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I’ve spent the past few days reading article after article and watching a handful of YouTube videos of Stadia running Doom Eternal in real time and, as I’ve posited in the past, come away feeling like Google is going to pull this whole game streaming idea off in a big way.
From The Verge to Gizmodo to IGN, everyone is coming away with very positive things to say about Stadia’s overall steaming performance. Of all the things we now know about Stadia, the part we’ve been a bit hazy on is how the whole thing will actually perform in real world use.
From all the reports we’re currently seeing all over the internet and YouTube, it appears that Stadia is bringing the performance to meet and/or exceed expectations by real gamers in real world scenarios. A particular video from IGN highlights the fact that Google’s setup was not only to a truly remote server, but also at a realistic 25Mbps connection.
With Stadia performing well under these conditions in an environment likely fraught with connection issues (we’ve been to quite a few large conferences and internet connectivity is never a strong point), it is more than encouraging to see Stadia perform this well. Throw in the fact that this is one of the biggest gaming conferences in the world and Stadia is having to stand up to less-than-optimal connectivity under the scrutiny of real gamers’ magnifying glasses and it seems to be doing quite well.
The only hiccup I’ve seen reported is the disruption with Wifi or connectivity in general. I think this is a bit less of a concern than it is being made out to be. Sure, for single player, campaign-driven games you wouldn’t have this type of concern when playing a game on a standard console. Stadia gets around this by giving users 10 minutes to reconnect after a failure so that gameplay isn’t lost, so at least there is some thought on how to deal with inevitable connection drops. For online multiplayer titles, however, it doesn’t matter if you are playing a local hard copy of a game or streaming it: you are screwed without a stable connection to the internet either way, so Stadia isn’t really any worse than what you’d deal with on a local machine.
All things told, 5 months out from the actual launch, I’m incredibly excited for what Google is poised to deliver with Stadia. It is clear the internet is full of nay-sayers and Stadia haters, but count me in the group that is not only cheering this effort on, but eagerly awaiting what the arrival of Stadia will be for gaming in general. Oh, and we’ll finally have an answer for “Yeah, but you can’t game on a Chromebook.” That will be nice.
