Google has finally lifted the curtains from its much-awaited gaming platform called Stadia today at GDC 2019. During the presentation, Google detailed the future plans for its video game streaming service Stadia which will offer games on demand to the consumers.
Stadia will work across a wide range of devices such as desktop PCs, tablets, mobile phones and laptops. With this platform, Google aims at bringing playing, spectating as well as game development at a single platform. The platform will also come with its own special controller called Google Stadia controller.
During the presentation, the same demo was seen working flawlessly across different devices which included a mobile phone, tablet, Chromebook and also a TV through a Chromecast Ultra HDMI streamer. The platform will support 4K streaming at 60 FPS right at launch with surround sound. In the future, Google plans to add support for 8K resolution and 120+ FPS as well. Google also mentioned that Project Stadia is more powerful than both Xbox One and PS4 combined.
The platform will support all existing controllers whether the consumer wants to play on PC or laptop. Google will also create a special controller Google Stadia controller for the platform. This controller can be linked to any device where you are using Stadia and it will come with a special Google Assistant button.
Different video games will be coming to Stadia starting with Doom Eternal. Marty Stratton from Id Software came to the stage during the demonstration and announced that Doom Eternal will be coming to Stadia. Along with this, Google also announced that they are partnering with Unreal and Unity for development.
Along with these two, Havok will also join in and help with the development. These developers will help create avenues for players to share moments with ‘State Share’ which will allow other players which could be your friends or stream viewers to pick up the controller and start playing right where you left off.
Check out the official Stadia reveal trailer below.
During the presentation, Stadia head of engineering Majd Bakar explained that Google’s advantage is its data center network.
Fiber optic links and subsea cables between hundreds of points of presence and more than 7,500 edge node locations around the globe, all connected with our network backbone. Stadia is built on an infrastructure no one else has.
To render the games, Google will use extremely powerful data centers. Google is partnering up with AMD to create a custom GPU which will have more than ten teraflpos of power and it will be powered by a custom CPU which will make up a single Stadia instance. The systems will run on Linux and will use Vulkan API. Stadia will also support split-screen multiplayer. A YouTube integration will help players to queue up and join live streamers when they play a certain game.
Stadia will be released this year and it will be available to all those who can run Chrome on their devices.
We will share more details on Google Stadia as they are announced. Keep checking back for more information. For the time being, share your thoughts with us about Stadia in the comments section below.
