xCloud won’t be the only big name to drop new info for game streaming during this summer. Tech giant Google has announced that it will reveal big details about its game streaming service Stadia sometime during the summer season, including pricing, available titles and some launch info.
The summer season kicks off in late June, two weeks after E3, where Microsoft is expected to drop significant info for its own game streaming service, xCloud. While Google didn’t mention a specific date during the company’s announcement on Twitter, we can expect it to directly clash with Microsoft’s own announcement in some form or another. Check the official tweet down below.
Two of the key things to look at with Stadia’s reveal is pricing and available titles. While there hasn’t really been something like streaming before for gaming, we can somewhat compare it with streaming services for TV series and movies, like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Pricing across these services are somewhat different from each other, but that’s mostly because they offer original content unique only to their platform. With streaming coming to video games, however, the situation is a bit different.
This is where the importance of games come in. The role of exclusives has never been bigger, and with Microsoft’s planned acquisitions of several studios the company has a plan in motion to keep xCloud relevant against competitors. It willl be interesting to see what Google and Stadia’s answer to this, though. Google has made it known that they are also looking into developers for the Stadia platform, although we’re still in the dark as to who they have approached. We do know for a fact that Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is one of the first titles we’ll get to see on the Stadia, following the game’s demo during the official platform reveal.
Of course, none of this matters if Google doesn’t address the most important aspect that should be the priority above all: latency. Unlike streaming movies and TV shows, games are much more finicky, and requires a very good low-latency connection in order for it to work properly. With a sub par connection, users will be relegated to significant input delays that can cause some games to be outright unplayable. You can actually see that in action during both the original Assassin’s Creed Odyssey demo for the Stadia, as well as the GDC footage for Doom Eternal.
In any case, expect additional coverage of the Stadia once more concrete news drops.
