Google has revealed its plans for a video game streaming platform called Stadia, offering games on demand streamed through the cloud and linking up players in Twitch-style viewing.
Stadia is planned for launch this year and lets users stream games, including high-end titles such as Assasin’s Creed Odyssey, across a variety of devices without a console.
The subcription-based platform aims to bring together playing, spectating, and developing games onto a single platform. Launched alongside a new controller, the gaming platform will see all of the computation for the games done by cloud computing – meaning the only thing gamers will need is a screen and an internet connection.
As an example, users could view Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on YouTube and then begin playing it through streaming in “as little as five seconds.”
Things like game updates and patches and system requirements are effectively a non-issue, because the game is running on Google’s servers, rather than a local device.
According to Google’s announcement, the platform will allow users to stream games to any screen on any device later this year.
The specs match those of the top consoles on the market, although there are very few games which support such high quality graphics.
Stadia will launch later this year in select countries, including the US, the UK, Canada and much of Europe – although a price hasn’t been announced.
Google said that its global network of data centres makes the platform possible, but its combination with YouTube is what the company is really banking on for development.
“In a world where there are more than 200 million people watching game-related content daily on YouTube, Stadia makes many of those games playable with the press of a button.