Google Stadia : Could it be the next game changer for gaming Industry?

Google recently announced their new gaming platform "Stadia". It is a new cross-platform game streaming service. Stadia is built for gamers of possibly all background. As the trailer promised, the cloud-base gaming service works flawlessly with Chrome Browser, Desktop, Chromecast Ultra, laptops and even smartphones. The feature to transorm your gaming experience to variety of devices seamlessly looks promising.

The Stadia Project follows Google's last year project - Project Stream. In a sense, Stadia is a highly polihed Project Strem done better. This(Stadia) will allow the user to stream and play AAA games at super-high settings, with smooth fram-rates upto 4K resolution with that scaling upto 8K resolution in the coming future.

So, what actually is Stadia?

  Stadia is a cloud-based gaming platform. It means you don't need any fancy hardware with lot of specification and gaming CD's to run each game. With this service, you'll be able to run game in the browser itself. Since, it a cloud based service it works seamlessly on any devices like laptops, desktop, PC and even Google Chromecasts. So, to run any game you don't need to buy Gaming Consoles or desktop.

Stadia is based on Linux and uses Vulkan. As per the video conference, Google will support many popular game development engines like Unreal Engine, CryEngine, Havok, AMD and Unity. Google claims that with it's extended data-centres all around the globe, players should be able to experience a seamless gaming moment.

Stadia will provide instant gaming service with as little as 5 seconds to load the game into your browser. There is no any hectic process of updates, downloads and installation. The multi-platform gaming service is incredibly good and can run among wide ranges of hardware devices.

What are new features of the Stadia?

Google says that Stadia user will have access to the power of custom AMD 2.7GHz x86 processor with 16GB of RAM and 484GB/s transfer speed, and a GPU that has 10.7 teraflops of power.

It is also be incredibly difficult to cheat and Google touts it a hack-proof. It makes sense as inaccessibility to the hardware device will make the task tough. However, this facility could also kill the mod support for range of games, unless the development of that functionality is accessed by developers.

Google Assistant Support

Google Assistant is integrated and you can get help from Smart Google Assistant within time. It is integrated through a button on Stadia Controller, with on-display result. It is possible to overlay a tutorial video on the screen which you can use to help yourself.

State Share

This is the feature which will allow you to instantly share all your gaming experience right away. With this feature gamers and Youtuber will be able to StateShare their game at the very moment. This will allow other people to see the moment in real-time, in-engine. This is not just a video-clip but a fully real-time game.

Google as a developer

Stadia is not just another game streaming engine. It itself is a game development platform. With this service, the platform will provide new tools which in result will bring new functionality in the current gaming systems. The features include split-screen gaming with no performance delay. Google also hinted on multi-players scalability with upto 1000+ players multiplayer games; a feat which could be possible with Google's Stadia immense scalability capacity

 

 What makes Google's Stadia promising ?

Cloud-based gaming solution is not a new idea at all. Previously, other companies have tried it as well. Companies like Nvidia and Microsoft are puling their best to provide a great cloud-gaming platform for people. But however, despite all the efforts, Cloud gaming truly never demonstrate it's true potential as it does now.

Google is a large company and with all products like Chrome and good cloud-platform, it will be a step-ahead for Google. Microsoft's xCloud showed much promise but still faile to capitalize. Microsoft however continues to develop and nourish the xCloud and shed some light in GDC 2019.

 

 But, is it upto the Hype?

That is a pretty good question and difficult to answer at this point. The idea of Cloud based gaming is a good one but the previous failed attempts have made people less reliable on this product. There are still several problems which have to be faced for creating a seamless gaming experience.

The main problem with Cloud Gaming over the years in the Latency and Input Response time. Input Response time is the time required for the action to take place on the screen once you've pressed the button on your controller. Most of the consoles have Input Response time(or input lag) of less than 15 ms. Newer generation controller have even improved and made it possible of incredible rate of 10ns or lower. Since, game controller resides on the same room and getting such a precise Input lag is possible.

However, Cloud gaming have a different story. It will have to record the input from the user's controller, send the input to the Google's Data Center to register the command and must travel back to response to the input on your screen. This whole process is incredibly difficlt task, especially if you want to experience a seamless gaming experience.

However, Google , as mentioned before have better infrastructure so if it one company can do it right - it should be Google. Various other companies have tried and failed before, so it's upto Google, how efficiently they can handle and solve the problem previously faced by Cloud Gaming.

When is it launching and what is the price ?   

Well, Google hasn't detailed much about the launch late but it claims to launch it's product this year in U.S., Canada, Uk and most European countries. It is believed that it will be subscription based just as NetFlix, but that's just a speculation for now.

Sources:

AndroidPolice

AndroidAuthority