or all Stadia’s promises, two big
questions remain: can it succeed? And
if so, what will it mean for the industry?
“This is definitely the kind of power
move only a large tech company could
make,” says David Farrell, lecturer in
computer games at Glasgow Caledonian
University. We meet in a pub in
Edinburgh, south of Scotland’s gaming
hub Dundee, where the companies
behind Lemmings, Grand Theft Auto,
Crackdown and Minecraft were all based.In 2018, Edinburgh startup Cloudgine,
which developed real-time cloud gaming
technology, was bought by Fortnite
creators Epic Games to help move Epic’s
Unreal game engine into the cloud.
“Cloud gaming is the future –
although when it comes to the next
generation of consoles, Google’s
offering isn’t the most exciting thing
around, and it’s not clear how long it will
take to get there,” Farrell says. “In the
long term, Google isn’t really trying to be
Xbox; they’re trying to be the platform
on which everyone else builds their
cloud gaming – so essentially, they’d
be offering their ‘Netflix of gaming’ on
the back of Google technology. Unless
Google comes up with some killer app
games, it’s just building the pipes for
others’ cloud gaming to run through.”
George Jijiashvili, senior analyst at
tech research giant Ovum, has reserva-
tions about the technology, especially
when it comes to latency and lag. “Most
of what Google is promising is possible
and deliverable, but there are three or
four pain points that will take a few years
to be ironed out,” he says. “The biggest
one is networks – they can open up new
data centres closer to hubs, but most of
the networks users are receiving are low
quality, and were put in place to transfer
voice or small packets of data.”
Majd Bakar insists that Google has
the answers. “Our platform and infra-
structure allow for techniques that
create additional time buffers,” he
explains. “We can generate frames
in less time than it takes consoles or
PCs, and with our machine-learning
experience we have built models to
help with the prediction and generation
of content faster. This counteracts the
impact of network distribution time.”
But consumers will still need a
connection of a certain speed to make
full use of Stadia’s offering. Google
says that players will need a 35Mbps
connection for the top-end 4K resolution
experience or 20Mbps to play in HD, with
a recommended minimum of 10Mbps.
Matthew Handrahan, editor of the trade
site gamesindustry.biz, thinks this may
be asking too much. “I lived in Berlin until
six months ago, and I could only dream
of 6Mbps. We will only be able to judge
properly when they’re out in the wild –
and not in high-speed San Francisco.”
Then there’s the issue of Stadia’s
business model, in terms of attracting
both game developers and end users.
At this point, the Stadia service lacks
the exclusive, hugely desirable AAAgames traditionally used to gain market
share, and these are not cheap to
develop. Most AAA games cost up to
$70 million, and that’s just pure devel-
opment costs, with the marketing
spend coming on top of that. The real
killer app games can end up doubling
that figure – Grand Theft Auto V cost
$137 million back in 2013, and Halo
Infinite (the kind of game that Stadia
is up against) is rumoured to have a
budget of between $200 million and
$500 million. And while Stadia does
offer a monthly subscription, Jijiashvili
says that “it’s not the Netflix service”
some gamers were expecting. “People
who sign up will still have to purchase
games. Unlike music with Spotify, where
albums died and cheaper individual
tracks became the offer, you can’t break
games down into smaller chunks.”
Handrahan says that developers
are desperate for a new marketplace.
“VR has stalled so there’s been no new
platform since mobile gaming 15 years
ago,” he says. “But developers are
wary about Stadia. They are waiting to
hear how their games will earn money
in the free streaming service.”
Typically, platforms take 30 per cent
of a game’s cover price, meaning big
publishers take 70 per cent – and
developers without a big publisher
can end up with just 40 per cent.
Increasingly, revenue for developers11-19-FTGoogleStadia.indd 96 13/09/2019 11:10