Google's new Gaming Service, Stadia
Eyes up gamers! Google has shown up to this year’s Game Developers Conference with its own gaming platform. Google Stadia aims to bring gaming to everyone and everywhere through the clouds.
The giant tech company explained that Stadia will be bringing games to any device through streaming. While this may seem like an enormous hurdle, Google has already shown a prototype demo of their ideas in action by running Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in their Chrome browser.
Google is serious about its gaming plans and has already created some hardware for Stadia. Google’s first official Stadia controller was shown at GDC with the ability to connect to devices via Bluetooth and USB. The controller can also connect to wifi to run Stadia games. Besides your usual controller buttons, the Stadia controller will have buttons for specific actions like sharing video and photos of your games and buttons to interact with Google Assistant to help you complete difficult levels.
Since the Stadia service will be fully integrated with Google, gamers will be able to play games right after they watch a game’s trailer on YouTube. Google’s Vice President Phil Harrison went on stage to demonstrate the YouTube and Stadia experience. Just under the YouTube video window, there is a “Play Now” button that you can click and the game will launch immediately in your browser. After beginning the game, you can start streaming to your YouTube audience at 4K and 60 FPS. This can all happen in a matter of seconds. In the future, Google will increase those output settings to 8K and 120FPS.
Google is handling all of the backend technical aspects of the Stadia service so this can be great for video game developers too. There is no need for developers to worry about the consumer’s hardware. Battle Royale games can now increase their player count, and games can have more co-op capabilities without worrying about graphical decline. Each player will be streaming their own experience directly from Stadia on Google's servers.
There is a lot to look forward to with Google’s new Stadia service. Gamers might have to look into getting better internet service to support their gaming habits because thanks to Google Stadia, hardware issues may become a thing of the past.
What do you think of Google’s Stadia? Let us know in the comment section.