Doc 1 :What is Google’s Stadia all about in brief

Stadia is a cloud gaming service operated by Google. By using Stadia one doesn’t require any additional
hardware to play games other than a device which has an internet connection and support for Google
Chrome. It supports the streaming of games in HDR at 60 frames per second with 4K resolution. It will
also allow users to stream their games online like Twitch.

Benefits:

● It removes the need for any additional hardware such as a high-end graphics card, a good cpu and a
decent chassis to cool these expensive equipments. This will bypass many hardware manufacturing
companies like Nvidia, Dell, Lenovo, Asus thus potentially reducing the cost of gaming.
● Stadia also has immense potential of revolutionizing streaming technology as a streamers can
directly stream their games on Youtube by the click of a button.
This will not only increase the quality of viewer’s experience but will also increase the number of
streamers.
● It will also boast its own set of exclusives.

The biggest challenge that Stadia will face is the availability of a really fast internet connection. The
infrastructure required for streaming games at 4K 60fps is not available to all people. Google
commented that for playing games on Stadia “a mere 30Mbps connection” is required. This has raised
many eyebrows and this speed still leaves a lot of people uncatered.

The cost of this service is a question that google has not answered yet.

Google has yet to announce a firm date of when Stadia will become available, but it said it’ll launch in
the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe in 2019.

https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/gaming/google-stadia-all-your-questions-answered-on-
the-cloud-gaming-service-5640119/
 Doc 2: How Stadia disrupts the gaming market dynamic.

The vertically integrated gaming platform will consolidate the gaming process - from
development and hosting to distribution and advertising, explained Phil Harrison, the head of the
new service, during the Stadia debut.
This implies stadia will be going head to head with well established platforms like ‘Steam
Market’ creating it’s own game distribution channels. If they move forward with a subscription
based model which allows users to subscribe to games for a month and keep on renewing it
thereafter according to the user’s wish.
This increases the number of active users for a game by a lot, leaves a huge dent in the
piracy/hackers issue and most of all fills the coffers of game developers monthly with a
customer base larger than ever.
Stadia might charge a fee to the developers for hosting their games on it’s servers and at the
same time get the subscription fee to the stadia service paid by the users and the money by
subscription to the game goes to the game developer. This offers Stadia with opportunity to use
a well known tactic in the gaming industry i.e. ‘Exclusivity’. Stadia can host games exclusive to
its platform which will counter exclusive titles on ’XBOX and ‘PS-4’. This combined with the fact
that Stadia renders owning high-end hardware for gaming almost useless might lead to a huge
drop in sales of the aforementioned devices.

Another highly coveted service by Stadia will be ‘Crowd Play’, this will be a direct competitor to
‘Twitch’. Both of these services let gamers stream their gameplay on other persons device.On
almost any given night audience on ’Twitch’ is bigger than ‘Netflix’ or ’HBO’.
The appeal of this service is people enjoy watching professional players, enjoy their side
commentary and get to learn new in-game tactics, also people with not so good devices use
these services just to see the gameplay of titles which they can’t run on there PC.
Stadia here have a distinct advantage as it drastically increases the number of people with the
power to stream their own gameplay and it increases the quality of viewers experience. It may
not have a facecam or audio transmission of the player to the viewers which might be a big
negative as it leaves out the personality of the player which attracts the viewers most. It will be
interesting to see how Stadia tackles this issue.