A Google Stadia executive said the game streaming platform will have “way better” multiplayer connectivity than what’s possible on consoles, potentially allowing for “thousands of people” playing together in the same game world. The proliferation of cloud-based gaming services like Stadia are seen by some as a sign of the death of traditional game consoles.
Following its announcement earlier this year, Google’s game streaming platform was initially thought by many to be a “Netflix for games,” but it has become clear that’s not the case. Stadia games are purchased at full price, and the Stadia Pro subscription will only give out roughly one game per month, in addition to giving subscribers 4K, 60 FPS streaming capabilities. As such, Stadia is more a cloud-based replacement for a traditional console rather than a radical departure from the norm.
In a recent Kinda Funny podcast, Google Stadia Director of Games Jack Buser expressed high expectations for the platform’s multiplayer capabilities. He said Stadia will essentially be “the world’s largest LAN party,” with the service’s “very, very robust, high-bandwidth pipes” allowing for stable connections between players. Buser said this could even allow for game worlds with thousands of players running around together, noting that even hundred-player battle royale games are a relatively recent engineering accomplishment. Stadia previously revealed another possible multiplayer innovation, saying that the service will allow for split-screen and local co-op support without any performance drawbacks.
In the podcast, Buser also said cloud streaming has the potential to introduce modern games to people around the world who don’t have the resources to purchase consoles, though he noted that this could take time to be fully realized. Since its announcement, many have been skeptical of Stadia’s practicality, given potential users’ various internet speeds and reliability levels. It was revealed in June that Stadia eats 1TB of data in 65 hours of 4K streaming, meaning those with monthly data caps could run into problems.
Google Stadia could end up providing easy access to console-quality gaming, but it all depends on how the service runs within different internet environments. The fact that Stadia won’t have a beta before launch means users won’t be able to try it out the service without purchasing the $129 Founders Edition, since the free version won’t be available until sometime in 2020. There are reasons why you should be cautious about Stadia, though some hands-on impressions from PAX West 2019 show that Stadia actually works. Google Stadia is set to release in November 2019.
Next: Every Game Releasing On Google Stadia At Launch
Source: Kinda Funny
