Heard about Stadia yet?
The future of gaming
https://stadia.dev/
is not a box
Today Google announced nothing less than what they call “a new era of gaming”, Stadia. I am pretty sure that 99% of news sites and game magazines will describe this as another shot at game streaming with ambitious goals. They will grant Google the advantage of having better chances than most because, well, they are Google. They have an incredible infrastructure advantage, shitloads of money and huge influence on gaming through Youtube.
But then there will be the usual doubts about latency, bandwidth needs for 4k/60fps/HDR gaming, the need to be always connected, uncertainty about pricing, congestion for launch titles, developer adoption, etc. Meaning people will try to put the service in just so many boxes and move on.
While those counter-arguments are all true, immediately after watching the GDC keynote I started wondering what actually happened tonight. And it was not about a game streaming service (only), but in fact about a new era of gaming. And a lot of companies invested in this should get worried. Right now.
But let’s take a step back. What exactly did Google announce tonight? To get the most out of what I go through below it would be helpful to watch the keynote from GDC 2019, but possibly a “Watch it in 15 minutes” will be enough as well.
Specialized Cloud GPUs
As with Consoles there seems to have been a behind-the-scenes fight between the big Green and the big Red, and AMD turned out the winner. Since I am affiliated with NVIDIA I can’t stay on this topic long, but suffice to say that AMD seems to have (re-)designed a GPU specifically to Google’s specs, but still just barely tops a default RTX 2080 in terms of raw TFLOPS.
Developer HW and Tools integration
More than 100 developer studios received Dev HW. That is a major investment right there. At the same time they have the support of the two major middleware tools with Unreal Engine and Unity. If they play it right that alone will give them a huge foundation of game developers.
A Game studio
Stadia Games and Entertainment will create Stadia exclusives. Given the history of innovative ideas Google comes up with and the tight integration with the service provider itself is a huge promise.
A distribution platform
What, you didn’t see this? They subtly called it “The Internet is your store”, but in fact all of it was just the ad-servce of Google’s. And of course the Stadia store. Easy to miss, I admit, but there with all the others like Google Play, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Reddit.
A Multiplier network
Stroke of genius to make Youtube an essential part of the whole Stadia idea. So many game streamers make it their livelihood already that come to think of it, adding instant gameplay for viewers to it is a no-brainer.
What does it all mean?
Disclaimer: This is just me extrapolating all the subtle details that I heard or thought I heard between the lines. In the way they explicitly NOT talked about other businesses that overlap Stadia’s portfolio. And of course assuming that Google is successful in deploying their platform.
Google takes a clear stab at several companies in the gaming industry with this move and in one fell swoop create a new gaming ecosystem beside the established players of PC, XBOX and PS. I think the first to go will be the highly PC dependent game distributor services like Origin, Epic Store and especially the smaller ones like Discord or Twitch stores.
Not that they will not struggle for a while. But who can say no to adding a huge new user base to their games? Instead of having to jump through hoops to make a game like Apex playable on Mobile you simply deploy it in Stadia and bang! 200+ million more potential players. If the big ones give in once, they will eventually have to shut down their own stores. Why wait hours for the newest download if I can just play at once on Stadia?
Next are the consoles. Sure, there is a fanbase for PS and XBOX, but why bother? They need to be always connected to the internet as well for most games, so what is the difference? If there is any price advantage, and with console game prices being as high as they are that should be easy, then why pay premium for the same experience? Remember, Stadia runs on any connected Display…
Steam, that’s a tough one. So many games in their library, so many concurrent users there as well. Community, of course, but will that be enough? The store there has been more Google Play than excellent curated selection for a long time. So I ask again, what is the big difference?
One big thing not to be overlooked here is that Google promises true (HW) platform independence. How often did you complain about a game you already bought for one platform and then wanted to have for another one … and had to pay again? Sucks, right? If Google fixes this, why not join the revolution?
Twitch will suffer as well. The user base of Twitch is huge and it is deeply entrenched in eSPorts, but Stadia will eat away at that base nevertheless. Youtube is still a bigger “creator” platform and that mighty influencer and multiplier network combined with easy integration of gaming itself and the ability to immediately play on any device while watching the video on Youtube, that’s an easy sell.
Lastly this is an attack against AMD and NVIDIA as well. I don’t talk about NVIDIA’s own game streaming service here. And yes I know, AMD is to gain from this service. In the short term. But if Stadia really takes off there wouldn’t be need for anymore for GPUs beside High-end enthusiast level. Google will play those (currently) big two against each other and both lose.
Last words
Google showed a lot of new and innovative ideas beside the hidden meanings, and they have the power to make this new platform a success. With that they could change the way how people create and play games and what they expect from them. It might be a good thing to give the traditional gaming industry that sees “battle-royal” formats as something that revolutionizes gaming a little wake-up call. I am sure there will be consolidation in the future to some extent. And who knows, maybe we will finally get the ultimate gaming experience as we envision it in “Otherland” or “Ready Player One”.