Stadia has launched a few years into premium consoles and they boasted specs well above them. Even if there is a poor optimization thing happening, I suspect the reality is users arent getting the advertized specs.

PS4 and X1 basically share the same market, given their library is very similar and they have similar games as top sellers. So I generally  lump them together as an audience. Therefore I dont see premium consoles them as a niche separate things per se. Frankly, Stadia is aiming for the exact same type of gamers that enjoy Playstation and Xbox.

Switch in comparison has a more unique audience. When you look at the games that really thrive on it, it has no direct competitor.

PS Now is probably profitable, but I doubt its making a big profit. I cant recall the exact amount but I think they said it had like 700k subscribers in a report before the price change and some major PS4 games were also added. Its also limited to 720p/60 fps so they arent sending out data like Stadia.

Gamepass cant be profitable for publishers? What is that based on?

Sony has a strong 1st party, but they come to PS Now late. I believe I read xCloud is going to have the enitre X1 library. Hence, xCloud is more like a real console being streamed versus a more curated experience of the competitors. If xCloud is ultimately curated, it will atleast have 1st party games at launch.

Virtualization doesn't work like that. The way instructions need to be assigned and executed in the complex GPU pipelines, each with different burst times, data fetches etc. would mean that each "half" would have far less computing power than it is theoretically available. And it would probably be readily noticed from frame time spikes and latency, a bit like what happens with dual GPUs but worse.

Not to mention that comercially speaking, two GPUs half the size of a larger one would have been a cheaper alternative considering how the costs for larger dies scale. Of course, I'm not saying is impossible that it could have happened, maybe Google did invest a lot on GPU resource scheduling and sharing (to little results), but it would seem super sloppy and amateurish even for the standards of the Stadia launch.

It's hard to believe that $120 a year for gamepass, spread over I don't know how many games, can be a good source of income for publishers other than MS. Besides that, a lot of people just get it now and then at discounts. I played a bunch of games with gamepass for $1. Nobody made money off that lol.

Virtualization doesn't work like that. The way instructions need to be assigned and executed in the complex GPU pipelines, each with different burst times, data fetches etc. would mean that each "half" would have far less computing power than it is theoretically available. And it would probably be readily noticed from frame time spikes and latency, a bit like what happens with dual GPUs but worse.

Not to mention that comercially speaking, two GPUs half the size of a larger one would have been a cheaper alternative considering how the costs for larger dies scale. Of course, I'm not saying is impossible that it could have happened, maybe Google did invest a lot on GPU resource scheduling and sharing (to little results), but it would seem super sloppy and amateurish even for the standards of the Stadia launch.

Skimmed through another lag test that was more comprehensive (explains all the equipment they used, and measured all the values).
Looks like there was a correlation between input lag and higher quality streams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0gILReDQsY

It's so strange that when you put more fps to have a smoothier experience and faster reaction you increase lag so much.

That because his PC cannot keep the same FPS at 4k ultra, as it does at 1080p.
The more fps a game renders at, the more often it "updates" things on screen, and as such, the instance it notice a "key press" happends more often too.

Thats why the input delay rises when hes doing testing at 4k, vs 1080p.
The 144mhz is just what hes asking the monitor to output at.... if his PC cannot keep that frame rate at 4k, then thats to be expected.

How is it contradictory?  The IQ and FPS are up to the developer, not Google.