Google Stadia Cloud Gaming Service: Launch Date, Price

Google has finally unveiled its long-expected cloud gaming service named Stadia at GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco on March 19. Previously, Google used to fail in initial Stadia work named Project Stream at that time to compete with current console giants such as Microsoft, Sony and even Twitch live streaming site.

But Stadia is a game-changer. According to Phil Harrison, Microsoft and Sony’s former executive who broke down the vision of Google, this vertically integrated gaming platform is expected to consolidate the whole gaming process from hosting and development to advertising and distribution. The final target is to combine two modern gaming industry’s pillars including fan-collected giants visiting Youtube to play games such as League of Legends, Apex Legends, and Fortnite or stream and game developers creating immersive digital worlds.

Harrison said:

Stadia will not only combine many different gaming market fields but also completely replace the role of PCs and gaming consoles. The gaming service will simply run on Google Chrome using laptops, tablets, TVs, desktops, and smartphones. Stadia is expected to come in a bundle with a standalone controller, which is much cheaper than current popular consoles with a price of $400.

The announcement of Stadia has shown us the “future of gaming”. But, the presentation made various sweeping promises when skipping more important details.

Google Stadia: Operation

Stadia’s brain and heart are expected to be the global data center network of Google which span 200 different nations. Google would like game players to rent the graphical and computational capacity to run the games of its servers instead of purchasing a PC or console.

The gaming service will offer a games library where they can pick a game and play after one click, no need to download or install the game. The servers of Google run the games and send the visual output to users via the Internet with up to 4K resolution at 60fps out-of-the-box, and even at 8K resolution at 120fps in the furture.

Google carried out beta tests in October 2018, which proved that the gaming platform could ensure this in a limited capacity. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was the game to be tested using the service. And as a result, a few testers with good Internet connection ran this game smoothly. According to the presenters of Google, it will require new partnerships and times to recreate that experience all over the world and with an increasingly expanded number of games.

To do all this, the search engine giant is working with AMD chip maker to create a particular GPU for the data centers that the company claims to be the graphics card in order to completely control them. The GPU is likely to offer 10.7tflops of power, which means that the chip can accomplish 10.7 trillion operations each second over the 4.2tflops of power in the Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro and the 6tflops in the Microsoft’s Xbox One X. All of which is expected to be supported by a custom 2.7GHz x86 CPU paired with 16GB RAM.

Stadia servers will be the first to make this graphical power level accessible to the users through only web browsers. However, it still remains unclear when the search engine giant let users test Stadia.

Launch Date Of Google Stadia

So far, Google has not announced an official launch date for Stadia. However, it reveals that Stadia will be available in Canada, the U.K, Europe and the U.S this year.

Price Of Google Stadia

Google also has not revealed the price of Stadia, however, Nvidia and Sony already launch their services for streaming games so that we can make a comparison, even if the PlayStation Now of Sony still asks users to purchase a PS4.

However, users have to pay a $19.99 monthly subscription fee when using the service of Sony to access the games. Therefore, to stream a game, users have to spend around $20 each month although the price of Stadia’s controller or if it is contained with each subscription remains unknown.

According to a Google’s blog post, currently, Google is waiting for the Federal Communications Commission’s approval to start selling its controller in the U.S. Therefore, now, users cannot access the hardware which is really important to play multi-player games on Google’s gaming service.

Stadia’s Ability To Support Multi-Player Games

It is known that lag is one of the most serious problems with online gaming via a streaming service. As a middle man between the technology that they are playing on and gamers, Stadia will need to find out the way to avoid problems, especially in case it is going to add multi-player games on its game list.

It is due to the fact that game players will actually need to deliver their inputs to the servers of Google and then to the servers of Fortnite as well. Even when the Internet speeds are fast, this still causes more delay. However, the company plans to handle this problem by using the controller of Stadia.

The controller will use Wifi to directly connect to the servers of Google instead of making the connection with users’ devices, which means that the inputs of users will only have to go from Stadia to the servers of Fortnite, which in theory should eliminate input lag. The solution should be enough for today games, but certainly, Google still has other bigger ambitions.

Google has just cooperated with several software and game engine companies such as Unreal, Unity, and Havok to allow game developers to make their own games on Stadia. On paper, it allows freelance game developers to make battle royal games on the servers of Stadia, which could lead to game sessions without lag. Harrison stated:

Google Stadia: Live Streaming Features

The Google gaming service currently introduces “Crowd Play”, which will allow video game streamers’ fans to play with their favorite characters when they are active on Youtube. The feature is likely to attract users of Twitch to switch to the video site of Google.

For instance, if a game streamer is streaming when he is playing NBA 2K19, viewers could play with their favorite YouTube streamers by clicking “Join This Game” button. Not only would Youtube become a streaming website for people to watch games matches, but it is also a site where people can play games themselves, according to Ryan Wyatt, Gaming Head of the site.

Stadia Games List

Doom Eternal will be the first game to appear on Stadia with HDR 4K resolution support at 60fps. According to Marty Stratton, Executive Producer of the game, the company only spent a week on optimizing this game for the Google gaming service, which means that the upcoming games could be added on Stadia easily.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is likely to appear on the Stadia’s games list.

So far, only these two games have been added on Stadia for sure, other games will be announced later this year.

Google Assistant Integration

Furthermore, each controller of Stadia will have its own Google Assistant button. The button will take responsibility for various purposes, game players can access particular features in games in the future by using it and ask for voice assistant’s advice on a big fight which is causing troubles for them.

So far, Google has been relying on game developers to add this feature in the games in the future. At the same time, the company will support gamers to ask for tips of gaming immediately when they get stuck on a level.

Said Harrison:

Will Games On Stadia Be Cheating Free?

According to the executive of Google, online games in the future on the servers of Google are likely to be free of cheating and hacking. However, Pavel Pjundik, a software developer, also stated that Google may be hard to keep that promise.

Several cheats such as aimbotting which aims and shoots at the targets in multi-player shooter games automatically will be still effective by accessing the memory of games to figure out other players’ in-game coordinates.

It takes a large amount of coding prowess to succeed in DLL injections, however, there are still many aimbot programmes which can analyze the video output in order to aim at players at any superhuman levels. There are few reasons to think these programs are not likely to run on the Google gaming service. However, due to lack of information, we cannot say anything for sure.