Google’s take on games

Your favorite series? You can stream them via Netflix. Want to listen to your favourite artist’s latest hit? It’s a matter of streaming via Spotify for immediate enjoyment. But games? You can still buy them in an old-fashioned way in the (web)shop or you first have to download them completely on your game computer or PC. Not for much longer if it’s Google, because Stadiums will also allow you to stream games later on.
So streaming movies, series and music is nothing special anymore. We’ve all been doing this for years. Streaming is no longer the method of the future, but that of today. Soon also for games, because streaming games is getting better and better. We start at the beginning: what exactly is streaming games?

Streaming games is playing a computer game via a server. While playing, the image of the game is streamed to your screen. The game itself runs on the server. With streaming games, you play a game without having the game console or game PC in house. It is located on a server at a different location. You download the image directly and your control input is uploaded at the same time.

Google Stadia is a new streaming service for games. It is a subscription service that will also be available in the Netherlands from November 2019. It comes with a free version and a paid service. The service can also be used on various devices. Google will offer large, well-known titles, such as Assassin’s Creed, Doom and Destiny.
With Google Stadia you play games by streaming them from Google’s servers. The device on which you play the game is not the game console with which you play the game. No, it’s on Google’s servers. The hardware of your device is therefore used much less intensively. All the heavy math is ‘outsourced’. The downsides of streaming your games is that the graphical quality will suffer along with the latency.