Why not play them on the toilet, with your phone!" Microsoft are attempting to frame 'cloud gaming' as playing games on your phone. This is not what a legitimate cloud gaming platform looks like.

GFN, PlayStation Now, Stadia, and most other cloud gaming platforms all have a means to play games on a monitor / TV, and xCloud does not. That should put the nail in the coffin for xCloud, and yet people continue to bring it up as if it is gold. (Keep in mind, I have an Xbox and xCloud, but I have very little interest in playing console games on my phone.)

xCloud could have a million free games, including all AAA new titles, and you're still stuck playing them on a phone. I'm like 99% of other gamers out there; I want to play games on my couch or on a computer chair, in front of my TV or monitor. xCloud gives me no way to do this. (Some have brought up the fact you can cast your phone to your TV. I've tried this and it is absolutely terrible. I can barely play a Telltale game that's how bad it is.)

There's also no concrete promise from MS to update the cloud tech to Series X, there's no concrete promise or timeline for 1080p or 4k resolution, there's no promise of being able to purchase 3rd party games like Cyberpunk through the Microsoft Store and play them through xCloud. You are stuck with Games Pass games on your phone, no couch co-op, with at most 720p on older hardware (Xbox One S).

It's fine for mobile gaming, if that is your interest, but otherwise it's a terrible stand-alone gaming platform when compared to other stand-alone gaming platforms. And Microsoft made it bad by design. If xCloud was too good, then there would be no reason to purchase a Series X or any of their new hardware. Why would you? You would just play all the same content, at relatively the same performance streamed through the cloud, and save yourself $500+ this year.

No, instead, xCloud is a companion app. Their intention is to hook you into the Xbox ecosystem. They want you to consider xCloud to be an addon to your Xbox console, just a means of playing your games on your phone. And for this fact, the media who continues to compare xCloud to Stadia are doing a complete injustice to their viewers/readers.

[randallb]

Very well thought out and informative breakdown in the state of gaming media and how it is for real! Just was saying the very same thing to a few folks just in my town and I would always get canned word 4 word arguments till I could take them to the actual articles they "quoted" show a different thing altogether.

The world is big enough for any amount of art and gaming and enjoyment. Just give ourselves the ability to be open minded and willing to embrace it... That is another battle all together haha

[deathgain]

People shouldn't hate something cause they read a headline they need to try before opinion

[EricBoydwrites]

It's hard to find Stadia news for this reason. I like seeing APK teardowns and leaked game ratings. Stuff that's actually reliable and noteworthy. I'm a day 1 founder and admittedly in the tank for Google (pixel + pixelbook). I hate buying consoles, so a 130 dollars for a controller and Chromecast (which I needed anyway) seemed alright. My first thought was that this was something I could use during downtime at my job. Which I have done, and it's great. It works. At home, I don't have internet. I use free, over the air wifi. I'm lucky if I pull 15-20mbps. Even there, it works. I play more at home than anywhere else. The service just does what it says it will, and any hiccups I've experienced were 100% due to spotty internet. I have nothing against other consoles, I'd just rather spend my money on more games. For me, being out of gaming since PS2, I don't mind playing an old Tomb Raider because it's new to me, and I see actually-new AAA titles coming down the pipeline that will be cool as well. I think Google's marketing could be better, but for my personal experience everything has been good.

[RicTone]

Bro you are right on. Not because I'm a fan of stadia but just your synopsis on journalism in general. It's really sad the world we live in. I hope your channel grows my friend. Keep it up in a world where bad journalism sells.

[skillsles]

For this honest video I follow you. Great vid keep it up.

[jdeslip]

Went ahead and subscribed. Love the great production quality.

[Kr]

Dude that was epic your so right though.🙌

[bigdaddyuk]

You hit the nail on the head with this video. Too many ignorant people and too many fan boys.

[sbadham]

Great summary. Thanks for calling this problem out.