Google Stadia is cool

Hey y’all, let’s talk Stadia. Stadia is Google’s new video game streaming service with a terrible logo. Like, its just a generic stylized S. But that’s not important. What is important is the potential of this service. For those that don’t know, Stadia is a service through which players will be able to stream video games to any device with Google Chrome. The idea is to essentially eliminate the need for consoles and PC specs. Theoretically, you won’t have to purchase any actual hardware. Unless you want to play on your Chromecast. Then you’ll need the special Stadia controller. Either way, this a very cool idea if it works.

And it does. At least the Beta (known then as Project Stream) did. I was able to play Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on a laptop with 2GB of RAM that struggles to startup. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. There were occasional dropped frames and stuttering, but the resolution and graphics never faltered. There was some latency, but it was better than using PS Now. I should mention that I have a very good Wi-Fi set up and that certainly helped my experience, but Google claims a 30Mbps connection will be able to yield 4K graphics at 60 fps. The PS4 controller I used to play with Project Stream will be able to play Stadia (outside of the aforementioned exception) so I am extremely happy.

Bland ass controllers

Obviously, there are questions and concerns about this service. The most important being price. It is unknown how much it will cost. The mock service used during the reveal presentation seems to have implied that it would be a marketplace where you buy individual games. I’m not sure that will succeed. If this is a streaming service that has X amount of games I can play for a subscription fee, I think that is a much more feasible model. The next question is: what if Google gets bored of this and shuts it down in two years like it does so many other projects? If I’m buying individual games, are they all gone? That would suck.

A concern that Google can’t independently fix: Data caps from Interne Service Providers (ISP). I know I ran into this problem when I left my Roku plugged in for a whole month (Don’t do that folks). Imagine if I was streaming AAA video games multiple hours per day. Sure, I can remove my data by paying $50 extra every month, but I can’t afford that, and I suspect there are many others in the same boat. Could this lead to a harder charge from video game companies (spearheaded by Google) to lobby policy makers to remove data caps? Maybe. There is a chance that Google pays ISPs like CenturyLink and Comcast a ton of money so Stadia doesn’t count against data caps. That would be swell and way more likely than my previous idea.

So, there are a ton of potential problems, but the potential to revolutionize video games is worth it my book. And if anything can make video game streaming a thing, it’s our supreme overlords. Google will be revealing more “this summer.”