Cloud-based gaming platform Google Stadia finally revealed

Today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Google has announced its first ever step into the gaming sector of entertainment by revealing its first cloud-based gaming platform, Google Stadia. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google has explained it as a platform designed for everyone and accessible from a variety of devices. The launch is expected to happen sometime this year for US, Canadian, UK and European users.

Those who followed Google’s Project Stream in the past several months of 2018 would be happy to see the feature become apart of the Google Stadia. The service was tested by allowing users to stream games directly in their Chrome browser and the game was chosen for the test was Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Now, it is going to use the YouTube creators that are already involved in creating gaming content to improve its game streaming service.

In practice, this would result in users watching a YouTube clip of their favorite streamer and by clicking “play now” button would immediately stream the game, without any hassle with downloading or installing a game on the device itself. Moreover, Google also created Crowd Play feature. With billions of hours of watched YouTube gaming content just last year alone, Google is adding to the user experience by allowing the users to highlight, capture and share the game directly on YouTube, and even allow the viewers to join the streamers in play.

One of the first games among many that will be available at launch on Stadia is Doom Eternal. Google also announced Stadia Games and Entertainment which is the in-house game studio that will provide the service with exclusive titles. Led by Jade Raymond, SGE already has over 100 studios and 1000 designers and engineers working on the new titles for Google Stadia.

Besides the gaming service, Google also revealed its own controller. The Stadia Controller resembles a mix of Xbox and PS4 controllers with the 2 twin sticks, a D-pad as well as a lot of face and shoulder buttons. What makes it slightly different is that it has a Google Assistant button that provides in-game hints, as well as a Home button with the new Stadia logo. The controller would be connected through WiFi to Stadia streaming service which would decrease lagging but also allow users to move the game from one device to another, for example from phone to tablet to TV as it was shown at the conference. The service is still well functioning even without this specific controller but, as Google puts it, it would bring out the best of Stadia.

Having in mind that Stadia users will be all around the world, cloud streaming will rely on globally dispersed Google data centers. This is also one of the ways Google intends to decrease lagging which is a very important element of streaming via the Internet. Through the partnership with AMD, Google is planning to create a GPU specifically for the data centres which will provide 10.7 teraflops which is almost double what it provided by both PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. We also can’t forget that there is going to be 2.7GHz x86 processor with 16GB or RAM standing behind each Stadia use. The expected resolution of Google Stadia is 8K at 120fps even though supported resolution at when it launches is going to be 4K at 60fps.

Google didn’t forget about the game developers either. One of its announcement was a new way for them to create titles on Stadia in their own design styles. By dropping the image into video frames, a transfer tool will imitate the style throughout the game. Moreover, it introduced State Share which would allow players to share content among each other, from specific moments to exact parts of the game all through a link.

Stadia is expected to be compatible with many of the Google’s already offered devices, meaning it will stream games from the cloud to Chromecast, Pixel devices and even through Chrome browser, just as it was expected. Of course, other devices can be used for streaming including laptops, PCs, tablets, phones and TVs.

Altogether, Google took quite a big and impressive step at once when it comes to its cloud gaming service, but it is unfortunately still not known when exactly in 2019 Stadia will be available for its users. More information including the price and initial game list will be revealed in summer while the Stadia controller won’t be released before the very end of the year.

ALSO READ: What Does Google Know About Me? And Why?