Beginning of an Era: Welcome to Google Cloud for Live Games

Google Cloud for Live Games is supposed to be the new major talking point in the world of cloud gaming (Gaming in general? Come on! No way! Not even in the distant future!). Within two months of shutting down its world-famous Stadia platform, it has come up with a new tool to revive the fortune of Google’s cloud gaming aspirations. It’s called Google Cloud for Live Games.

For the uninitiated, Google’s Stadia used to be a cloud gaming service developed and operated by the Mountain View-headquartered company. During development, it was known as Project Stream, the service debuted through a closed beta in October 2018 and later, was publicly launched in November 2019 on a global scale. 

But what’s in store for the all-new Google Cloud for Live Games tool? Will it be able to go beyond just creating a renewed interest of gamers in cloud gaming and make a mark? What made Google close Stadia? Why has it launched a new tool so early? Is there really a market to thrive upon? 

Let’s delve deeper with the story to find out the answers to all these obvious questions. And without much ado, here we go!

It needs to be seen whether Google Cloud for Live Games goes on to manage a turnaround for Google’s cloud gaming aspirations. [Image Credit: Google Cloud for Games]

Google Cloud for Live Games: A Fresh Bid to Revive Fortunes? 

The calendar read January 18, 2023 and a message popped up on the screens of those who logged on to the official website of Google’s cloud gaming platform Stadia – “Thank you for playing with us. Stadia was shut down on January 18, 2023.”

It definitely caused a major heartbreak to many gamers who went on to embrace the platform, which never really rose to the occasion and remained a case of hits and misses despite immense potential. To add to its woes, Google has also done away with the white label version of Stadia, which was attached to the platform itself. 

Jack Buser, Director, Game Industry Solutions, Google Cloud clearly stated, “We are not offering that streaming option, because it was tied to Stadia itself. So unfortunately, when we decided to not move forward with Stadia, that sort of offering could no longer be offered as well.”

For your information, thanks to this gem of a technology, which was at times referred to ‘Google Stream’ by Google itself, top players in the global gaming industry like AT&T and Capcom used to allow anyone to try games like Batman: Arkham Knight, Control and a demo of Resident Evil Village without charging a single penny. 

Now Google has rolled out this brand-new cloud gaming tool called Google Cloud for Live Games after writing the obituary of Stadia, which used to enjoy its own share of popularity among gamers across the world. 

Buser says that today, the live service model is prevalent across all console, PC and mobile platforms and genres. He goes on to stress on the rich potential of the market by saying, “And with a projected 3.6 billion players by 2024, the opportunity for live games has never been larger.”

Now what does the Google Cloud for Live Games have on offer? Let’s have a quick look at them. 

• An ecosystem for live games.
• Cloud Spanner supports large player populations without sharding or overprovisioning.
• Analytics and AI for games help you monetize. 
• Open source for games integrates with your tech.

Meanwhile, Jacques Erasmus, CIO, King, has vouched for Google Cloud for Live Games – “Our infrastructure needs to support hundreds of thousands of concurrent connections per second, as well as our data warehouse, and we saw that Google has the capability to handle our needs.”

It needs to be seen whether Google Cloud for Live Games goes on to manage a turnaround for Google’s cloud gaming aspirations. We need to wait for a considerable amount of time in order to draw any definite conclusion based on substantial data. 

Till then, stay tuned! We will get back to you soon with more exclusive updates on gaming and keep  you posted with the top tech stories around the globe.