Problems plague Google Stadia
Google Stadia launched this week, promising to deliver 4K HDR cloudbased gaming to anyone with an internet connection and a screen.
The launch was available to early-adopters in 14 countries, though not in New Zealand, and the verdict from the industry was – well, it’s complicated.
Yes, it technically worked, and there were even some glowing reviews. But for the majority, there seemed to be major issues at play here. Problems that will put serious gamers off.
Google Stadia was supposed to be the future of gaming.
In very simplistic terms, Stadia is a centralised gaming server that users can access via an internet connection. Think of it as Netflix for video games.
For US$130 (NZ$203), customers get a threemonth subscription as well as the two pieces of hardware they need to stream Stadia at launch: a Chromecast Ultra dongle and the Stadia game controller, which looks like a hybrid of the Xbox and PS4 controllers.
After that the service costs US$10 a month. For that they get a pro tier of Stadia that unlocks 4K HDR at 60 frames per second gameplay.
Gamers can also buy premium titles for between US$20 and US$60. And there’s also a separate free version of Stadia coming in 2020, but that’s another story.
The beauty of Stadia, or so we were promised, is that all the heavy lifting is performed by the Google Stadia servers. To access high-end games users need only the relatively cheap hardware and a reasonably fast internet connection.
And then, in a few months, when the full Stadia launches, they will be able to play Stadia games via just a Chrome browser. The benefit all of this brings is obvious: no need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a high-end gaming console or PC.
Gamers who signed up for the first wave of Stadia could play 22 new and high-end titles on their Chromecast Ultra dongle, Pixel phone, or the Chrome web browser on a laptop or desktop.
These games include blockbusters such as
Red Dead Redemption 2, Destiny 2, NBA 2K20, Wolfenstein: Youngblood as well as less graphically-demanding titles such as Football Manager 2020 and Farming Simulator 2019. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
And it is. In theory. However, the early testers of Stadia have reported mixed results from the game-changing gaming platform.
The problem is a sadly predictable one. It doesn’t deliver a reliable ‘‘stream’’.
Technology journalists using Stadia with high-speed fibre connections and top-of-the-range routers tell of ‘‘horrendous latency’’, with regular drops in frame-rates and resolution.
How big a problem is this? Massive. A drop in frame rate and resolution when streaming video is arguably forgivable – except when the All Blacks are playing in the Rugby World Cup – but in gaming, it’s totally different.
And that’s because gaming is a two-way street. Streaming video can add a few seconds of buffering to iron out any drops because the content is consistent. That’s impossible with a video-game stream because it relies on upstream data as well as downstream.
Most important of all is latency – how long it takes for the game to process a gamer’s input. If Stadia takes a fraction of a second too long to display a critical move, it is literally life and death stuff in a game environment.
The success of Stadia depends entirely on internet speeds. Even if its centralised servers manage to handle the large number of users that are heading its way in the next few months, the quality of its service is at the mercy of its users’ internet connection.
And until this is fixed, a factor that is totally out of Google’s control, I can’t see Stadia or any of its rivals being the gaming revolution they promise to be.