Stadia is a cloud gaming platform by Google.
A browser based cloud service that is specifically for game players and game developers. Since it is browser based, what you need to work on it is good internet connection and Google Chrome browser. Google has a large number of data centers across the globe, and so Stadia has already advantage over other cloud gaming services as most players would be geographically close to a data center.
Plus points
Stadia supports the streaming of games in HDR at 60 frames per second with 4K resolution, and plans eventually reaching 120 frames per second at 8K resolution.
Time has gone when players need to have good hardware and softwares downloaded to play games. Stadia makes it so easy for players to play online and share their live sessions directly on YouTube.
To reduce input latency, Google has developed its own controller that will connect independently to the Google datacenter through Wi-Fi. But Stadia supports any HID-class USB controller as well.
Google has also attached its AI service ie. Google Assistant with Stadia, that would automatically search for relevant videos related to the game user is playing.
It support all device types effortlessly TVs, laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones.
Hardware Stack
Stadia has powerful Hardware that is the need for establishing such platform.
Custom 2.7 GHz hyperthreaded x86 CPU with AVX2 SIMD and 9.5 MB L2+L3 cache
Custom AMD GPU with HBM2 memory and 56 compute units capable of 10.7 teraflops
16 GB of RAM with up to 484 GB/s of performance
SSD cloud storage
Software Stack
Build on Linux OS, Stadia is using Vulkan, i.e. Next-gen cross-platform graphics and computing API with custom layers optimized for cloud-native gaming. It has APIs for managing games, like saves, multiplayer modes, suspend/resume gameplay, etc.
Developer Tools
All your favourite game development tools are already part of Stadia, two most important are Unreal Engine and Unity. Others include Havok®, RenderDoc, Visual Studio, LLVM, AMD RadeonTM2 GPU Profiler, IncrediBuild, UmbraTM 3, FaceFX and Intelligent Music Systems.
The best part is still to be told and that is you would never need to update your software / hardware because of cloud based platform, and still you will be always up-to-date. Cool..
References: https://stadia.dev
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