Google Stadia

Stadia is a cloud gaming service developed and operated by Google. Known in development as Project Stream, the service debuted through a closed beta in October 2018, and publicly launched in November 2019. The service was to compete with Sony's PlayStation Plus cloud streaming, Nvidia's GeForce Now, Amazon's Luna, and Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming. Stadia initially received a mixed reception from reviewers, with most criticism headed towards its content library and lack of promised features. Google had initially intended to develop in-house games in addition to other third-party titles but began scaling back on these plans in February 2021 by shutting down its studios. The service continued to offer games by creating partnerships to use the technology as a white-label product to deliver game content over the cloud. Google announced in September 2022 that it would be shutting down Stadia in January 2023.

Stadia is accessible through Chromecast Ultra and Android TV devices, on personal computers via the Google Chrome web browser and other Chromium-based browsers, Chromebooks and tablets running ChromeOS, and the Stadia mobile app on supported Android smartphones as long as the latest version of the Chrome browser and the latest version of the Stadia app are installed. There is also an experimental mode with support for all Android devices capable of installing the Stadia mobile app. In December 2020, Google released an iOS browser-based progressive web application for Stadia, enabling gameplay in the Safari browser.

Stadia is capable of streaming video games to players at up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second with support for high-dynamic-range (HDR) via the company's numerous data centers. It offers the option to purchase games from its store in order to stream them or to play a selection of free-to-play games. While the base service is free and lets users stream at resolutions of up to 1080p, a Stadia Pro monthly subscription allows for a maximum resolution of 4K, 5.1 surround sound, HDR and offers a growing collection of free games that—once claimed—remain in the user's library whenever they are subscribed. Both tiers allow users to play online multiplayer without any additional costs. Stadia is integrated with YouTube, and its "state share" feature allows players to launch a supported game from a save state shared by another player via permalink. The service supports Google's proprietary Stadia game controller, along with various non-Stadia controllers through USB and Bluetooth connections.

Features

Stadia is a cloud gaming service, and only requires the device to have an Internet connection and either Chromium support or a dedicated application. Stadia works atop YouTube's functionality in streaming media to the user, as game streaming is seen as an extension of watching video game live streams, according to Google's Phil Harrison; the name "Stadia", the Latin plural of "stadium", is meant to reflect that it is a collection of entertainment, which the viewer can choose to sit back and watch, or take an active part in. As Google had built out a large number of data centers across the globe, the company believes that Stadia is in a better position for cloud gaming compared to past endeavors like OnLive, PlayStation Now, and Gaikai, as most players would be geographically close to a data center. Stadia supports the streaming of games in HDR at 60 frames per second with 4K resolution, and anticipates eventually reaching 120 frames per second at 8K resolution. Players can start games without having to download new content to their personal device. Players can opt to record or stream their sessions onto YouTube through Stadia. Viewers of such streams can launch the games directly from the stream with the same save state that they were just watching.

The streaming technology enables new features on Stadia. Stream Connect allows Stadia players, cooperatively playing the same game with friends, to have picture-in-picture inserts on their display of their friends' point-of-view in the game. This feature was first launched with the release of ''Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint''. The streaming technology allows for larger number of concurrent players on a game server; for example, servers for ''Grid'' are normally limited to 16 players, while the Stadia version allows up to 40.

While Stadia can use any HID-class USB controller, Google developed its own controller which connects via Wi-Fi directly to the Google data center in which the game is running, to reduce input latency. Google is also exploring further ways to reduce latency, using an idea called "negative latency" which involves the prediction of user input through various means so that any apparent network lag between controller and game response is minimized. During its GDC 2019 keynote reveal, Google confirmed that the controller would also feature Google Assistant, which will automatically search YouTube for relevant, helpful videos related to the game they are currently playing at the touch of a key.

Stadia offers two tiers of service, a free level (initially at launch known as "Stadia Base" but after April 2020, simply "Stadia") and a monthly subscription Stadia Pro level. The free Stadia level limits streaming to 1080p resolutions. The Pro tier costs approximately per month, but allows users to access higher streaming rates up to 4K resolution, access a library of free games over time, and get discounts on other games offered for Stadia. Harrison stated they are also looking into offering publisher subscriptions and other models in the future; for example, Ubisoft announced its Uplay Plus (now renamed to Ubisoft+) subscription service will be available to Stadia users. Since April 2020, new users to Stadia are offered a limited period of free access to Stadia Pro features, and retain any games purchased this period to their account if they fall back to the free Stadia level; initially, new users received two months of Pro access, which was reduced to one month starting on June 3, 2020.

The internet speed requirements for the different types of picture quality from Stadia's service is as follows:

Games

Stadia requires users to purchase games to use on the service, though it also offers a selection of fully free-to-play titles. Pro subscribers also get the option to claim a growing catalog of free games that, once claimed, remain available to the user as long as they are currently subscribed. At the time of the platform's full reveal in June 2019, Google announced that ''Gylt'' by Tequila Works and ''Get Packed'' by Moonshine Studios would be timed exclusives to Stadia. The service launched with 22 games, added 4 more in December 2019, and by the end of 2020 the service had over 130 games.

In January 2020, Google announced that it planned to release over 120 games for Stadia during that year, of which 10 were timed- exclusives set to release in the first half of the year. Further Stadia announced more than a 100 games would arrive in 2021. In December 2020, Ubisoft's gaming subscription, Ubisoft+ arrived on Stadia letting users play all Ubisoft games available on Stadia through the subscription. The subscription consisted of 18 Ubisoft games at launch with later titles added as they released.

Hardware

Upon launch, Stadia's cloud hardware used a custom Intel x86 processor clocked at 2.7 GHz, with AVX2 and 9.5 megabytes of L2+L3 cache. It also uses a custom AMD GPU based on the Vega architecture with HBM2 memory, 56 compute units, and 10.7 teraFLOPS. The service also has solid-state drive storage, and 16 GB of RAM (supporting up to 484 GB/s bandwidth) shared between the GPU and the CPU.

Controller

Google developed its own controller for Stadia. It has two thumbsticks, a directional pad, four main face buttons, two sets of shoulder buttons, and five additional controller face buttons. To use the controller, players can either plug it into a compatible device with a USB cable, or connect it over Wi-Fi to a local network for a direct connection to Google's Stadia servers, which reduces input lag. The controller has been available since launch in three color schemes, "Clearly White", "Just Black", and "Wasabi"; the "Founder's Edition" bundle included a limited-edition "Midnight Blue" controller.

Software

Stadia is built on Debian Linux servers and Vulkan is their graphics API.

A progressive web application-based version of Stadia for iOS devices was announced by Google in November 2020 and released on December 16, 2020. This version runs through Chrome or Safari web browsers as to avoid restrictions Apple had in place for apps that directly stream libraries of games; the browser-based method had been similarly adapted by GeForce Now.

At the Consumer Electronic Show 2021, Google announced that several upcoming LG smart televisions will include a Stadia Smart TV app.

Platform features

Stadia has features made possible by its streaming nature:

History and development

Launch and studio expansions (2018–2020)

Project Stream was Google's first announced sign of interest in video gaming products. The company had previously been rumored as working on a service called Project Yeti since at least 2016. Google had also hired gaming industry executive Phil Harrison and was seen recruiting developers during industry events in 2018. Project Stream's main differentiator from past services, such as OnLive, GeForce Now, and PlayStation Now, is its ability to run in any desktop Chrome browser, so no additional software needs to be installed. The service uses AMD Radeon graphics hardware. Internally, the service was developed around 2016's ''Doom'' to show that the proof-of-concept worked in realistic settings across the public internet.

Google announced the service in October 2018 and soon after, opened invitations to beta testers with access to ''Assassin's Creed Odyssey''. Players could apply for access and those who met an Internet speed minimum could run the game in their Chrome browsers. Those who participated received a free copy of the game when the beta expired. Stadia was formally announced during Google's keynote address at the 2019 Game Developers Conference in March 2019.

Alongside Stadia, Google established the Stadia Games and Entertainment division in March 2019, with industry veteran Jade Raymond as its head. This division focused on internal development of games for Stadia in addition to those they have obtained from third parties. The first studio was established in Montreal on October 24, 2019. In December 2019, the Stadia Games and Entertainment division acquired Typhoon Studios to develop additional content for the platform. A second Stadia studio, located in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, was opened in March 2020, led by former Santa Monica Studio head Shannon Studstill.

Strategy change and shutdown (2021–present)

Google shut down Stadia Games and Entertainment on February 1, 2021. This decision would also cause the closure of Typhoon Studios. The announcement came after decisions were made about Stadia's priorities for game development and delivery. Harrison stated that the decision would focus on making the platform more amenable as a publishing platform for third-party developers, stating "We believe this is the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry." The shutdown affected about 150 employees, including Raymond who left Google that day. Sean Hollister of ''The Verge'' suggested that the shutdown may have been triggered following the release of ''Cyberpunk 2077'' on Stadia, which he described as a "make-or-break moment for the service", while '' Kotaku'' writers reported that Google's decision to close the studio followed after Microsoft announced their intended acquisition of ZeniMax Media for Xbox Game Studios in September 2020.

Reports from ''Bloomberg News'' and ''Wired'', based on information from those that worked on Stadia, said that the concept of game development within Google was an unusual concept in contrast to building out the technology to operate Stadia, and never had the full support of the company. Further, under Harrison's leadership, Google had spent millions of dollars to get major titles on the service like ''Red Dead Redemption 2'' as well as drawing in Jade Raymond to develop exclusive content for Google. Despite the investment at the launch, Stadia had failed to meet target user counts or revenues by significant differences, which contributed to Google's decision to close down the studios. The founders of Typhoon Studio agreed that Google did not have either the financial or corporate backing to bring the "level of investment required to reach scale" expected for high-end game development, with Google seeing that area as too much of a risk. ''Video Games Chronicle'' also reported that several planned games for the service were cancelled leading up to the closure of the studio. These included a sequel to Typhoon Studios's '' Journey to the Savage Planet'', planned projects led by Hideo Kojima and Yu Suzuki, and a large multiplayer title led by Francois Pelland, a former '' Assassin's Creed'' developer, and left in limbo a near-finalized game from Harmonix which Harmonix says may still be released. ''Axios'' later reported that ''The Quarry'' by Supermassive Games and '' High on Life'' by Squanch Games were also both originally being developed for the service prior to the shutdown of the studio, with former eventually picked up by publisher 2K for release, and the latter eventually being self-published by Squanch. With the shutdown, Hollister suggested this may be a change of direction for Stadia into a white-label platform that Google could license out to game publishers for things like instant game demos, in the same manner that Nvidia had done with its GeForce streaming solutions.

In May 2021, at least six lead people for Stadia left Google, including John Justice, the vice-president of Stadia for Google, Sebastien Puel, Stadia's general manager, and Corey May, Stadia's head of creative services and publishing, the latter two joining Raymond at her new studio, further putting the viability of the platform in question. Several of these departures joined Raymond in her new studio, Haven Studios, that she founded after her departure. During the '' Epic Games v. Apple'' trial, Epic's CEO Tim Sweeney stated that Stadia had been "very significantly scaled back" since its launch. Google stated in wake of these events that Stadia is "alive and well" with significant plans for expansion in 2021.

To draw more developers to the platform, Stadia announced new revenue sharing programs in July 2021. Through 2023, Stadia will take only a 15% cut of a game's revenue on the platform, up to , after which their cut returns to their standard rate; this standard rate is not published, though believed to be near the industry-wide 30% average and which Google called as "competitive revenue share terms". Further, Stadia will share 70% of Stadia Pro membership fees to games that entered the service starting in July 2021, the share split based on hours played by Stadia users. Additionally, Stadia will contribute the first month of a new Stadia Pro membership to any developer who draws a new user to the service through affliate links on their game pages. The former members of Typhoon Games were able to secure funding, including some from Tencent, to launch a new studio Raccoon Logic, and were also able to negotiate to retain the intellectual property of ''Journey to the Savage Planet'' and its in-progress sequel from Google.

Google began licensing out Stadia's technology as a white-label product in October 2021, with one of the first instances being an offer for AT&T customers to play a Stadia-enabled version of '' Batman: Arkham Knight'' for free. Another early example was Capcom's use of the Stadia technology to offer a free demo of ''Resident Evil Village'' in June 2022 through any web browser. In December 2021, it was announced that Stadia has been ported to LG televisions running WebOS 5.0 or later. On February 4, 2022, ''Business Insider'' reported that Google intended to shift its focus on Stadia from video games to playable experiences and online demos, as Stadia will be demoted within Google. That same day, Google announced on its Twitter that Stadia will have 100 more games coming to the platform in 2022 and that they are working on new features not yet announced.

In February 2021, Chromebooks started to launch with Stadia pre-installed. During a developer summit in March 2022, Google announced that it would be extending the technology for Stadia into a business product called "Immersive Stream for Games" as part of its Google Cloud product offerings. This is a continuation of the white-label approach from October 2021.

On September 29, 2022, Google announced that it would shut down Stadia, citing its lack of traction with users. The service will shut down on January 18, 2023, and Google will refund all purchases for hardware and games made through the Google and Stadia stores. All storefront features were disabled with the announcement. The technology behind Stadia will be utilized in other parts of Google, including with its partners. Both Stadia employees and game developers were not made aware of these plans until the announcement, which caused concern for developers that had plans for new games to be released on the service. Ubisoft stated that Stadia players will be able to transfer their purchased games to personal computer versions via their Ubisoft Connect platform for free. Other studios said they were evaluating methods to transfer save game progress from Stadia to other platforms ahead of the shutdown. For example, Bethesda Softworks confirmed that players of ''Elder Scrolls Online'' will be able to transfer their Stadia accounts to other platforms. For some games that were Stadia-exclusive, this allowed the developers to release them as multiplatform titles, such as Tequila Works' '' Gylt''. Not all Stadia-exclusive games will be available elsewhere after its closure. For example, ''Outcasters'' from Splash Damage was reliant on Stadia technology so the developers have no plans to port the game to other systems.

Shortly after announcing the end of Stadia in October 2022, Google unveiled new Chromebooks designed around cloud gaming, with GeForce Now preinstalled and direct support for Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna, and Google Play. That same month, the "Premiere Edition" bundle received a price reduction to US$99.

In November 2020, Google ran two promotions through which they gave away complimentary "Premiere Edition" bundles. The first, which began on November 10, offered bundles at no cost to YouTube Premium subscribers in the US and the UK who had subscribed before November 6. The promotion ended two days later in the US after Google exhausted all available supply. The second promotion coincided with Stadia's first anniversary on November 19, and offered complimentary bundles to users who purchased a copy of ''Cyberpunk 2077'' on Stadia. Google ended the promotion early on December 10 in Canada and on December 13 in all other regions after exhausting their supply. In March 2021, Google announced a Stadia promotion in anticipation for the release of Resident Evil Village. The promotion offered a free Stadia Premiere kit after the purchase of either the Standard or Deluxe Editions of the game. All Stadia Pro members were given access to a free edition of ''Resident Evil 7 Gold Edition''.

In December 2020, Stadia expanded to eight new European markets: Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Switzerland. In June 2021, Stadia launched on most Android TV devices including the Chromecast with Google TV, the Nvidia Shield TV and other smart TVs with Android TV support.

Reception

Pre-release

During its beta, the service received generally positive initial impressions from reviewers, who felt it met and in some instances, exceeded expectations and could make game streaming appear as a potentially viable alternative to PC gaming. Some minor discrepancies and technical issues were nonetheless noted.

Reviewers reported that the streaming service had low latency and felt as if the game was being played locally. Despite this, depending on Wi-Fi speeds, the game sometimes compressed its screen resolution or lagged. A test by ''The Verge'' found no lag issues over a wired Ethernet connection, and occasional stuttering on a shared Wi-Fi connection. However, even on a wired connection, the stream did not output at 4K resolution and occasionally went fuzzy with compression artifacting. The reviewer reported the best experience on Google's Pixelbook. ''Polygon'' found the service's audio compression noticeable. '' Ars Technica'' remarked that Project Stream's login sequence was far simpler than that of other services. Digital Foundry performed a hands-on with ''Assassin's Creed Odyssey'' on a Pixelbook on the service in Beta, and found that on the testing environment, latency seemed acceptable, but there was a noticeable visual hit. They also remarked that ''Assassin's Creed Odyssey'' was not the best example for testing, as it did not operate at 60 frames per second.

Post-release

Stadia received mixed reviews upon its release according to review aggregator Metacritic. ''Wired Magazine'' described the image quality as "drab", but admitted to preferring to play ''Destiny 2'' on a Chromebook instead of a larger gaming laptop. VentureBeat criticized the service's pricing model, comparing it unfavorably to subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass and claiming that Stadia "doesn't matter". ''Digital Foundry'' found that the service was not playing all games at 4K resolutions: ''Red Dead Redemption 2'' was found to only run at 1440p, and ''Destiny 2'' ran at only 1080p (albeit at a frame rate higher than that of the console versions). Digital Foundry also discovered that games like ''Red Dead Redemption 2'' also struggled to maintain a consistent 60 frames per second, claiming that their test of the game on Chromecast only outputted a solid 30 FPS, while a test on the Chrome browser was an unstable 60 FPS that dropped frequently. ''The Guardian'' gave Stadia three stars out of five, praising the service's technical performance, while criticising its game selection for being too old and only featuring one exclusive. '' Ars Technica'' concluded: "Early adopters feel like they're getting a beta product here. Wait until next year to see if Google can work out the kinks and prove the service's longevity." ''S&P Global Market Intelligence'' reported that: "Stadia met with tepid enthusiasm from analysts and early adopters who criticized the service's slate of launch titles and lack of promoted features". Dieter Bohn from ''The Verge'' has stated that "I have put in enough hours in enough conditions to say that this is a beta product, and Google should have labeled it as such and launched it differently. Because even in the best conditions, this ain’t the best."

Towards the end of January 2020, Stadia users expressed concern about Google's non-communicative stance on Stadia, outside of its monthly free game additions; these users were concerned about planned features that were to be available in the next few months from Google's initial timeline but yet have been discussed further, such as 4K streaming resolution support. A Google community manager had been following these discussions and expressed sympathy that users have been waiting for information, and stated that there is news that they could not yet discuss but will be able to soon. Google responded by pointing users to its Stadia community site where it was providing weekly updates on the progress on Stadia's features, and that in terms of future games, they mostly had left it to publishers to announce when these games would be available on Stadia.

''Cyberpunk 2077'' experienced a tumultuous launch on eighth-generation consoles such as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as they struggled to run the game without major performance issues, and in some cases, saw a delayed ability to download the game. Players who ran the game through Stadia saw far fewer instances of crashes and an overall smoother experience.

References

Further reading

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External links

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Stadia Developer Website

{{Portal bar, Internet, Video games

2019 establishments in the United States
2019 in video gaming
Cloud gaming services
Stadia
Subscription video game services
Products and services discontinued in 2023