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Google Stadia video game streaming service goes live Tuesday with 22 games


The other streaming war – bringing video games to the cloud – is heating up.

Google flips the switch Tuesday on its Stadia cloud gaming service, which lets you stream games to your television, computer, tablet and Android phone.

The main selling point? Stadia lets you play marquee video games without the need of a game console or PC to house the game. Instead your game resides on Google’s expansive array of data servers.

As part of the monthly subscription fee, Stadia stores your games and connects you with other gamers in games that support multiplayer gaming.

Games delivered and stored in the cloud are a strategy aimed at attracting potential players who don’t want to commit to a specific console system or spring for a personal computer. And the flexibility of Stadia, which lets you play games on smartphones, tablets and the web, could appeal to an audience used to bingeing video anywhere and anytime on any device.

“This is the beginning of a way we can reach many more customers who can play our games and eventually, with cloud compute capabilities, enhancing games,” said Chris Early, vice president of partnerships and revenue for Ubisoft, which has two games on Stadia at launch – “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” and “Just Dance 2020” – and more on the way, including “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint,” and “Tom Clancy’s The Division 2.”

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Google Stadia: What do I need to play?

A $129 Stadia Premiere Edition starter package (available in the Google store) includes a Stadia controller (additional ones are $69), a Chromecast Ultra streaming device to connect to your TV and a three-month Stadia Pro subscription (subsequent months are $9.99).

Next year, Google will offer a Base membership with 1080P high-def video and stereo sound without a subscription fee. You can buy and keep what games you prefer and play them on your PC or Pixel phone (other phones will be added in the future, Google says.)

Google recommends a broadband connection of at least 10 Megabits per second to achieve high-def games and stereo sound. Want 4K video and 5.1 surround? Google recommends a 35 Mbps connection.

What games does Stadia have?

Stadia will have 22 games available at the outset, with additional games due by the end of the year. Available at the outset are “Red Dead Redemption 2,” “Rage 2,” “Tomb Raider 2013,” “Final Fantasy XV,”and fighting games “Mortal Kombat 11” and “Samurai Shodown.”

Games cost $19.99 to $99.99 for special editions, such as “Red Dead Redemption 2 Ultimate Edition.” For a full list of games go to the Stadia site.

Stadia Pro subscribers also get free games monthly. At launch, you get “Destiny 2: The Collection.” You also get a discount of $10 or more on games you buy.

How good is Stadia?

Unless you were able to simultaneously test games on a high-end gaming PC or Xbox or PlayStation console, it seems hard to see any flaws in Stadia’s service. During a pre-launch home review, the button-masher “Mortal Kombat” responded without lag and delivered vibrant video and surround sound. (Note: I played on a Samsung 4K Ultra HD TV and over a Verizon Fios Gigabit connection delivering more than 35 Mbps.)

Another game, “Shadow of the Tomb Raider,” loaded quickly – since the game is stored in the cloud, there’s no long load time to get the game’s code onto a local storage device – and I was playing the game in seconds.

I was able to move my “Tomb Raider” action to a Pixel 3 smartphone (provided by Google for the testing period) and continue the game with the phone mounted on the controller. (Hint: Older eyes may prefer sticking to the TV.)

What else can Stadia do?

Stadia will gain features as the rollout continues. Stadia Connect, which would let you see other players’ feeds as you play a game such as “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint,” will come in 2020.

Also promised: Buddy Passes, which let you give a friend a three-month subscription on the service; Crowd Play, which would let you watch a video game streamer or game developer’s stream and wait your turn to join them for a match; and State Share, the ability to share a point in a game with another player so they can join you.

“New features will start popping as soon as one week after launch,” said Stadia product director Andrey Doronichev in a Reddit AMA last week, reported on by video game news site Kotaku. “I expect the first game with Stream Connect to launch by the end of the year. The games that support State Share and Crowd Play will be released next year. And of course there are many more cool new platform features on the roadmap.”

Also coming: already-available Chromecast streaming devices will gain Stadia support and the service will have an achievement system that tracks your awards and progress across all games. 

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Why do we need games in the cloud?

Video games are already a growing market at an estimated $25 billion in the U.S. this year. But games stored and delivered via the cloud could attract more gamers because they don’t have to pay for hardware, which eventually must be replaced, says Piers Harding-Rolls, director and head of games research and lead AR/VR analyst for IHS Markit.

“Basically the cost of the hardware shifts to the service provider, but the user is required to spend money on subscriptions and other content to pay for this infrastructure investment and service delivery cost,” Harding-Rolls said. “Cloud gaming service providers hope that they can address a larger audience by removing this hardware requirement.” 

Cloud gaming services are expected to grow from about $100 million in 2019 to $739 million in 2023 in the U.S., and $2.5 billion globally, IHS Markit forecasts. The advent of 5G wireless connectivity will make cloud gaming attractive more attractive across multiple devices, he said.

Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony already deliver digital games via the cloud with their own subscription services. And Sony is teaming up with Microsoft to develop improved cloud delivery of games using Microsoft Azure data center platform.

Microsoft is currently testing its Project xCloud, which “enables us to create an experience where a consumer who is streaming from our data center can feel like they have an Xbox console right in their phone or tablet,” said Kareem Choudhry, corporate vice president for Project xCloud for Xbox.

The goal is to make gaming “more accessible to a broader audience,” he said. There’s no set launch date for Project xCloud, Choudhry said. “It is incredibly important for us to nail this experience and delivering what it is consumers expect,” he said. 

Electronic Arts, which plans to make games available on Google Stadia, is also working on its own streaming service, too.

Whether there will be multiple winners in the cloud gaming wars – as some experts expect in the video streaming wars – remains to be seen.

While Google is launching Stadia now, its full potential won’t be discovered until all its features, including the free option is available “that we will see the real Stadia as a competitor to the existing console platforms,” Harding-Rolls says.

In the meantime, don’t expect video game consoles to go away. Both Microsoft and Sony expect their cloud gaming plans to support their new consoles, due in 2020.

“The console platforms are actually very well placed over the next five years because consoles support all forms of distribution – physical media, downloads and streaming,” Harding-Rolls said.

Some of Stadia’s biggest supporters might actually be console gamers, according to a poll of 1,000 online gamers conducted last week by Limelight Networks, which helps deliver cloud-based content, but is not directly involved with Google Stadia.

Gamers who already own a console were more than twice as likely (20%) as those who don’t (7%) to express interest in subscribing to the service, the survey found. 

“Google Stadia will be the first opportunity for console-less gaming to truly disrupt the video game market,” said Neil Glazebrook, senior director for Limelight Networks. “Gamers may still own consoles, but our research findings show that many traditional console players are ready to try console-less options, especially for their mobile devices.” 

Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.

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