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Google Stadia shooting for negative latency by predicting players’ moves

Google Stadia is looking to become even faster and more responsive than consoles and PCs, which would be a massive achievement considering that latency is one of the biggest problems of cloud gaming.

Latency is the time it takes between a player’s press on the controller and for that action to register on the game. With Stadia, as well as other cloud gaming platforms, high latency will ruin the experience, as any form of lag affects a game’s playability. This is why latency is a huge focus for the Stadia team, product manager Khaled Abdel Rahman said in May at the annual Google I/O conference.

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In an interview with Edge magazine, VP of engineering Madj Bakar expressed confidence in Stadia and the plan for the service down the line.

“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,” Bakar said.

The Stadia team aims to come through with the promise through “negative latency,” which will use artificial intelligence to predict what players will do. This will allow cloud servers to pre-render the game’s next scenes so that once players press the button, they will be ready to load.

The idea is that Stadia will generate a set of possible next frames of the game in the cloud in advance, and then only display the frames that match the player’s choice. There is the chance that the player chooses a path that is not included in the A.I.’s predictions, but on average, this system will help reduce the latency in the service.

The approach is made possible by Google’s data centers, which will offer much more power than any console or PC could. The actual implementation of the concept behind negative latency, however, remains to be seen, and if it will be enough to convince long-time console and PC players to make the switch to Stadia.

Google will offer Stadia Base, which is a 1080p, 60fps tier, for free, but without access to the service’s free game releases. The complete experience will require a Stadia Pro subscription, which offers 4K HDR image quality, 5.1 surround sound, and access to the free game library, for $10 per month.

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This wireless workaround will give your Google Stadia controller new life
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Google announced yesterday that it will shut down Stadia in January. The good news is that refunds will be given to everyone who bought all Stadia hardware, including its controller, so long as they bought it from the Google Store. You don't have to return the controller to get the refund (see the platform's FAQ page), but it doesn't have to go to waste just because Stadia is shutting down.

Users in the Stadia subreddit have been asking Google to make the firmware for the Stadia controller open source so that it would work on PC and consoles even after its namesake platform has been put out to pasture (per Eurogamer). Though Google won't be able to do that in an official capacity anytime soon, software engineer Parth Shah created a workaround tool that allows players to use the controller wirelessly over Wi-Fi.

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After three years, Google Stadia is coming to an end. The Silicon Valley giant announced that the cloud-streaming platform will be going offline on January 18, 2023.

In a blog post published on Thursday, Phil Harrison, Stadia's vice president and general manager, said the company made the difficult decision to shut down Stadia because the cloud-streaming service hasn't "gained the traction with users" that it expected since its launch in 2019. This is despite the developed technology that allowed players to play demos from YouTube videos on their favorite games and then purchase them later, no console required.

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Logitech made its own lightweight handheld built for cloud gaming
The Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld sits on a stack of comics.

Although I can be tough on cloud services that have faults, I actually do enjoy cloud gaming on Google Stadia and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate quite a bit, and I’m excited about the technology’s potential for both players and developers. Currently, most of my cloud gaming takes place on my phone, but Logitech and Tencent Games want me to start playing cloud games on a new device. In October, the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld starts rolling out, and it hopes to become the way to play cloud games.
During a hands-off preview of the device, Logitech certainly delivered on highlighting an Android-powered device with two native cloud gaming apps that players can use to enjoy games with a Wi-Fi connection. At $350, though, it feels like a solution for a niche usage problem that similarly priced devices already solve. I could see myself enjoying this device if I wanted to stream a video game from my bed or a room without my TV and consoles. Unfortunately, it seems outclassed by just the ability to stream games on a midrange-or-better phone, something anyone reading this can likely do already.

What is the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld?
From a technical perspective, the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld contains specs that wouldn’t feel out of place on a mid-range mobile device. It features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G octa-core 2.3GHz CPU, as well as 4GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 64GB of internal storage that people can expand with an SD card. The display is a 7-inch IPS multi-touch screen that displays at a 1080p resolution with a 60Hz refresh rate. Players can listen to audio through its stereo speaker, a 3.5mm stereo audio jack, or a Bluetooth 5.1 connection.
What sets it apart is that Logitech built the controllers into the device, giving it a Nintendo Switch-like look. It has the d-pad, analog joysticks, buttons, bumpers, and triggers expected of a modern controller, plus a Home button to bring players to the home screen and a “G button” that will access more system-specific settings. Players will be able to remap the controls however they wish, though. On top of that, players can expect the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld to have haptics feedback, a gyroscope, a light sensor, and even a built-in stereo microphone with echo canceling and noise suppression support.
These aren’t top-of-the-line specs by any means, but Logitech made this choice because the device is made for gaming natively on the device. It also allowed them to get the device’s weight down to only 463 grams and give it a battery life of around 12 hours (it uses USB-C to charge), which has never been seen on a gaming handheld. Think of the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld as an Android 11 tablet with built-in controllers, uniquely tailored UI, and access to native Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia GeForce Now, and Google Play Store apps.

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