Google Stadia: Everything we know about the next PS4, Xbox One home game console rival (Pic: GOOGLE)
Earlier this week Google announced the newest games platform in the industry: Stadia.
“To do this right, we needed to make sure we had all the right minds” noted Sinda. To that end, Phil Harrison was hired by Google.
“Powered by the best of Google, Stadia is built for gamers to stick around – where gamers watch and play” noted Harrison. “Game communities that watch gaming content and gamers that play games, and the developers that make those games, are often segmented.”
Stadia, therefore, wants to combine these communities and bring them all into one place. Last year, Google prototyped this year with the actually-quite-successful Project Stream (which managed to stream Assassins Creed Odyssey at 60FPS and in 1080p via Chrome browsers).
Turns out, that was the first iteration of Stadia. And now Google plans to grow it.
What is Stadia?
Google promises an audience of 2 billion (thats 2,000,000,000 people!) will be able to play and game on the service at any time, via any device with a Google Chrome browser – and wants companies to understand that its philosophy is building a game platform for everyone.
“People who love to play games, people who love to watch games and people who want to build games… we want to work with all of you,” says Google CEO Sinda Pichai. The aim is simple: Google wants developers to grow, scale and connect all in one.
Say you see a game trailer on YouTube – you can simply hit a button that says Play Game and Google reckons in less than 5 seconds (!) you can be booted into the game. That means no download times, no patches and – amazingly – no hardware.
“We want to reduce friction between getting excited about playing a game and playing a game,” notes Phil Harrison.
So – you can go from having a trailer play on your phone, to playing the game on your phone, to deciding you want to play this game on your TV. All of that can be done seamlessly as long as all your devices operate on the same WiFi network.
Stadia Games and Release Date
Google has set up its own first-party games studio: Stadia Games and Entertainment.
Headed up by industry expert Jade Raymond, the development studio will bring 'a new generation of games' to the platform, with Google with first- and third-party developers to ensure their projects work well with the hardware Google has to offer.
We currently do not know how Google will price these games or experiences – will it be a single, one-off fee per game, or will there be a subscription service?
We know Stadia is coming in 2019 to the US, Canada, UK and (most of) Europe – but pricing and a specific date have yet to be determined.
Stadia Hardware
Any of your existing hardware will work on the Stadia platform: so that means you can pretty much plug your PS4 pad, your Xbox One pad or sync your Switch JoyCon to the screen youre playing on. So that keeps the hardware price down – and thats good.
The Stadia controller, though, is custom-built for the experience. It comes with two specially designed buttons: you can either hit the Capture button (which will start sharing video clips or screenshots to YouTube) or the Google Assistant button – which activates the controllers inbuilt microphoRead More
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