In 2018, Google had announced “Project Stream”, a work-in-progress online service that allows users to stream video games from the internet. Though many praised what Google had to offer, they were overall slightly dissatisfied with the compression, artifacting, and lag that was present in their demo. At GDC 2019, Google returned to “Project Stream”, now revealing it as “Stadia”. Google claims Stadia to be “A platform for everyone”, supposedly allowing everyone to play games off the internet with any device that supports Google Chrome. Google claims that their service will support 4k resolution (8k in the future), capable of running at 60 fps. It’s GPU is to run at 10.7 teraflops, far surpassing the PS4 and Xbox One’s capabilities. The platform is also operated under Linux, while graphical rendering is powered by Vulkan.
How it works
But, how does Stadia’s streaming service work? Well, Google is to provide servers for storing game data and holding billions of user accounts, all running each individual’s selected application(s) simultaneously. Consider the specifications of modern games and universal 4k + 60fps streaming. Such a concept requires an unbelievably large amount of processing power, memory, storage, and money. Luckily, Google isn’t manufacturing or distributing physical systems to consumers and has spent billions of dollars to create the perfect servers. Google also plans to partner with various ISPs, supplying Google Fiber as a connection source.
Many fans are skeptical, though. There are massive concerns for offline play, poor internet connections, unsupported ISPs, low spec devices, what makes it different from OnLive and PSNow, and more. One big concern, is that Google hasn’t even announced how Stadia’s subscription service will operate or cost. Google has a history of making things that they consider “innovative”, and later abandoning them. With many of the concerns that gamers have, Stadia may shortly fall into the graveyard of Google’s failures. Don’t lose all of your interest, though. With this being one of Google’s bigger projects, they may regard concerns and improve Stadia significantly.
Stay tuned. More updates are sure to come.
