Brave New World

Google’s Stadia could change the game industry forever, yet its coming-out party raises as many questions as answers

- Jack Buser

Sometimes, change comes quietly. At others, it hits you with a sledgehammer. The formal unveiling, at last month’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, of Google’s long-rumored cloud-gaming service, ended up being a bit of both. There is no doubt that Stadia has the potential to change not only the game industry but also the medium as a whole. It may even change the world. But it comes loaded with caveats, and questions to which Google does not yet have the answers – or not, at least, any answers it is ready to share just yet.

The pitch is irresistible, however. Stadia will let users play games at resolutions, color ranges, and framerates that rival the most powerful console hardware on the market – and then some – on any screen, over an Internet connection, through a direct connection to Google’s sprawling global network of data centers. The Stadia platform will be upgraded over time, offering increases in processing power, without requiring that users pay up for new hardware. For developers, it offers removal of the glass hardware ceiling, letting them push their work to previously unfathomable heights and put it in the hands of anyone with a web browser, HDTV or mobile device. This is the stuff of science fiction; the sort of thing future-gazers have been telling us would happen for years. It launches in 2019.