Google has announced a new games streaming service called Stadia

Google has used its keynote slot at GDC to announce Stadia, a cloud-based streaming service for games. Good games, too. Among the titles on display were Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Doom Eternal.

Stadia is not a console or streaming box, but a service like Netflix

To be clear, Stadia is not a console or streaming box. It’s a service, like Netflix, which you’ll be able to access through your existing devices, such as your phone, your PC, your Chromecast, and your Chromebook. And, like Netflix, it’ll let you stop playing on one device and pick up exactly where you left off on another.

Games will stream at 60fps and in 4K. They’ll even have HDR, and the potential is there for 8K and 120fps in future. 120fps seems like overkill to us, but it’s good that Google is future-proofing the service for the benefit of our superhuman descendents with their bionic eyes.

To enable players to take advantage of Stadia, Google has naturally also come up with a controller, which connects to the cloud – i.e. Google’s superfast worldwide data centers – via wifi.
Stadia is due to launch later this year, and it’ll come to some devices before others.

You can learn more on the official Google Stadia site.

Rob Hearn

Rob Hearn has over ten years of experience in the mobile journalism - so is our in-house sage on all things mobile, naturally.