An epochal transition, like the one from games in two dimensions to 3D. Phil Harrison, ex-Sony and ex-Microsoft, now Google Vice President and General Manager of the Stadia project, thus summarizes the great potential of the new platform for video game streaming which in November 2019 will debut in 14 countries, including Italy. We previewed it at the Google headquarters in London with a demo of Doom Eternal, one of the “blockbuster” titles that the developers of Bethesda will immediately bring to the Mountain View platform. The test is sufficient to become familiar with the system and the Stadia Controller (hardware well done, good balance, weight and handling) but it does not add much to what was already seen at the E3 conference a few weeks ago. There is still a lot to do on video quality and compression, as well as response times to commands, good but still not comparable to those of a console, especially if the controller is a gamer with some experience. Still impossible for now to try the 4K resolution at 60fps, that is the one that Google will offer to users who subscribe to the Pro subscription from € 9.99 per month (and will have a connection of at least 35Mbps available). We always met Phil Harrison in London after the demo. With him we tried to understand what Google’s goals are and how Stadia can change the video game market, the only sector of the entertainment industry that has not yet been revolutionized by the advent of streaming. We always met Phil Harrison in London after the demo. With him we tried to understand what Google’s goals are and how Stadia can change the video game market, the only sector of the entertainment industry that has not yet been revolutionized by the advent of streaming. We always met Phil Harrison in London after the demo. With him we tried to understand what Google’s goals are and how Stadia can change the video game market, the only sector of the entertainment industry that has not yet been revolutionized by the advent of streaming.
Mr. Harrison, Google isn’t the first company to try their hand at video game streaming. But why should Stadia succeed where others have failed?
«Stadia is a platform that operates thanks to what Google does best, which is to manage huge amounts of data in our datacenters. Not many companies today can do what we’re trying to do with Stadia. Thanks to our experience we can offer a new gaming experience, which transcends the limits of the hardware, the console or the PC, and turns any device into a screen, while the game is processed remotely on our servers ».
So do you think streaming will inevitably be the future of gaming and will it replace consoles?
«It is already in part the present of gaming. Hundreds of millions of people follow their favorite gamers who stream their games on YouTube and Twitch. What we will do will only offer this audience the opportunity to play immediately, without obstacles and without excessive expenditure: I see a game, I discover it, I click on it and without downloads, hardware, software patches in less than five seconds I am ready to play . This is the future, but the consoles will certainly not disappear immediately, there will be a long period of transition ».
However, the limit of Internet connections remains: not everyone will have enough bandwidth to play with Google Stadia at their best. Isn’t there a risk that the market is not ready?
“Consoles or PCs are unrealistic purchases, while everyone needs the Internet. While not all potential users will have access to fast enough networks at first, we believe there is already good penetration, especially in urban areas. Furthermore, a positive trend is clearly observed in the diffusion of fast access to the network which justifies a bet in this direction ».
On Stadia will arrive immediately titles of important developers, such as EA and Bethesda. How did you convince them?
“With Stadia, games can only be developed once for our datacenters, ignoring the fragmentation of the user’s hardware. Publishers care about volumes of scale, and with Stadia you can quickly reach millions of users at a lower cost and friction than other platforms. Furthermore, developers can have access to technologies whose evolution is faster, without waiting for the generational leap of devices ».
However, when software houses design a game they do it by thinking it according to the less performing platform on which it will run, could this not limit the potential of Stadia?
“It will be a matter of time. It’s a bit like when developers had to decide whether to continue developing 2D games or investing resources to move to 3D. Today it’s easy to think that this was the right way, but back then it was a serious business decision. In this case it will be similar. Google will also produce its own Stadia games: they will be exclusives that we call beacon or lighthouse experiences, projects that will act as a beacon, to show developers the potential of our platform ».
At the Games Developer Conference in March, you showed features such as State Share, which allows you to publicly link specific passages of a game. We haven’t heard of it since, though.
“What we showed at the San Francisco conference was a mix of short and long term vision. Some of those features will arrive immediately, others instead later in 2020 ( date also scheduled for the launch of Stadia Base, the free version of the service that provides for the purchase of single games, ed .). Some are already in the hands of the developers and we must give them time to implement them, including State Share ».
Also on that occasion you also talked about the role of Artificial Intelligence in defining new gaming experiences. How will it be used on Stadia?
“This is an aspect that is close to my heart, because it concerns the future of game design and the tools that we will be able to make available to both developers and players. Think of games that feature text-based selection windows: with speech recognition the interaction model could change radically. It is no coincidence that the Stadia Controller also has a microphone. Another example: in a war game in which a platoon is commanded, the user could send a voice command to manage the attack actions of the members of his squad managed by the system, describing them according to the elements of the scene. Or again, thanks to Artificial Intelligence, the game characters could remember complex interactions. It will be possible to reach levels of immersion and realism never seen before
