Google Stadia: Future Of Consoles?

Google Stadia is a brand new game streaming service that promises everything. If it all goes according to plan, then google would process your game in their global data centres and then live feed it to your PC or mobile.

The Goal

All of this will happen within a blink of an eye, making the experience analogous to your regular gaming on PC. Google has promised a lot with stadia, and it's far from anyone has ever offered before. If this works perfectly, it can ultimately win over the battle of consoles. The goal is to bring high-end gaming to every device possible. Its an excellent idea for both the developers and players as the market for games will increase exponentially and not limited to just high-end PC or console players.

Google stadia will launch in November 2019 for those who purchased the Stadia's founder edition. Initially, the service will be available on TV via Chromecast Ultra, as well as desktop and laptops with Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a. More phones will be added later on.

Technical viewpoint

Currently, Stadia Pro is the standard subscription service and will cost $10 per month. At this price, you can play at 4K resolution at 60 frames per second, HDR and surround sound. The free game distribution is not yet transparent. Although you will get a free copy of Destiny 2,

In 2020, there will be a Stadia Base program. In this, you can play games at 1080p resolution. Games you purchased can be played for free in this.

Google is targeting the upper-end market with 4K gaming at 60 frames per second. However, Google also stated that the resolution would be automatically detected with the lowest being 720p. Stadia will be providing 8K gaming experience at 120 frames per second shortly.

In the current situation, 4K gaming is hard to achieve with real-time ray tracing. Google will be using an x86 processor with hyperthreading that runs at 2.7 GHz, with 16 GB of RAM and a custom AMD graphics chip. It's said to deliver a raw horsepower of 10.7 teraflops.

Game Streaming services of the past have struggled with high-fidelity visuals and low frame rate issues. Early reports from hands-on review tell that the gaming experience was not far distinguishable from traditional gaming. According to Google, you will only require 30 Mbps of internet speed for gaming at 4K resolution.

We all hope to see Google pull this off for the betterment of the gaming society.