12/30/2023 0 Comments Google stadia chromecast![]() But on a game like Destiny 2 or Mortal Kombat 11, these frequent and unexplained quality dips did not make me feel like this was the future of gaming. Hold down the escape key to exit back to the browser.Įven the "bad" Wi-Fi experience was often "good enough" for slower-paced games like Kine or Gylt, where a bit of visual stuttering or a missed input isn't the end of the world. These were in locations in the house where I usually get a reliable Wi-Fi connection and where I didn't run into similar problems when testing Microsoft's xCloud beta on a Pixel phone last month (though xCloud resolution did bounce up and down a lot depending on the connection quality). The next day, that same Chromebook would provide an excellent Stadia stream in my downstairs kitchen even with a Netflix stream running on a nearby iPad. One day, the Wi-Fi connection would be so bad that I could barely get a Stadia stream to run for a minute on a Chromebook sitting mere feet from my router. The Wi-Fi inconsistencies continued for the rest of the week. As promised, gameplay was forced to stop a couple of times as Stadia kicked me back to the main menu (while I was able to reconnect relatively quickly and without losing my spot in the game, but it was still a major annoyance). The sudden message was all the more vexing because I was alone in the house, with no other devices actively running on the network.Īt that point, I faced a noticeable drop in resolution and frequent frame-rate stutters that made the game nearly unplayable. Then the Chromecast suddenly warned me that my connection had become "unreliable" and that "gameplay may stop" if it didn't improve. The first few single-player matches played beautifully, with crisp, smooth graphics and controls that made quick special moves easy to pull off. This became apparent in our very first tests, playing Mortal Kombat 11 on a Chromecast Ultra stationed on a TV one floor above the router. The stability of wired Stadia play was in stark contrast to the Wi-Fi Stadia experience, which was inconsistent to the point of aggravation. ![]() ![]() Playing with friends online was similarly smooth, with no significant lag over a wired connection (though we weren't able to test out online voice communications during the pre-release review period). While there was likely some additional input lag over local play, in Ethernet tests it wasn't enough to be noticeable to the naked eye, even for twitchy shooters and fighting games. That means smooth frame rates that generally held at 60fps and controls that felt largely indistinguishable from those on local hardware (even with the Stadia controller connected directly to the router via Wi-Fi). When running on a wired Ethernet connection, Stadia just about performed as advertised. In a week's worth of testing, the Stadia stream quality seemed to vary wildly based on the mysterious vagaries of our home networking. We also intentionally throttled the connection via router settings to test lower bandwidth limits, and we found streaming quality more or less conforms to Google's recommended specs.īut getting a good gaming experience with Stadia depends on more than bandwidth. Speed tests on that connection reliably get 100Mbps upload and download speeds, so bandwidth minimums weren't really a concern (the connection gets a "Bufferbloat" rating of C from DSLReports). We tested Stadia on a Verizon FiOS connection (and the company-issued FiOS-G1100 802.11ac 5Ghz router) in the Washington, DC, area. Google has been relatively up front about the bandwidth required to get a quality Stadia streaming experience in your home: 10Mbps minimum recommended for a "baseline" 720p experience 20Mbps for 1080p and 35Mbps for the full 4K experience. While there are some interesting fringe benefits to a gaming life in Google's cloud (and the potential for more in the future), today those benefits are not worth the headaches and risks associated with the transition to Google's platform. More specifically, is Stadia a robust-enough product to convince players they can leave behind the comfort and safety of games running on local hardware in favor of games running on powerful remote servers?Īfter trying the service for a week through a pre-release reviewer program, the answer is decidedly "no." As it stands at launch, Stadia is too limited and too unreliable, with too little advantage to justify giving up on the established way of delivering and playing games. But with the Stadia service going live for some pre-order customers today, a better question might be whether streaming is the present of gaming. Further Reading Google jumps into gaming with Google Stadia streaming service, coming “in 2019”And you should definitely ask Google, which since March has been telling anyone who will listen that streaming is the future of gaming and that Stadia is the future of game streaming.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |