What you need to know

  • VP of engineering Madj Baker expects Stadia to outperform local gaming systems in 'a year or two.'
  • This would be accomplished by making use of Google's machine learning technology to create 'negative latency.'
  • In order to do this Google will attempt to buffer gameplay and even predict what buttons a player will press next.

Back when Google was testing out Stadia under the name "Project Stream", I was blown away by the responsiveness and quality the streaming video game service provided. However, that was when it was locked to 1080p at 60fps. Once Stadia launches, it is promising the same low-latency with 4K HDR resolution at 60fps.

Not only that, the VP of engineering Madj Bakar thinks Stadia will outperform local gaming systems in "a year or two."

Ultimately, we think in a year or two we'll have games that are running faster and feel more responsive in the cloud than they do locally, regardless of how powerful the local machine is.

That's some big talk for a company whose first gaming product won't even start shipping until November, but if any company can do it, it's Google.

To achieve this, Baker says that Stadia will use machine learning to buffer gameplay and even predict the player's next button presses. This will create what he refers to as "negative latency" to prevent any lag for the player.

In other words, it would act similar to how YouTube loads, only much more complicated because Stadia will have to predict what you'll do next. It should also prevent any performance hiccups users might experience due to their connection or own equipment.

While we might have to wait a couple of years to see if Baker's predictions come true, you won't have to wait much longer for Stadia. If you want to give the game streaming service a try, you can pre-order it now and check it out when it launches in November.

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