Stadia Connect this month disclosed pricing, games and more about how the streaming service operates for the November launch. Google’s Phil Harrison touched on the information caps of Stadia in interviews this week and no other betas, as well as match pricing and accessibility.
Stadia data caps
Data usage is a significant problem for all game streaming services, at least in the United States. While subscribers may have speeds above 10Mbps, multiple stateside ISPs enforce caps of 1 TB information. 4 K streaming on Stadia would burst through this limit in 65 hours, as others have mentioned.
Speaking to GameSpot, the Stadia VP begins by challenging the “math calculations individuals have made.” He claims that they do not represent the compression that Google will “sometimes” perform, with Stadia “using considerably less information” during those phases than multiplying 35Mbps by the amount of seconds that you perform.
More generally, in reaction to the popularity of downloading and streaming music, TVs, and movies, Harrison notes how “information caps moved up.” Stadia, however, will allow gamers to keep track of usage and resolution control.
“ISPs are smart [and] they understand that they’re in the business of keeping customers happy and keeping customers with them for a long time.”
No beta Stadia pre-launch
Meanwhile, before Stadia launches this November in 14 countries, Google won’t host another beta. Harrison (via GamesRadar) defines the United States as the size of the “most complicated location to test” relative to Europe.
“So we are not going to do another test in the UK or Europe. If we had time we probably would have done so, but we don’t need to.”
Stadia games: price & availability
The Stadia lead also informed GamesRadar that in a situation where publishers are pulling a game, digital buyers will continue to have access. Given the prevalence of film streaming services in this day and age, the notion of content being pulled so often is known to more individuals than ever. In Stadia’s case, a pulled match would simply not be accessible for buying fresh players.
Harrison (via Eurogamer) does not predict that games on Stadia will be cheaper than Sony PlayStation or Microsoft Xbox on the same subject. When questioned why players would buy on the Google service rather than competing consoles, Harrison again advocates how games on all your screens and devices will be accessible.
