Google announces Stadia, its streaming game platform, in an effort to upend the $140 billion video game industry

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BREAKING: NEW Google cloud-based gaming platform, Stadia release date in 2019 ��

✔️ Scalable
✔️ 4k/60FPS
✔️ HDR

Plans for the future:
✔️ 8K/120FPS+

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There's a new standard in gaming

GPU Teraflops comparison vs:

1. Google #Stadia: 10.7
2. Xbox One X: 6.0
3. PS4 Pro: 4.2

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Stadia Official Reveal Trailer: The Future of Gaming from Google.

"The future of gaming is not a box. It's a place. Welcome to Stadia, an all-new gaming platform from Google for playing AAA video games across all the screens in your life. Gather around."

Source: https://store.google.com/magazine/stadia

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For 20 years, Google has worked to put the world’s information at your fingertips. Instant delivery of that information is made possible through our data center and network capabilities, and now we're using that technology to change how you access and enjoy video games.

Stadia is a new video game platform, delivering instant access to your favorite games on any type of screen—whether it’s a TV, laptop, desktop, tablet or mobile phone. Our goal is to make those games available in resolutions up to 4K and 60 frames per second with HDR and surround sound. We’ll be launching later this year in select countries including the U.S., Canada, U.K. and much of Europe.

To build Stadia, we’ve thought deeply about what it means to be a gamer and worked to converge two distinct worlds: people who play video games and people who love watching them. Stadia will lift restrictions on the games we create and play—and the communities who enjoy them.

Advanced game streaming

Using our globally connected network of Google data centers, Stadia will free players from the limitations of traditional consoles and PCs.

When players use Stadia, they'll be able to access their games at all times, and on virtually any screen. And developers will have access to nearly unlimited resources to create the games they’ve always dreamed of. It’s a powerful hardware stack combining server class GPU, CPU, memory and storage, and with the power of Google’s data center infrastructure, Stadia can evolve as quickly as the imagination of game creators.

Data centers make Stadia possible, but what sets the system apart is how it works with other Google services. 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. If you watch one of your favorite creators playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey, simply click the “play now” button.Seconds later, you’ll be running around ancient Greece in your own game/on your own adventure—no downloads, no updates, no patches and no installs.

But what’s a gaming platform without its own dedicated controller? Enter the Stadia controller*.



When we designed the Stadia controller, we listened to gamers about what they wanted in a controller. First, we made sure to develop a direct connection from Stadia controller to our data center through Wi-Fi for the best possible gaming performance. The controller also includes a button for instant capture, saving and sharing gameplay in up to 4k of stunning resolution. And it comes equipped with a Google Assistant button and built-in microphone.

Using Google’s vast experience, reach and decades of investment we’re making Stadia a powerful gaming platform for players, developers and YouTube content creators—of all sizes. We’re building a playground for every imagination.

*This device has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained.

Source: Stadia: a new way to play

Building on a close, long-term collaboration between the two companies, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced that Google selected high-performance, custom AMD Radeon datacenter GPUs for its Vulkan® and Linux®-based Google Stadia. Google announced the platform today at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Calif. AMD also is supporting Google with its software development tools and Linux-based, open-source Vulkan driver to help game developers optimize future titles to run on the new GPU-powered platform.

“By combining our gaming DNA and datacenter technology leadership with a long-standing commitment to open platforms, AMD provides unique technologies and expertise to enable world-class cloud gaming experiences,” said Ogi Brkic, corporate vice president and general manager of the Datacenter GPU Business Unit at AMD. “AMD is delighted to work with Google in its effort to bring amazing gaming experiences to legions of gamers around the world with the reliability and no-compromises performance they expect.”

“We’ve worked closely with AMD for years on this project, leading to the development of a custom GPU with leading-edge features and performance for Google Stadia,” said Dov Zimring, Google Stadia developer platform product lead. “Google and AMD share a commitment to open-source with expertise in Vulkan, open-source Vulkan GPU drivers, and open-source graphics optimization tools. We’re humbled by the spirit of innovation and collaboration that exists throughout the gaming industry and look forward to pioneering the future of graphics technology with game developers, in open-source.”

High-performance AMD Datacenter GPUs

Streaming graphics-rich games to millions of users on demand and from the cloud requires ultra high-performance processing capabilities to minimize latency and maximize game performance. It also requires advanced technologies to tackle unique datacenter challenges, including security, manageability, and scalability.

Custom AMD high-performance Radeon datacenter GPUs for Google Stadia include:

• Second-generation High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) to provide power savings in a compact footprint;
• Critical datacenter features such as Error Correcting Code (ECC)1 protection to help ensure data integrity;
• Fast, predictable performance with security features for cloud-based gaming, via the industry’s first hardware-based GPU virtualization solution built on industry standard SR-IOV (Single-Root I/O Virtualization) technology.

The AMD graphics architecture supports a wide range of today’s gaming platforms – from PCs to major game consoles – enabling developers to optimize their games for a single GPU architecture and extend these benefits across multiple platforms which now include large-scale cloud gaming platforms.

Robust Developer Tools

Powerful AMD software tools enable developers to optimize their games and other applications for AMD Radeon GPUs. AMD empowers developers with a range of options and broad flexibility to optimize the performance of GPU-based applications based on a long-standing commitment to open-source platforms, including Linux-based drivers and support for the low-level Vulkan API that provide broad control over the performance, efficiency and capabilities of AMD Radeon GPUs.

The open-source AMD Linux drivers allow Google and its development partners to inspect the code and understand exactly how the driver works, enabling them to better optimize their applications to interface with AMD Radeon GPUs. The driver also contains an application tracing component that, together with the AMD Radeon GPU Profiler (RGP), provides access to detailed, low-level information about how workloads run on AMD Radeon GPUs. Identifying timing issues that might suggest potential optimizations, this capability dramatically improves developers’ ability to create applications that deliver the best possible performance on AMD Radeon GPUs.

The AMD Radeon GPU Profiler allows game developers to visualize exactly how their application is utilizing the GPU, including how graphics and compute thread groups occupy the GPU. Developers are then able to track event timing and optimize their games for Google Stadia. RGP also interoperates with the popular open-source RenderDoc graphics debugging tool to give developers deeper real-time insights into the rendering of each frame, reducing the time required to debug and profile frames during the development process.

RGP operates the same way in a virtualized environment as it does when running on a dedicated PC client, making it easy for developers to optimize their applications for virtualized GPUs in large scale environments as they would for any other gaming platform.

For more information about the Stadia game streaming platform, visit the Google blog here.

Source: AMD Radeon GPUs and Developer Tools Tapped for New Generation Gaming Platform, Google Stadia | AMD

Demonlord4lf said:

So we have 4 game consoles now? Wonder if this one will last and one of the other 3 will die out :-/

You don't need the console, if I am not mistaken. I think they designed it just for people who are used to console playing.

My understanding was/is you need nothing more than an internet connection and any PC or MAC or Chromebook or other tablet type device. Google had a testing phase called 'Project Stream'. You could sign up for free (which I did) to try it out, the game was Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. It was the full version, after playing about twenty hours, I decided to purchase the actual game and install it, to see what the differences were.

There was virtually no difference, graphics wise, speed play, etc. Where it did fall short, is if you had an interrupted internet connection, it started to pixellate and sluggish play. But, I only have a 40Mbps internet speed, 100MBps or 1Gig woulde be optimal. But even with the slower speed, it was still very playable and I saw very little difference.

It's main purpose is to offer users high end games without having to purchase consoles or high end equipment or upgrading your equipment every few years. Which for people like me is perfect.

It also makes it so developers don't have to design games for different platforms. One size fits all.