-
-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 32
FAQ
- Do i need to pay for Pro, to play games?
- Are all games 4K/2160p and 60fps?
- What devices can i use Stadia on?
- Is there a difference between using a Chromecast or my PC?
- Can't i just play the games i already own?
- Why is there no cross-play / cross-save in this game?
- How does State Share work?
No, you don't!
Stadia currently offers two different usage models; Stadia Base and Pro. Base allows you to play any game you bought (and free titles) at up to 1080p & 60fps without any additional payments. For roughly 10$/month, Stadia Pro on the other hand offers up to 2160p (4K) & 60fps, HDR, 5.1 surround sound and the ability to claim a changing set of "Pro Games" for free, that you keep forever. You claim them once to unlock them on your account and as long as you are a Pro member, claimed games are available for you to play - even if you drop the subscription for a while and come back, or if the game you claimed isn't a claimable Pro title anymore.
No.
The native resolution and framerate depend on the actual game - 2160p/60fps is simply the current upper limit of what Stadia offers. Some games run in full 2160p/60fps, while others may only offer 1080p/60fps and switch down to 30fps on higher resolutions, with some games are 30fps even at 1080p. Games also aren't restricted to these resolutions, i.e. a game can natively run at 1440p upscaled to 2160p before being streamed to you.
Almost any.
You can currently use Stadia via the Chromecast (Ultra) and the Stadia Controller (bundled in the Premiere Edition), your smartphone and via most devices that support Google Chrome, or any other browser based on it (i.e. Opera, Chromium Edge, ..). The important key components here are your internet connection, connection to your devices (like ethernet) and hardware used. A fast internet connection alone doesn't mean you can expect perfect results; the hardware you play on also has to be able to decode the stream fast enough to avoid increased input latency and the internet connection of your device has to be stable enough to avoid information loss, which would result in input latency increases, image quality loss, or even connection drops. Chrome extensions like Stadia Enhanced offer a streaming monitor, that can help you find the weak spot in your setup, if any issues come up.
Yes.
While the performance on both can be identical, it isn't in lots of cases, based on settings, hardware support and other factors of your PC. When playing on a PC, Stadia runs in either H264, or VP9 - those are, to keep things simple, different "packages" with different settings (i.e. compression) applied to them. If your GPU supports hardware decoding for VP9, Stadia uses the VP9 option and can — thanks to the processing power of your GPU — quickly unpack those packages, resulting in less delay while playing. If your PC however isn't able to use hardware decoding for VP9, it might switch to H264, which could be supported - or it will switch to software decoding (using your CPU). All those different options mixed with the amount of different hardware you can play on, can result in ending up with a mix that simply doesn't work well - which can result in lower image quality, higher input latency and other issues.
The chromecast on the other hand eliminates the entire process where suboptimal settings could be chosen in the first place. It isn't providing results you can't get under optimal conditions on a PC, it simply makes the process of getting the best results easier and less prone to errors. Currently only the Chromecast Ultra supports Stadia however, which in return means you are limited to the Stadia Controller in terms of input devices using it.
No.
Stadia is a new platform - it isn't just a service streaming the games on a platform that already exists, like GeForce Now or similar services. While this means the games you bought for i.e. your PC or Xbox can't just be played on Stadia without any additional payments (just like you for example, can't buy your games on a PlayStation, after buying it on a Xbox), it also means Stadia isn't limited to the same restrictions that apply to those platforms.
A very basic example of this for the future would be multiplayer games and access of player/world data. A game designed specifically for a PC is limited in terms of players based on the amount of data that is needed in real time - a racing simulator might update the track based on the condition changes of the track caused by other players via for example abrasion of the wheels. Every single time those changes happen, every instance (as in; game running on someone's PC) has to be updated with the current state, which significantly caps the possible number of players that can be updated in time. Those issues are a lot less relevant on a cloud-based platform like Stadia however - not just because it's less limited in terms of updating the instances, but also because it isn't limited to the processing power of each individual player. GRID for example uses exactly this advantage to provide a 40-man mode in the Stadia version, that according to the developers simply isn't possible in the PC version of the game.
The implementation of those features is up to the developers.
Stadia fully supports cross-play and cross-save and multiple titles already feature both of them, but at the same time it isn't a requirement for games. Just like on PC and consoles, not all games will have these features - the number of games allowing you to play independent of the platform you chose, however hopefully grows.
It's effectively a personal start-up command, including some of your data.
When you capture a screenshot including a state share, some information (like the world seed / ID, your inventory, ..) are saved together with the specific game you took the screenshot in. When someone opens said state share they are given the option to "Play" your state share, which effectively starts a new session of the linked game (the user still needs to own the given title) but at the same time also imports the data saved when creating the state share itself. This allows you for example to directly load into the same world (via the seed/ID) with specific items (in your inventory, or for example collectable on the ground where someone left them) compared to the person who saved the state share in the beginning.
What exactly is saved in these state shares is up to the developers of the game and their implementation - Pixeljunk Raiders for example saves the world you play, used blueprints and even weapons you dropped before saving the state share. The maximum size of saved data per state share is limited however, so certain elements (for example a full map in Terraria) currently wouldn't be able to get shared this way.