Today, Google took the stage at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco to announce their latest offering, a game streaming service called Stadia. The streaming service is the company’s efforts to make digital, on-demand video games viable and reliable for the masses. The service will become available this year in the US, Canada, UK and Europe.
Ideally, Stadia will allow gamers to play any game on any connected device. For example, a gamer could play Devil May Cry 5 on their iPhone, Dead Cells on your smart TV or even Apex Legends on a Mac. The streaming service will stream games in 4K, 60FPS and HDR color at launch, but will eventually bring support up to 8K.
There’s a lot to offer game developers, as well. The streaming service will allow developers to sell their games in new ways, including directly via Twitch and YouTube live streams. To simply put: if you run across a trailer for Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on YouTube, you can just click “Play” and then game will load in as little as five seconds on your Chrome browser. Yes, it’s as simple as that.
There’s another neat feature called Crowd Play. This feature will allow people watching on YouTube livestream to jump in line and join the streamer’s game. The State Share feature will allow people to send links to specific sections of a game, and their friends can simply click on the link to play in Chrome browser.
While Google’s Stadia service is very nice, the search engine giant isn’t the only company to come into the game-streaming space. Microsoft has already brought Xbox Game Pass subscription service and will reportedly also build a streaming-focused console that it plans to announce soon, possibly at E3 since it’s right around the corner. In addition, NVIDIA’s GeForce Now service has offered similar experience for a few years now, but only in beta.
Google, however, has some great advantages over many other companies. For example, the company has a robust cloud network that includes more than 7,500 nodes positioned all over the world. Game-engine companies like Unity and Unreal are partnering with Google on Stadia as well. Needless to say, Google has plenty of support right off the bat.
Will you try out Stadia? Let us know!
