The Future Is Here: Google Unveiled A Gaming Service That Will Allow You To Play Streaming 4K Games On Your Phone, Computer, Or Browser

Polygon- Google announced Stadia, a new cloud-based gaming platform, at its GDC 2019 keynote Tuesday morning. It’s a major move for Google into the video game business, which is increasingly building toward streaming as a solution. Stadia is not a dedicated console or set-top box. The platform will be accessible over the internet on a variety of platforms: browsers, computers, TVs, and mobile devices. In an onstage demonstration of Stadia, Google showed someone playing a game on a Chromebook, then playing it on a phone, then immediately playing it on PC, picking up where the game left off in real time. Stadia can stream games in 60 fps, with HDR and 4K resolution, said Google’s Majd Bakar. In the future, Bakar said, Stadia will achieve resolutions up to 8K and frame rates up to 120 fps. Google showed AAA games like Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and id Software Doom Eternal running on Stadia.

Look at Google dropping into the video game industry with all the subtlety of a Zion Williamson dunk. Actually before I get Well Actually’d by hardcore gamers that know what they are talking about and outed as a n00b, let me say that I don’t know what else Google has done in the gaming industry or how long Stadia has been rumored for. But as someone who grew up having to blow in cartridges to get games to work, spent years of his life untangling wires, and zeroed out my bank account to buy video game consoles, all those things no longer being necessary to play a video game is an absolute gamechanger.

Firing up a game equal to something we see on PS4 or XBox One on my phone with no massive downloads or a console is too much for my peasant brain to compute. Sure you may have to bump up your internet package to another level or two so the 100 other devices in your house don’t have same shitty internet speeds as Barstool HQ. But playing a 4K game on your Twitter machine cell phone is crazytown. We have come a LONG way from playing Snake on a Nokia (no disrespect to the GOAT)

And being able to go from watching Smitty get blown up in Fortnite to actually joining him in the game then blowing him up yourself in Fortnite with the simple touch of a button is some “We are living in the future” shit.

But the best part about all this is that I don’t fear the controller at all.

Seemingly decent size and less than 100 buttons. It’s perfect for my old, washed up ass!

Now we just hope that Stadia is more GMail than Google+ in terms of success.