A look at Google’s Stadia, the gaming platform that works through streaming on any device you own – Will it be a console killer or just another failed Google project?
The 8th generation of video game consoles has already been with us for quite a while but it seems that it might be the last traditional video game console generation as the gaming industry might heading in a completely new direction. This new direction is video game streaming and Google is at the forefront with its upcoming Google Stadia streaming platform!
What is Google Stadia?
Google Stadia is a game streaming service that Google plans to launch later in 2019 in some parts of the world, including the USA, Canada, UK and some European countries. From it’s announcement event, we know a good deal of stuff from Google’s presentation of Stadia yesterday at GDC which can be summed up in this list:
- Spec-wise, every instance of the Stadia will be providing an AMD GPU with 10.7 Teraflops of power, 16GB RAM and a CPU (with an unknown core count) running at 2.7GHz
Compared to current consoles, the Stadia has impressive specifications and they might be upgraded in the future when more demanding games pop up!
- These specifications are similar to those of a modern mid-to-high range gaming PC and are much better than what the PlayStation 4 Pro and XBOX One X offer
- Apparently, the Stadia will be powered by Linux
- At launch, Google promises up to 4K @ 60 FPS with HDR with surround sound. In the future, it will support up to 8K @ 120FPS
- It must be noted that the ‘up to’ is of utmost importance here as it’s likely that not all titles will be available at the aformentioned resolutions. However, Google claims that it can hook up multiple Stadia instances to improve your gaming experience but only time will tell how well that’ll work or whether you’d need to pay extra for it
- You will be able to access Google Stadia through the Chrome browser (and hopefully other browsers supporting the required features), smartphones/tablets (presumably both Android/iOS) and TVs through Chrome Cast (and probably Android boxes)
- Any controller and keyboard/mouse may be used with Stadia but they’ve also released an optional Stadia controller
- You need a 25Mbps connection for a good 4K gaming experience and presumably faster internet for 8K streaming
- We also find the feature of being able to pick up your game from any other device at the exact same place you left, easy YouTube streaming (and integration), couch multiplayer support, state sharing and an enhanced Google Assistant that takes in queries relating to the game (such as how to progress if you get stuck)
Whilst we know a lot about the Google Stadia, there are some very important things we don’t know namely:
- Its pricing model
Doom Eternal and AC Odyssey will surely be supported by Stadia but we don’t know about what else it’ll get
- There is no information on whether you pay monthly and you get access to a whole arsenal of games or whether you’ll be able to buy streaming rights to a single game (for the price of a console game) and be able to stream it forever.
- No information has been given on how much a monthly service would cost but some websites are estimating a $15-20/month price
- What games will be available
- Around a 100 game studios have pledged support for the console
- However, it is unclear which games it’ll support with the exception of two games namely Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (tested in Project Stream) and DOOM Eternal
- Google has created a game studio to create exclusives for the Stadia but we don’t know much about that either
How will this affect me?
Obviously, such a large development ought to have some impact on the end-user especially if other companies move to cloud gaming as well. Among these, we find:
- Hacking/modding scenes for gaming platforms are unlikely to ever exist as data is much more tightly controlled and any breaches would most likely be fixed quickly
- As a result, game modding might be impossible unless Google provides some type of official modding functionality
- Cheating will also be more difficult although it might not be 100% impossible
Through game streaming services, you may save money but in the long run, you won’t own anything and if you don’t play games too often, you might actually spend more than you would spend on with a traditional game console!
- If you’re a pirate, you’ll be stuck playing older games if games eventually become available only through streaming since there’ll be no way to pirate ;p
- If the streaming service closes, you’ll probably lose access to all your saved games and if a game gets pulled for whatever reason, you won’t be able to play it as you technically don’t own anything (unless they adopt a buy once/stream whenever you want approach)
- Obviously, not all game development studios will be on board with the Google Stadia and might decide to offer their games exclusively on other streaming services.
- This may mean that you’ll end up having to subscribe to multiple services to play all the latest games which might put on a strain on your wallet
- On the plus side, you might save quite a bit of money if you game a lot but if you don’t game a lot, the savings may be minimal or you might end up paying more money than if you owned a traditional game console
- The ability to play on every device you own is pretty cool but I highly doubt many people will do serious gaming on a 5/6″ smartphone so I think that many people will still play on 1-3 different devices and that’s it
Conclusion
While it’s too early to tell whether Google Stadia will be a success or not, we can say that it has a decent amount of potential. However, we don’t know some crucial parts about it and how well it’ll work in real life which means that it might not spell instant death to 8th generation consoles!
You can check out the announcement video below for more information or follow it on Twitter:
This will fail miserably 🙂
This is the worst thing in the videogames history.
Definitely.
While the mobile ‘business model’ has been a disaster for console gaming, the literal hybridation of those two may spawn something disgusting…that cellphones players may enjoy, which is the worst.
The irony here, what I hate the most has killed what I loved the most.
Of course it will fail, nobody really wants it and the idea of streaming games makes no sense at all when user hardware is getting smaller and cheaper. Video streaming makes sense since the user is sent a bit at a time and your hardware does the work… in games you basically have to download atleast all the core files or you are server side processing (which makes no sense).
I don’t understand at all why the “console” stats are relevant in the discussion. If it is a streaming platform, the stats are useless. My PSVita’s stats have absolutely nothing to do with the performance of my PS4 games when using Remote-Play.
I think in general they are useful to let you know what “the source” is. Also since it’s basically a cloud farm it’s important for PR, to show off their mammoth processing power or whatever. Even though the average subscriber will end up getting some laggy sub-par feed.
No but your PS$’s stats do…this is the server that’s actually running the games those stats are for, that’s the compute power each game can use to render same as a console
And what are they streaming from, do you think? Magic? Their specs don’t matter much since they’ll scale it to match premium PC gaming, I imagine. Maybe if enough idiots take it on they’ll then try to do better than ANY consumer hardware, but that’s doubtful and I do hope consumers aren’t quite so stupid to give away all sense of ownership just yet.
This feels like OUYA. And we saw how that ended.
Not interested.
Google can take their streaming service and get lost with it
These game streaming services are garbage and I really wish people would stop supporting it. Yeah, a lot of people said the same thing about rental stores but you actually got to use a PHYSICAL platform to test a product. Sure, Netflix and other MOVIE streaming services are successful, but that’s a video platform and you don’t watch the same video over and over unless you are a kid who wants baby shark on repeat another 100 more times every 10 minutes.
Gaming needs to stay as a physical platform controlled by each users needs instead of a service trying to either be “the next big thing” or another repeated fad. Companies are already selling unfinished games and people are purchasing it which is stupid for lack of better words but this is just another path to money wasted on useless services. I hope it is another failed Google service and they concentrate on something better.
It’s all about squeezing as much money out of the paying consumer as possible, I’ll stick with physical games & consoles thanks, They will bring in a simple pricing structure to start then change it to rake in more money
Can see it now as its google….. Just doing an important part of a game and a popup appears on the screen even though you have “Paid to remove adverts”
No thanks
These services do work and in optimal conditions provide a pretty solid experience but they have a lot of disadvantages.
One problem is at least here in the United States 99% of people don’t have access to very fast and reliable internet connections. Most people barely have 50Mbps and forget anything over 100Mbps unless you’re in a rare place that has optic fiber. This is the biggest hurdle. Consider that if you live in a multi user house and everyone is on at once it’s going to kill your speed even more.
Although they make it look convenient with the service running on multiple devices via wireless connections, the truth is you’re going to experience occasional lag due to interference over wifi. You won’t achieve a stable and low latency experience without being connected over a wired/Ethernet connection.
Although the cloud provides continuous hardware upgrades with your subscription, you have to consider the risk that they can change their pricing model at any time and raise their fees in the future.
There is some upside to the cloud, like not having to download games or at least download them quickly and being able to carry your gaming experience between various devices, but the overall experience is lacking unless you have a stable wired connection with a robust internet service to back it all up.
My conclusion is that for most of us cloud gaming still can’t compare to a local gaming system. But, for those that have a robust internet service at home and that live close to the data Center they are using, it can provide a very, very close experience to what you’d get with a local machine.
“99% of people dont have access to very fast and reliable internet.”
thats not true – this has been said by so many news outlets that people are believing it. fact is MOST people do have fast enough internet, at least in the USA. if they don’t then its economical reasons, not sourcing thats the issue.
can’t afford the base 60 mbps internet cable offers? too bad, but that doesn’t count as you “don’t have access”. they do, they choose not to take it.
No. Wrong.
You lose ownership and you lose free will. Games will come and go and some would be lost forever if they were streaming only. You’re bound to their will on what you can play and when. Companies can’t even prepare properly for launch weeks as is, can you imagine putting yet another infrastructure into the mix during a launch?
This is Renta-A-*** gaming. No dignity, no proprietary. Just utter shame and selfishness.
Moreover, given the connection you need for this to work perfectly you could download any game within an hour or two if they’re over 100 GBs in size. AND you wouldn’t need to keep saturating your connection while you play it. The very definition of specious reasoning is to say it’s more convenient to stream…
100% Flop. This wont work for people who like physical media. I will only buy a digital version of a game if a physical release don’t exist. You cannot re-sell digital. Also any lag in streaming for FPS and action games will be a bust. I cannot see this working out. Zero interest in this.
I have a multitude of consoles and my streaming experience so far has been poor RE7 on the switch awful, PlayStation now trail couldn’t even get a PS3 game to load and my internet connection is sold to me as super fast!!
Hey.. and how ’bout offline experiences? No one is ever talking about that? What happens if connection closes off? Can I still play it? If not, Stadia sucks and consoles are still the way of it! Or is it gonna be only “multiplayering”? I’m a little concerned about offline playing..
Some games like PINBALLFX3 you can’t have any lag aka latency of more than a frame or two. No way a streaming service can deliver that.
The whole online only thing is really friggin annoying. The internet is powerful, but not eternal
Only way this is a console killer is if they bring google Fiber along with it to the rest of the US.
Still FAR too much of the country has *** for Internet speeds.
C´mon guys!! No matter what we say, they´ll do whatever the heck they want. In the end it´s all bussiness. There´s no gaming passion or whatsoever, only by us. They sell stuff, period. That´s what Game Industry means.
meh.. just another stupid realisation. it works ONLY with FREE cloud system, including storage\stream\etc… only when all database was free, all can buy 1 gadget like switch (good idea, gamepad-tablet) but from google. and if MOSTLY all was FREE in that cloud, with basic functions like play\watch\read\serf, i repeat, all content MUST be free! THAN it realy was good. someone ask: where to get profit from that? i answer: extra features.
Yes, that plan can`t give a millions for one time, like if u create AAA title and sell in all world, but it can give millions, oh.. no.. my fault, billions!! for a long time.
Slowly, but 100% profit.
( but.. u know.. who cares =\ )
Maybe the industry moves too fast for you kids (with the exception of the guy mentioning Ouya).
Remember OnLive? I used to subscribe to it, back when internet in my area (outside a metropolitan area, enough that our internet was fairly awful). What happened to it?
Sony bought it.
Minus the millennial that thinks everything should be free because (s)he hasn’t yet realized that every free service (s)he uses has compiled user data extensive enough to create an AI spambot millennial that rampages through the internet not only demanding everything be free, but that it have no viable business model that generates revenue… the whole discussion could come from the era where Steam started to take off.
How many digital games do you “own?” My physical titles are my modern “rentals.” I trade them when I’m done. My steam library is somewhere near the cusp of 1,000 titles.
SaaS is a game where I hope consumers can refuse to engage. Enterprise, sure, but I truly hope consumers opt out and these endeavors fail, spectacularly. I’m somewhere in upper-middle class in the US, as far as median income, and I don’t want to subscribe to Netflix/Hulu/Prime/(Whatever Apple’s Thing Is)/Spotify/YouTube TV/YouTube Red. Go ahead and Patron a bunch of people and support a bunch of Twitch streamers.
Then we get to SaaS. Adobe has done it. Microsoft almost did it and I wouldn’t be surprised if they release an update where Windows 10 is free, but everything you do is theirs. There is XBox Game Pass and PlayStation Now. They’re the model we’re looking at, probably, but I think if you can look into OnLive, you’ll get closer (I remember similar reports of their processing power back in the day). I simply don’t see where I can rationally budget that many services. Google would do well to figure out a way to, like Amazon, to bundle Music, Video, and Games (my Prime subscription would have stayed if the book subscription wasn’t another bill, as the family reads voraciously). I just dropped Prime after their last “report record profits, increase price of Prime.” There is an opening.