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Multiple posts on Reddit and Twitter suggest Google's media player can't keep up with games, 9to5Google notes. It appears that the Chromecast Ultra gets far too hot while Stadia runs, and thus the media player shuts down to avoid any damage to internal components. Now, users are wondering why the Chromecast Ultra fails to handle a few hours of playtime despite its reliance on the cloud rather than on-device processing.
Google, however, doesn't seem all that concerned. Support representatives are telling users the Chromecast Ultra performs as intended.

"We know any sort of heat on a device can be worrisome, but we can confirm there is no thermal overheating issue with Chromecast Ultra," one representative stated. "During normal usage (like watching cat videos on YouTube), the surface of the device may get warm to the touch, but this is working as designed."


In a Stadia thread on Reddit, one user wrote: "I was in the middle of a fight in Destiny 2 when suddenly my Chromecast died and lost connectivity to the network. I went to unplug it from the power and it was extremely hot." Others chimed in with similar experiences: "Mine has overheated and shut off twice now."
Google told CNN Business it "will happily work with users to understand their particular experience better," but noted it hasn't seen thermal shutdown problems during its extensive testing.

"During normal usage, the surface of the device may get warm to the touch. This is working as designed. Using your Chromecast Ultra to stream Stadia games is very similar to using it to stream TV shows and movies," the company said in a statement.


"Mine has not successfully run a game on the chromecast longer than 10 minutes before it shuts down from overheating!" said Raiotech. "Clearly your supportive customers who paid for the launch of new tech are having issues and your fire back with denial of an issue. This is not how you convince people to stay and trust purchasing things from you. Nobody's perfect, things slip through, maybe a bad batch of chromecast ultras from factory. Whatever it is, acknowledge there is an issue and fix it."

"I want to point out that when it's working, Stadia works wonderfully and I want it to succeed," OP armadeon7479 replied. "That said, you can't tell me that the problem doesn't exist when I clearly experienced it and other users are stating this is a Chromecast Ultra issue that predates Stadia. It's literally to the point where people have had to come up with their own homemade heatsinks."

"Mine is extremely hot and shut off after playing for about 20min. Now it won't even connect to my home account," said ultv336, while XHeavygunX added: "Mine gets extremely hot to the touch also just from watching 4K Netflix or playing stadia. Last night I was worried it was going to catch fire because it scared my wife when she accidentally touched it so I unplugged it as fast as I could."
 
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VAD

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,846
Holy hell... They better not overheat smart TVs with their shit.
 
Feb 26, 2018
2,753
The funniest thing about Stadia with all that talk how "On Stadia devs can do stuff impossible on local hardware" even tho Stadia have issues running games designed for 2013 lmao
 

elenarie

Game Developer
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Jun 10, 2018
10,955
This is an issue with the devices themselves under heavy usage, not a lot to do with Stadia. :p
 

Deleted member 52407

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All the symptoms of a major console and a major online service rolled into one.

jurassic_park_samuel_l_jackson.jpg
 

oni-link

tag reference no one gets
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Oct 25, 2017
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If only there were a way games could run locally from a box by the TV instead, all these problems would just vanish
 

Jon Carter

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Oct 27, 2017
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Google figured they wouldn't have to shut down Stadia if they could simply shut down all the devices that run it.
 

big_z

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Nov 2, 2017
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Any video of this happening? All the chromecast does is stream video so I don't see why it would overheat unless there's a firmware issue or bug in the stadia app.
 

Patitoloco

Member
Oct 27, 2017
25,219
4K's only a thing on the CCU at the moment

On a funny note, I still remember this post on Reddit that was praising Stadia because he'd never have overheating issues again... that didn't age well
I didn't say otherwise. I'm just explaining mnz why that particular issue with RDR2 happens, Chromecast or not.
 

Phife Dawg

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,049
Any video of this happening? All the chromecast does is stream video so I don't see why it would overheat unless there's a firmware issue or bug in the stadia app.
Is the input data going through the controller directly? If not maybe that is the problem? Should not be much but it is a steady upload stream.
 

GrantDaNasty

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,498
If only there were a way games could run locally from a box by the TV instead, all these problems would just vanish

I get what you're trying to get at, but as the issue is tied to a physical device overheating (Chromecast Ultra) - not exactly something standard consoles are exempt from (RROD being the classic example)


does it seem like a lack of QA on Google's part?
 

Deleted member 2652

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Oct 25, 2017
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this is very likely to be fixable by a firmware update, but googles communication on the issue is beyond silly
 

Snarfington

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Oct 25, 2017
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I had it running AC:Odyssey for a good five hours the other day and it was fine, but maybe a little warm. I can maybe see it getting too hot if your house is very well heated, but this seems more like a bug to me - albeit a bad one.
 

Pheace

Member
Aug 23, 2018
1,339
this is very likely to be fixable by a firmware update, but googles communication on the issue is beyond silly
Depends what's causing it I imagine. Given everything literally needs to happen at a certain speed to not impact latency it's not like you can spread out load or something. And this isn't even 4k60FPS yet.
 

shenden

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,549
Have Google made any statements regarding Stadia since it launched? I'm not talking about only responding to critisicm, but in general regarding salesnumbers, plans for the future etc. Maybe too early to hear anything, but it feels like this service got deployed and then everyone took off.
 

Deleted member 2652

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Depends what's causing it I imagine. Given everything literally needs to happen at a certain speed to not impact latency it's not like you can spread out load or something. And this isn't even 4k60FPS yet.
i think it will be fixed but the question will be what they decide to do as a short term solution. optimization or regression? (the answer is regression)
 

Darkstorne

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Oct 26, 2017
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But if it's just streaming... how is this creating a significantly higher workload than streaming TV? Because it streams at higher framerates? Something to do with controller inputs (so constantly uploading info at the same time as streaming)? I'm surprised that streaming games is creating so much extra stress for a device specifically designed for streaming.