After teasing various gaming things over the last few weeks, Google finally unveiled Stadia. Google Stadia is a new platform from Google bringing high quality game streaming for everyone on various devices. Stadia is powered by Google’s data centers across the world and it will integrate across phones, tablets, PCs, TVs, and more. This will even work with YouTube allowing you to immediately stream directly from the Data Center which sounds great on paper. Watch the Stadia announcement below:
In addition to the platform that aims to allow for 4K 60fps gameplay with HDR, Google plans on allowing for 8K 120fps. The data centers for Stadia are powered by a GPU with 10.7 teraflops that is powered by AMD and this is nearly double what the Xbox One X has which is the most powerful console right now. They showed off Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and then Doom Eternal.
The highlights of this showcase so far aren’t just the streaming aspect but how quickly Google aims to allow you to get into a game. They claim it will take up to a few seconds only to get into a game and switching will be near instant. The demo showcased looked great but this will of course depend on your internet connection. Google Stadia isn’t just focussed on single player games either. They aim to allow multiplayer with “up to thousands" in Battle Royale games and even enable cross platform play. The Stadia controller even has new buttons that aren’t on traditional controllers like a Google Assistant button. Check out the controllers below:
The games on Stadia can be discovered through forums, texts, YouTube, Google Play, and more. Stadia Games and Entertainment is a new first party studio from Google led by Jade Raymond who has worked on many games across EA, Ubisoft, and more. Stadia is launching this year in US, Canada, UK, and Europe. What do you think of Stadia so far?
I'm excited.
I do want more details on how it will work on phones.
Will it just require the mobile Chrome app? Or a separate Stadia app?
For right now only Google Pixel phones hopefully soon on Android and Apple. Until it is on Apple or Android it's a PC thing for me because I do not have nor want a Google phone.
What about TVs with Chromecast built into them?
The future of gaming has arrived. Once 5G becomes standard, services like this will be how everyone games.
How long have you been working for Google?
Future of gaming? Oh god, please no. I rather own my games. If the future of video games is gaming as a service or rentals I’d stop playing video games.
Good Bye dude!
Are these controllers MFi compliant? 😃
Streaming games is terrible for everyone except the companies who will now control everything you can play and how you can play it, you thinking licensing issues suck now, just wait. If this is the future of gaming I’ll gladly stick with the classics.
So this is different from OnLive, GeForce Now, PlayStation Now... how exactly?
I don’t know why people get so excited by this shit. Nobody uses the cloud gaming services. I’d bet anything that Google kills this in less than 3 years.
The problem is it’s “solving” a problem that doesn’t exist with technology that hasn’t been refined enough yet.
The difference between this and a decent console is negligible in most people’s eyes, and you can get a console for $200. For those that do care, even on a beastly internet connection these services never look as good as they’re supposed to, and will never beat a high end PC.
Pricing is always subscription or locked to one vendor so you lose the pricing competition of PC, and mobile internet connections and data plans aren’t good enough that this will work on the go. Plus the fact that people have shown time and time again that they aren’t interested in a mobile gaming experience that requires slapping their phone into some sort of controller with physical buttons.
So basically, if I don’t care about graphics and latency I can get any console for a one time cost and get years out of it, if I want the best graphics, modding or cheap games I want a PC, if I play on my phone I’m not using a controller and my data plan/network quality will restrict me from playing anyways.
Just seems pointless. Maybe 10-20 years from now if 6G is successful, data limits are abolished and it blankets the world, but Google doesn’t have the patience for that. It’ll flop, hard, then it’ll limp along for a year or two more and will be put out of its misery, just like OnLive.
The ones “excited” for this in comment sections are probably sales/marketing people.
Have you tried a cloud service? Im currently using the Nvidia shield Grid service (as its in beta and free) and its absolutly excellent- yes its buggy at times but thats more related to it attempting to be controller friendly rather than mouse and keyboard - as a service its excellent and you certainly forget that its cloud based so the tech works now
Wonder why Google kept details about the service secret. No pricing on the service, hardware, or software. This was not exciting at all. As I was watching Google unveil all of this the thing that kept popping into my head was how this is exactly how not to launch something. Google really does not get gaming. This made Microsoft 2013 e3 like a great reveal.