Shadow has its own hardware, namely
the Shadow Ghost.its own competing service—Apple
Arcade—not long after. Details
are thin on the ground, but Arcade
seems to have more of a focus on
mobile gaming than Stadia.
What sets Stadia apart is its
controller. The Stadia gamepad
should be familiar to anyone
who’s handled any home console
controller, connecting directly to
your home Wi-Fi to cut out some
of the latency issues that come
with traditional controllers, which
need to send input data through a
local device first. The controller
also comes with an integrated mic,
plus buttons for Google Assistant
and video capture. The controller
doesn’t have a catchy, Google-
themed name yet, but we wouldn’t
be surprised—especially as it’s the
only piece of new hardware you
need to buy to get playing. StadPad?
Google Croissant? You can have
those for free, Google.
UNCERTAIN FUTURE
Stadia is about nine months away
from commercial release, but there
seems to be an incredible number
of unknowns around it. Streaming-
based gaming services are not, in
broad terms, aimed at PC gamers.
Console gamers are more likely
to benefit; home consoles are
expensive, borderline impossible
to upgrade, and most now come
with their own subscription-based
services for online play. Games
themselves, too, are becoming
costlier, particularly for current-
gen consoles. Streaming solutions
like Stadia could banish all of these
expenses, but they come with their
own costs. An Internet connection
capable of supporting the service
results in a price tag that isn’t
exactly small.
Will Google offset the prices with
ads? Will there be a subscription
service—and if so, will there be free
and premium versions? How much
will the controller cost? There
are so many uncertain variables
surrounding the Stadia, it’s difficult
to gauge whether it will soar higher
than any platform before it, or
crash out OnLive-style. The phrase
“Netflix of games” is bandied
around a lot, but is that really what
gamers want? “YouTube of games”
might be more appropriate; the idea
of a free cloud gaming service with
an available premium membershipCLOUD AND
PROUD
A quick Google search for “failed game streaming
services” rather damningly places OnLive at the
top of the results list. It wasn’t the only one to fall
in the face of traditional downloads and physical
copies, though. Gaikai’s tech might have gone on to
form a powerful baseline for PlayStation Now, but
its original service failed to gain much momentum.
Elsewhere, Square Enix’s ill-fated effort Shinra
lasted less than two years before it admitted
defeat and shut it down, resulting in a loss of more
than $16 million. Others simply vanished into the
ether. If you’ve heard of InstantAction or GameFly,
congratulations—you’ve been paying more
attention than most.
GeForce Now, Nvidia’s attempt at a cloud gaming
platform, has been in an open beta state for months
now. It allows users access to a server-hosted
Windows environment running powerful GeForce
graphics, where they can install and play games
they already own from digital suppliers such as
Steam or Origin. While nifty, it doesn’t push the
boundaries of what cloud gaming is capable of,
and seeing its competitor AMD cozying up with
Google for Stadia must be making a few Nvidia
execs nervous.
One platform that has seen some real success
is Shadow—a service comparable to GeForce Now
that sees users connecting to a dedicated machine
in one of Shadow’s data centers, then using that
machine to play games they already own in up to
4K 60fps, with multiplatform support available.
Shadow has received acclaim from gamers (even
a professional CounterStrike: Global Offensive
team) regarding the quality of the service, but it
demands 15Mb/s or faster Internet, and comes with
an eye-watering $35 a month price tag—on top of
the cost of the games. And lastly, no, Netflix doesn’t
count, no matter how much you enjoyed Black
Mirror: Bandersnatch.Cloud gaming solutions use beefy data centers to run games.
Online shooters str uggle the most on cloud gaming pl atforms.
maximumpc.com JUN 2019 MAXIMUMPC 39