The cloud gaming has existed for many years, and in 2019, it went full-steam-ahead. Google was one of the major companies that were going this way. There are a lot of questions, potential, and hurdles in the mind of the people for this emerging technology. Google revealed its game streaming platform called Stadia during the GDC 2019. It made some commotion, and it would be because Google is a newcomer to the gaming sphere, or it might be around Google’s privacy practices. It works like streaming services that render games on a different server instead of your local machine.
And then stream the video back to you while your input is simultaneously sent to the server. Right now, there are two ways you can play games first via the cloud and second a monthly subscription. If a person wants to access the library of games, that person will need a remote server which is connected to their computer. Or you can access a remote know as virtual PC on which you can install your games. It is like you the remote desktop on which you are renting a gaming PC somewhere else that you can connect to.
As for the specs, Google’s goals are to provide a streaming experience at 4K 60 fps, and also aims to achieve with the following specifications:
• Custom x86 processor having top speed clocked at 2.7GHz w/ AVX2 SIMD and 9.5MB of L2+L3 cache
• Custom AMD GPU with HBM2 memory, 56 computer, and 10.7TFLOPs
• 16GB of RAM (shared between CPU and GPU), up to 484GB/s of bandwidth SSD cloud storage
This shows that it will be extremely great for gaming experience via local machine, but one of the problems is that how Google will tackle the internet connection issue like latency, dips in framerates and other performance issues. Digital Foundry did some test of their own, and they discovered that Stadia has 166ms of lag compared to the 79ms of latency while playing on a PC at 60fps. For it to work, you’ll need a minimum streaming rate of 15Mbps, latency below 40ms, and data loss below five percent.
As for Google Stadia will be releasing in November. Google will be releasing a special Founder’s Edition for $129.99 sometime that month, and the pack that is available for pre-order now will be coming with a Chromecast Ultra puck, limited-edition Night Blue controller, “first dibs” on a Stadia username. Also, you will get a two three-month Stadia Pro subscriptions one for you and a friend. Otherwise, it will cost you 9.99 per month, which will grant you access to a lot of games and up to 4K resolution and 60 frames per second, with HDR and 5.1 surround sound. As for the game down below is the list of games that will be available on it.
• Bandai Namco – Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2
• Bethesda – DOOM Eternal, DOOM 2016, Rage 2, The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein: Youngblood
• Bungie – Destiny 2
• Capcom – TBD
• Coatsink – Get Packed (Stadia exclusive)
• Codemasters – GRID
• Deep Silver – Metro Exodus
• Drool – Thumper
• Electronic Arts – TBD
• Giants Software – Farming Simulator 19
• Larian Studios – Baldur’s Gate 3
• nWay Games – Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
• Rockstar Games – TBD
• Sega – Football Manager
• SNK – Samurai Shodown
• Square Enix – Final Fantasy XV, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• 2K Games – NBA 2K, Borderlands 3
• Tequila Works – Gylt (Stadia exclusive)
• Warner Bros. – Mortal Kombat 11
• THQ – Darksiders Genesis
• Ubisoft – Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Just Dance, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, Trials Rising, The Crew 2
