- We don't know that latency or "ownership" are actually issues.
Of course they are. You can't have match the latency of the game running on similarly specced hardware locally, that's just physics. And ownership is of course an issue because all of your purchases go away as soon as the service dies.
- Preservation is not an issue for individual players, but the larger community.
If, hypothetically, a game I liked released exclusively on a streaming service, and the streaming service shut down, leaving me without the ability to play the game, how does that not affect me?
- We don't know what Stadia's exclusive library is.
So? We've seen what they've announced so far, and it does not inspire confidence. This isn't a topic where they get the benefit of the doubt that there might be something better later. Not without any history behind them.
- It's a matter of preference whether Switch is "much better positioned" considering one purchase gets you a 4k60 living room experience as well as multiple portable options. Switch comes with major compromises.
Switch actually delivers on a portable experience in ways that Stadia will probably never be capable of. I can play my Switch on the subway, trains, planes, etc. Stadia would be unusable in any of those scenarios.
- There's a lot more than just power "going for it", there's instant playing, playing on many devices, easy split screen implementation and more.
"easy split screen implementation" is a developer-focused bullet point that makes no sense to bring up in this conversation. Especially when that would likely require multiple nodes, if you're implying what I think you are, which is something I can't really see Google encouraging that much due to cost.
Playing on many devices and instant playing are fair bullet points, but are both fairly weak in the context of the overall weak offering. The need for a constant, high quality internet connection is going to limit the actual versatility of the offering compared to something like the Switch. The need for a separate controller to be paired with a phone or tablet is also going to be a pretty big limiting factor on the audience that reaches, as those aren't really something you see in the wild.
Instant playing is worth something, but not when I don't really want to use the platform to begin with. Also I can't image it's actually that much faster than the NVMe drive in my PC, or the ones it is increasingly sounding like might ship in Sony and Microsoft's next consoles.
- Speculation about cost should take into account the cost of an online multiplayer subscription which comes out to like $5/mo, and mid-cycle hardware refreshes, which will happen automatically on Stadia
All of those are optional.
