Google today jumpstarted the ninth generation of gaming hardware with the announcement of its Stadia project at the Game Developer\u2019s Conference in San Francisco. Big on hype and short on details, Stadia promises to use Google\u2019s cloud-computing power to let players jump straight into high-end\u2026<\/b>
\nGoogle today jumpstarted the ninth generation of gaming hardware with the announcement of its Stadia project at the Game Developer\u2019s Conference in San Francisco. Big on hype and short on details, Stadia promises to use Google\u2019s cloud-computing power to let players jump straight into high-end, fast-paced games from existing devices without any need for additional hardware; if you can run a YouTube video at 4K, you\u2019re already set up for Stadia.
In Seattle, however, there\u2019s already a startup doing what Google pitched on Tuesday.
Rainway allows users to stream video games from personal devices to any other machine in their possession, as long as it has a browser and can comfortably run video at 60 frames per second. After raising investment dollars for its beta last year, the 2-year-old company that graduated from Techstars Seattle in 2018 made its official launch on the Windows platform at the end of January.
\u201cWe did get there first,\u201d Sampson told GeekWire over the phone from GDC. \u201cIt\u2019s always good to beat the big guys to the punch.\u201d
Sampson fired off a set of tweets after Tuesday\u2019s announcement, noting how Google \u201cmisrepresented\u201d the performance of its beta tests for the new streaming service and said the search giant \u201cgoes on to pretend as if they are the first to get high-quality games playing in the browser.\u201d
Google then goes on to pretend as if they are the first to get high-quality games playing in the browser. They aren’t. We launched @RainwayApp two years ago with low-latency game steaming in Chrome, Firefox, and even Safari. https:\/\/t.co\/NEctxW7Uz7
\u2014 Andrew Sampson @ GDC (@Andrewmd5) March 19,2019
If you want to maintain your freedom and begin playing your game library anywhere today, check out @RainwayApp \u2014 we’re building an extension to your games, not a replacement.
\u2014 Andrew Sampson @ GDC (@Andrewmd5) March 19,2019
Sampson told GeekWire that \u201cGoogle doesn\u2019t understand that openness is a big reason why people love playing video games.\u201d
Rainway has an announcement coming later this week regarding its availability on the Xbox. Since its launch, the company has racked up more than one million regular users.
And remember, Rainway is coming to Xbox ???? pic.twitter.com\/32apxteGwm
\u2014 Rainway (@RainwayApp) March 19,2019
Stadia isn\u2019t the first attempt to create a streaming service for video games. The most notorious attempt thereof, as has been pointed out on Twitter several thousand times by now, is OnLive, founded by Steve Perlman. It was initially announced in 2009, launched in 2010, had laid off all its employees in 2012, and was officially discontinued in 2015.
The shortest version of the OnLive story is that while it played well under lab conditions, typical consumer internet service couldn\u2019t run cloud-based games without lag or input delay at the time, which meant OnLive couldn\u2019t hope to provide a comparable experience to playing locally. At best, it was a way to try a game before you bought it for another system.
OnLive\u2019s patents were eventually purchased by Sony, which would subsequently launch the similar, now-defunct PlayStation Home service\u2026 and one of Home\u2019s champions at Sony, Jack Buser, is now heavily involved with Stadia at Google.
While other companies are going further in on digital media, such as Microsoft planning an all-digital Xbox One SKU, Google Stadia is the first to abandon the concept of not only physical media, but local copies of downloaded content. It\u2019s a risky, disruptive play.<\/p>\n