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Showing posts from June, 2019

Why Google Stadia will be a flop

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You'll have read about Google's new gaming initiative. Here's the write-up on Wikipedia . Essentially, it's cloud-based gaming, with all rendering and visuals generated in the cloud and delivered to 'dumb' terminals - Chromecasts, laptop screens, and so on, which is OK up to a point. But the bandwidth requirements are horrific - an absolute minimum of 10Mbps and a more usual ramp up to 35Mbps. Now, these connection speeds aren't impossible, especially in the tech world of 2019. I mean, look at the average family these days and there's a good chance that most family members are using the Internet in some capacity. It doesn't take many iPlayer or Netflix streams to add up to 50 or 60Mps, for example. BUT. There's a huge difference between video streaming/downloading i.e. content consumption, where there's a huge background buffering factor that makes sure that nothing is missed, and a real time gaming experience, where you're playing mul