Google Stadia! It’s the future of gaming, if you happen to enjoy playing games that you already own on various consoles through a streaming connection. It all sounds like magic when you think about it: Provided that you’ve got a decent internet connection and happen to live in a country that Google gives a damn about.
That being said, if you are on Google’s rollout list and you’re curious to see how Stadia does in your home, then you’re probably going to need a hefty internet connection whose fair usage policy is very fair. While Google claims that top tier streaming will result in 4K visuals with 60 frames per second and minimal lag, the data cost on that content will be steep.
According to PC Gamer calculations, an hour of 4K gaming will set you back 15.78GB an hour, 9GB per hour for 1080p visual fidelity and 4.GB an hour for (spits) 720p distractions. Which with a little bit of extra maths, means that a 4K game with a lengthy story will work out to one entire terabyte of downloading over 65 hours. That’s…that’s a lot of bytes.
And that’s before we even get to regular internet usage, for tasks such as work, email and definitely not spending too much time looking at trending lists on Pornhub. Not that I would ever do that, hahahahahano hey look a squirrel!
Google Stadia launches later this year, for the ice-cold price of $9.99 a month and with a library of 25 games that includes the likes of Destiny 2, Gylt and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. It also includes Baldur’s Gate eventually, which may just be the only game that people care about currently. You’ll be able to play on just about anything that has a screen, with a few caveats of course.
Last Updated: June 7, 2019
Admiral Chief
June 7, 2019 at 13:41
Sounds good, doesn’t work
Llama In The Rift
June 7, 2019 at 15:09
Were you part of that covfefe?
G8crasha
June 7, 2019 at 14:03
I just love the idea that you don’t need an excessive Internet speed to game. I have the Nvidia Shield Android TV box, and in order to use Nvidia Geforce Now service, they advise you have nothing less than a 35 Mbps connection. When I watched the Stradia stream last night, they say all you need is a 10 Mbps internet speed to stream in 1080, with HDR, 60 fps and 5.1 sound. That’s golden for me. Admittedly, the latency would suck if you tried to stream from non-local servers. But hey, it seems Cloud Gaming is going to become the next big thing in gaming. I’m just waiting to see what sort of announcements are made at E3 with MS (Sony won’t be there, so we’ll have to wait to see what they say, if they haven’t said anything already yet).
Reclusive Eagle
June 7, 2019 at 15:09
The Internet infrastructure in place around the world can not support this feasibly. Even in the US there are places that still have Dial-up or even no internet at all. This will at best be limited to major US cities, at worst only US and no other countries.
EU does not have enough bandwidth, Africa doesn’t have enough bandwidth, Russia, Australia, most of Asia with the exception of Japan and Korea which is the home town of Nintendo and Sony so good luck to Google ever getting a foot in that market.
The entirety of the worlds internet infrastructure will have to be upgraded and data costs made so cheap it becomes viable for the average consumer. This will take more than 15 years to complete. Its a great service to force internet providers to lower costs and ultimately the consumer wins in the end because of ambitions services like Stadia, but it comes at the cost of not being viable to most at the current time.
geel slang
June 9, 2019 at 15:04
The eu certainly does. Im in the Neherlands and have a 500mbs line. I can do 10 stadia 4k connections at once without even commimg close to the limit. Stadia will certainly work in the first world.
Reclusive Eagle
June 9, 2019 at 16:00
Yes someplaces in the EU have Gigabyte internet. But for the majority of the EU its less than 20Mbps. You happen to live in a place where you get decent internet but even in London or Brighton UK there are places with less than 10Mpbs. Netherlands is different because of the large amount of tax you pay so the Gov can build up infrastructure. Same for Norway and other Scandinavian countries. Russia most places have no internet at all. Half of Europe has internet you probably had in 2008.
Its not that X country has the ability to have 500Mbps lines. Its, X country needs to have 500Mbps lines as a standard. Like I said even in USA there are places with 50kpbs connections who are stuck on dial-up or no internet at all. Stadia will function in many countries but running at 20% capacity world wide for the few people who have decent internet even in 3rd world countries is not the best option in terms of business.
We will see massive upgrades to internet infrastructure over the next 10 years world wide to accommodate for the massive bandwidth requirements for most things. But as of now Stadia is effectively a prototype for Streaming because it does not have the capacity to reach anywhere near the audience of hardware Atm.