QUOTE | "If it's not on a subscription basis I'll be shocked" – Lewis Ward, IDC Google had clear advantages – few other companies had the infrastructure to pull this off – but there were a lot of unanswered questions, including the business model. Responses to Stadia's unveiling ranged from cautious optimism to outright confusion. Phil Harrison on stage at Stadia's big reveal during GDC 2019 But it's a fundamental and, I passionately believe, an inevitable and one-way direction that the industry is moving." The whole world isn't going to shift to that new model overnight, and it will take time for us to realise every aspect of the promise. "I think that's a really exciting moment for the industry. As of 10am yesterday, we just broke through that glass ceiling and said to developers, 'The internet is your store and the network and the data centre is your platform.' But it's still that mental model of a package for a thing. It's been package-centric – I either ship the game on a disc or a cassette tape or a cartridge or increasingly now I download that package. QUOTE | "For the last 40 years of games, the industry has been device-centric. In our conversation with Harrison that week, he told us Stadia was the start of an "inevitable and one-way shift" away from consoles. StateShare, which would allow players to share playable versions of the exact moments or scenarios with each other.įinally, Google announced it had formed an internal development studio – Stadia Games and Entertainment, led by Jade Raymond of Ubisoft and EA fame – to build titles that showed off the full power of the streaming service.StreamConnect, allowing multiple players to see each other's screens without developers having to sacrifice visual quality or performance. And Google teased functions that were only possible with the power of the cloud, such as: Streams would playable in up to 4K at launch at 60 frames per second (with plans to go up to 8K in future), complete with HDR and surround sound – plenty of tech specs to get people talking. This, the company bragged, was more than the PS4 Pro's 4.2 and Xbox One X's 6 teraflops. STAT | 10.7 teraflops – The amount of power Google said Stadia would be able to harness, thanks to its worldwide network of data centres and the custom-built GPUs from AMD. No dedicated hardware, no console, no waiting, and an addressable audience of two billion. Stadia boss and industry veteran Phil Harrison talked of a world where players could watch a trailer for a game, click a Stadia link and be playing within five seconds. Google said the service would enable users to play video games across smartphones, tablets, desktops, laptops and TVs (via Chromecast). Stadia was officially announced at GDC 2019. This prompted speculation that Google might launch a cloud gaming service in fact, at Stadia's unveiling Google CEO Sundar Pichai described the service as "probably the worst-kept secret in the industry." It began as Project Stream, a collaboration between Google and Ubisoft to make Assassin's Creed Odyssey playable through browsers. The full implications of this are still emerging, but as the fallout continues, it's perhaps an opportune time to reflect on what Google was attempting with its foray into games streaming. Last week, the company announced Stadia will be shut down forever in a matter of months. The irony of Google promoting its would-be-revolutionary cloud gaming service alongside some of the industry's most famous failures has not been lost on anyone this past week. An empty case at the end of the timeline would later be home to a Stadia controller. The service was teased in the days before its unveiling via an outdoor exhibition near San Francisco's Moscone Center, on the corner of 4th Street and Howard Street, intriguing GDC 2019 attendees with historical gaming pieces such as the Nintendo Power Glove, the Dreamcast and a copy of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial for Atari 2600. A full year before PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S were announced, Google presented its own vision for gaming's future: Stadia, a cloud gaming service that enabled you to play across any device.
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