controller’s central
buttons are very tiny.
isn’t there yet. 5G networks, for
example, are still being tested,
meaning most consumers will not
be able to use this technology any
time soon, let alone on all devices
at any time. That barrier isn’t
something you can punch
through with capital.” We’re willing
to bet that Google will give it a
shot, though – if any company has
the bucks, it does.
Weekers isn’t the only one
unconvinced by Stadia. Another
successful service of this sort is
Jump, an indie-focused platform
with a subscription fee of just $5
a month. With a curated library
of over 100 indie titles, Jump
recognized the hurdles to cloud-
based gaming early on. Its
HyperJump progressive
download technology
downloads games in small
segments, then removes them
once they’re done being used,
giving the impression of a fully
installed game. This tech adapts
to the user, keeping data from
popular games cached to
minimise load times.
Games can even be played in a
browser – when we reached out to
it, Jump was keen to emphasise
the advancements in modern
browser-based gaming, from
speedy load times to shareable
links to games and embedded
demos. We gave Jump a go, and
found that indie games could run
flawlessly even on an iMac, in
Chrome, with a dozen other tabs
open. Somehow our computer
didn’t catch fire.
Jump CEO Anthony Palma
voiced concerns about pricing and
latency, commenting that “latency
is inescapable in streaming until
5G and fibre are in every
household,” adding “I think
streaming has potential to be a
gamer’s console replacement... in
10 years”. Jump views subscription
gaming as a “complement rather
than a replacement” for user-
ownership. Palma likened it to
movies moving from the theatre
to subscription services; bothare key revenue streams for the
movie industry.Stadium rock
So, Google Stadia. It’s a cool name,
we’ll give it that. Better than the
achingly dull-titled Project Stream,
which Google ran last year as a
then-suspected, now-confirmed
beta test for Stadia. Project Stream
(ugh) saw recent releases such as
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey running
at 30fps and 1080p in ordinary
browsers. The lower frame rate and
resolution gave Project Stream
space to mask latency issues, and
Odyssey isn’t a game that demands
frame-perfect button inputs.
Stadia, though, promises up to 4K
60fps gameplay with minimal
latency. It’s a bold claim, and one
that comes with the caveat of an
Ethernet connection with high
Internet speed.
Stadia’s fundamental systems
work using familiar hardware; input
is streamed directly to a Google
server running your game of
choice in one of its many data
centres, which feeds back live
video of the game to your device.
AMD was pleased to announce its
partnership with Google, its
top-end data center GPUs
powering Stadia’s actual gameplay- although Google has been
tight-lipped about the specifics, it’s
been revealed that the CPUs are
actually Intel-powered. Stadia is
promised to run on an assortment
of desktops, laptops, smartphones,
and tablets, although any mention
of iOS was conspicuous by its
Playing games over a stream is a tricky
business, not least become some games
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that it enables games to be played at a
high level of graphical quality (thanks to
powerful data center GPUs) on even the
most basic devices. In theory, if you’ve
got a screen and an Internet connection,
you should be able to instantly play
games on ultra graphical settings. In
practice, not every service has managed
to deliver this. We’ve been banging on
about latency a lot in this article, we
know, but the fact is that it tends to tank
a lot of fast-paced games. With that in
mind, what are some good games to play
over cloud gaming platforms?
Turn-based strategy and RPG games
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visually demanding. Indie gem Into The
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runs perfectly when streamed, regardless
of connection speed. Even real-time
strategy titles such as Total War function
reasonably well. Doom Eternal has been
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6WDGLDZKLFKLVH[FLWLQJ – if it runs well.
Demos we’ve seen so far have been
visually appealing, but input lag means
the game can stutter badly, leading to
gameplay issues and an overabundance
of motion blur.
The games that really suffer when run
on cloud-based platforms are online
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Legends or Call of Duty? Well, your input
needs to go from the controller to your
console or computer, then to the data
centre where the game is hosted, then to
the game’s own servers, then all the way
back again. Latency will shatter any notion
of quick reaction times. Rocket League?
Yeah, good luck with that.Doom Eternal on Stadia felt a little rough around the
edges when demoed at GDC.Game on
60 |^ |^ August 2019