Does the future of gaming lie in streaming? Google surely thinks so and is betting heavily on it. As scheduled, the company provided details about its platform ahead of E3 during its first Stadia Connect streamed today.

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The D Day is sometime in November of this year, when $129 will get you a Stadia Founder's Edition that comes bundled with an exclusive Night Blue Stadia Controller, a Google Chromecast Ultra for streaming to your TV, Destiny 2: The Collection, an exclusive Founder’s Stadia Name, and three months of Stadia Pro without charge for yourself, and three months of Stadia Pro to give away to a friend. With this bundle you can play across laptops, desktops, Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a2 with cross-screen early access from day one.

Note that the Founder Edition bundle is the only way to access Stadia this year. Other subscription services will open up in 2020. Stadia Pro, which is what you get with the Founder's Edition, is priced at $9.99 per month, allows you to play games up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second with HDR and 5.1 surround sound. The free Stadia Base service which launches next year allows you to buy and keep games capped at 1080p and 60 frames per second with stereo sound but does not allow you to access games for free nor get special discounts which Pro subscribers can enjoy. The controler alone costs $69.

Regarding connectivity requirements, Google claims that "Stadia works across various connections from 35 Mbps down to a recommended minimum of 10 Mbps" and the platform with match resolution from 4K to 720p according to your network’s speed. Here's a nice infographic for that:

As for games, Google announced the following today, with more to come in the future:

• Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2,​
• Doom Eternal, Doom (2016)​
• Rage 2, The Elder Scrolls Online​
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood​
• Destiny 2​
• Get Packed​
• Grid​
• Metro Exodus​
• Thumper​
• Farming Simulator 19​
• Baldur's Gate 3​
• Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid​
• Football Manager​
• Samurai Shodown​
• Final Fantasy XV​
• Tomb Raider Definitive Edition​
• Rise of the Tomb Raider​
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider​
• NBA 2K​
• Borderlands 3​
• Gylt​
• Mortal Kombat 11​
• Darksiders Genesis​
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey​
• Just Dance​
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint​
• Tom Clancy's The Division 2​
• Trials Rising​
• The Crew 2​

At launch the Stadia platform will be available in the following 14 countries: US, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland.

The service will be accessible via a Chromecast Ultra, a regular Chrome browser on any computer, or a Pixel 3/3a smartphone, with support for more smartphones planned in the future.

What do you think of the Stadia after the announcement? Will you be subscribing for a Founder's Edition or you will wait and see how it fares?

SOURCE​

 

[KingVamp]

Kind of sounds like PS Plus the Stream Edition.

 

[Mama Looigi]

So... the only reason I was excited for this was because I wanted to cat Mario. I just realized how pointless that reason is.

 

[x65943]

Well isn't the main purpose for single player games and campaigns so you can still have fun with no internet

What. Not really. I primarily play single player games and have had stable internet for years. Some people aren't interested in online play even if they have the option.

 

[tiamat999]

What. Not really. I primarily play single player games and have had stable internet for years. Some people aren't interested in online play even if they have the option.

But your streaming the game so it's still needs online.

 

[Pluupy]

Misleading information from Google spreading like wildfire. The only "free" game available at launch is going to be Destiny 2. The others will have to purchased separately, in addition to the subscription price. Per the official Stadia site.

So if you want to play Elder Scrolls Online, how does that work?

I already own that game.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

It's priced right, unlike GeForce Now. I can see this being highly successful. At that price, if your internet is decent, you can get just as good of an experience as playing locally, at a lower cost than you would be paying keeping your desktop up to date to play all the latest games on high. But they need to add support for playing any steam game, like GeForce Now has.

I believe the zero latency thing. GeForce Now honestly has zero perceivable latency, impressive for something that's still in beta. And Google has the bandwidth and computing power to make an even better service.

 

[Xzi]

Wow, a line-up of games that you can get on just about any other system. It's literally just a Shield TV that can't run anything natively. I hope this shit flops hard, and it probably will.

 

[diggeloid]

Hard pass from me. That controller doesn't even look cool, it's like some bland unbranded controller you'd see on an ad for an Ikea TV stand or coffee table.

 

[kuwanger]

Misleading information from Google spreading like wildfire. The only "free" game available at launch is going to be Destiny 2. The others will have to purchased separately, in addition to the subscription price. Per the official Stadia site.

Yet another reason to dislike streaming services. If I'm going to rent access to play games, I shouldn't have to buy the games too. I mean, when I "buy" the game what happens if I cancel the service? At least with consoles it's clear because you own the console and can keep playing your bought games.

At that price, if your internet is decent, you can get just as good of an experience as playing locally, at a lower cost than you would be paying keeping your desktop up to date to play all the latest games on high.

Except that a lot of us will probably not be able to reliably play at higher than 720p . Meanwhile, 4K gaming is basically just not a thing on modern titles (even with a RTX 2080) if you want to crank settings to near max; that's not even considering ray tracing. If all you're going for is 720p, used you can buy an RX 580 for ~$100. Couple that with a used $100 system with an i5-3xxx and you should get pretty close to high 720p for modern games (at least, from the many videos I've seen from Phil's Computer Lab and others).

Now, I've no idea what the future will hold. I do find it highly unlikely, though, that Google would buy the equivalent of multiple GTX 2080 per user because that cuts into their bottom line. It's another major reason why I'm very suspicious of streaming in general: you're trying to multiplex high end harder over a lot of users who play at different times but the best way to do that would require global reach of each streaming center which is antithetical to good streaming. At best, I'd expect most streaming services to have more middling quality and every effort they make to dump old hardware for new to keep on the cutting edge just further drives down the used hardware prices.

 

[eyeliner]

With the monthly fee, you can purchase a few of these games on sale, unless they are brand new. And you get to keep them and play without internet.

It can work for thise frugal gamers.

But anyone knows what happens if you buy the game but fail to pay the fee?

Can you still play the game or are you locked out?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Yet another reason to dislike streaming services. If I'm going to rent access to play games, I shouldn't have to buy the games too. I mean, when I "buy" the game what happens if I cancel the service? At least with consoles it's clear because you own the console and can keep playing your bought games.



Except that a lot of us will probably not be able to reliably play at higher than 720p . Meanwhile, 4K gaming is basically just not a thing on modern titles (even with a RTX 2080) if you want to crank settings to near max; that's not even considering ray tracing. If all you're going for is 720p, used you can buy an RX 580 for ~$100. Couple that with a used $100 system with an i5-3xxx and you should get pretty close to high 720p for modern games (at least, from the many videos I've seen from Phil's Computer Lab and others).

Now, I've no idea what the future will hold. I do find it highly unlikely, though, that Google would buy the equivalent of multiple GTX 2080 per user because that cuts into their bottom line. It's another major reason why I'm very suspicious of streaming in general: you're trying to multiplex high end harder over a lot of users who play at different times but the best way to do that would require global reach of each streaming center which is antithetical to good streaming. At best, I'd expect most streaming services to have more middling quality and every effort they make to dump old hardware for new to keep on the cutting edge just further drives down the used hardware prices.

You can get good quality 1080p at 10 mbps. In fact, Steam In Home Streaming rarely uses more than 10 even when I have it set to 30. Might be a limitation of NVENC, not sure.
I don't know why Google says you need 20. But I assume there will be bitrate settings you can adjust to get 1080p at lower bitrates. Most people should have at least 10 mbps, but it might be a problem if you try to stream games on a shared connection if your internet isn't very fast. Random hiccups whenever someone plays a YouTube video or watches Netflix can ruin the experience quickly.

I don't know what percentage of the world has 20-25 mbps or above (what I would recommend as a minimum if it's a shared connection so it doesn't become unplayable whenever someone else is streaming video) but it's surely a large enough amount of people to make Stadia successful.

 

[kuwanger]

Most people should have at least 10 mbps, but it might be a problem if you try to stream games on a shared connection if your internet isn't very fast. Random hiccups whenever someone plays a YouTube video or watches Netflix can ruin the experience quickly.

That's precisely why I say it. In theory I have a 30 mbps connection, but it's shared and even if it weren't there's too much risk of hiccups for me (or a lot of people) to consider. Now, if I had a 300mbps connection and was in the same city as one of the game streaming servers, that'd be another story for 4K. Somewhere between those extremes is 1080p. If I don't care about having an actually good game experience or it's a JRPG or something, sure crank it to 4K.

 

[NeSchn]

Big meh, I have a feeling this is not going to take off much at all.

 

[NoNAND]

If they consistently add new games to the platform $10/month is very reasonable.

I am a little skeptical that the service will have newer games - I think we are gonna get more of a Netflix scenario with older outdated games flooding the platform.

Well only time will tell, If it gains somewhat of popularity and a positive reception and reviews who knows maybe more games could head to this console.
Side note to the resolution. I'm actually baffled by the fact that this odd thing could attain reasonable framerates in 4K at merely 35Mbps.
Doesn't 4K streaming require a super fast internet connection?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

That's precisely why I say it. In theory I have a 30 mbps connection, but it's shared and even if it weren't there's too much risk of hiccups for me (or a lot of people) to consider. Now, if I had a 300mbps connection and was in the same city as one of the game streaming servers, that'd be another story for 4K. Somewhere between those extremes is 1080p. If I don't care about having an actually good game experience or it's a JRPG or something, sure crank it to 4K.

30 mbps should be a good experience, that leaves room for one other person to be streaming videos at the same time, but if the whole family tries to stream video at the same time, well, you'd run into issues regardless of whether you have Stadia or not. 30 mbps isn't much when 3-4 people are sharing it.
4K is pointless anyway unless you have a projector or a huge monitor/TV you sit close to.
But if you really want you can use supersampling but stream in 1080p/1440p and get slightly better image quality without increasing bandwidth requirements.

 

[wiewiec]

Funny thing if they as said invested money to develop big infrastructure - so why this limitations to only stated countries?

 

[NoNAND]

Wow, a line-up of games that you can get on just about any other system. It's literally just a Shield TV that can't run anything natively. I hope this shit flops hard, and it probably will.

There there, be patient

 

[kuwanger]

Doesn't 4K streaming require a super fast internet connection?

Apparently Amazon recommend 15 mbps, Netflix 25 mbps. Obviously that doesn't include shared connections.

4K is pointless anyway unless you have a projector or a huge monitor/TV you sit close to.
But if you really want you can use supersampling but stream in 1080p/1440p and get slightly better image quality without increasing bandwidth requirements.

True enough. Honestly in most games I'd be content with 720p (especially with supersampling), so that's not very much the issue for me. This circles back to the original point where you can use used parts. :/ Now, if Stadia had some killer game--like some game that works really well, but only with ray tracing--and you might actually sell people on the service. Or include a large library of games free to play as long as you have the service. I just don't see the high-end aspect of it being per se a selling point because I don't really know of any must-play games that require high-end specs or which look substantially different at lower resolution/settings.

 

[JakobAir]

I've got a fiber optic connection to my house so I might give it a shot. The intro didn't touch on achievements though. I imagine there will be, seeing as games in the Play Store have them.

 

[KoalaityTV]

I can think of many people this wouldn't work for:
- People in the middle of nowhere
- Speedrunners
- Offline players
- PC players (edit: sorry I didn't watch the video, it was an assumption from the images provided)
- Nintendo fans
- Pixel purists
- High precision FPS players
- People who like to future-proof their purchases.

Here is a little bit of an explanation:
People in the middle of nowhere or rural areas usually have a poor internet connection, speed runners rely on VERY low latency, this is not a PC solution, there are no Nintendo games, people who are pixel purists would likely encounter artifacts, high precision FPS players would likely encounter the same problem as speed runners, and last but not least, these services do not last for ever. Imagine the Wii Shop shutdown but with literally all of your games, and it rendering an entire console useless. It would basically be BRICKED.

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But your streaming the game so it's still needs online.

Not the same way you are streaming games here. This is a console that streams games from someone else's computer. The entire image is compressed and sent over the internet, unlike normal online play. With normal online play all of the resources are on the hardware and it is being rendered locally, the only thing that is online are player positions, actions, etc.
NOTE: This is probably not the best way to explain it, but just know that there is a big difference.