Google Targets Gaming Community with Stadia

Google, an Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) product, announced on Tuesday (March 19) the launch of Stadia, a new platform that seeks to deliver instant access to games on any device, including laptops, tablets andmobile devices.

The internet giant was rumored to unveil a streaming service, especially after it tested the platform under theProject Stream moniker. At theGame Developers Conference on Tuesday, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, officially unveiled the service, which lets gamers stream games from thecloud to a device of their choice.

It has to be noted that the company hasn’t set an official date for the launch of the service, although it stated that Stadia will be launched sometime this year in Europe, Canada, the UK and the US.

Pichai kicked off the event with the confession that he isn’t a “big gamer,” but would play “FIFA 19” and “Ashes Cricket” “quite a bit.”

In a blogpost, Phil Harrison, vice president of Google Stadia, said that the streaming service will rely on the company’s globally connected network ofdata centers, and that Stadia “will free players from the limitations of traditional consoles and PCs.

“Data centers make Stadia possible, but what sets the system apart is how it works with other Google services,” Harrison said in the blog post.

Harrison highlighted that more than 200 million people watch content related to gaming daily on YouTube. With Stadia, Google is presenting an opportunity for gamers to play the games at the “press of a button.”

“If you watch one of your favorite creators playing ‘Assassin’s Creed Odyssey,’ simply click the ‘play now’ button. Seconds later, you’ll be running around ancient Greece in your own game/on your own adventure — no downloads, no updates, no patches and no installs,” Harrison said.

The company seeks to provide support of up to 4K resolution and up to 60 frames per second (FPS) when launched, and eventually scale up to 8K resolution and 120 FPS in the future.

To minimize latency and to elevate game performance, Google haspartnered with AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) to build custom graphics processing units (GPUs) for its data centers.

“We’ve worked closely with AMD for years on this project, leading to the development of a custom GPU with leading-edge features and performance for Google Stadia,” Dov Zimring, Google Stadia developer platform product lead, said in the release.

Ogi Brkic, corporate vice president and general manager of the datacenter GPU business unit at AMD, said that his company is delighted to work with Google.

“By combining our gaming DNA and datacenter technology leadership with a long-standing commitment to open platforms, AMD provides unique technologies and expertise to enable world-class cloud gaming experiences,” Brkic said.

Additionally, Google introduced the Stadia controller, which connects to the Stadia service directly through WiFi and links it to a game session in the cloud.

Following the announcement, shares of Alphabet were up 1.17 percent and closed the trading session on Tuesday at US$1,202.46. The stock has a “strong buy” ranking on TradingView with 18 verticals in favor and 10 in neutral.

The company also has a “strong buy” ranking on TipRanks with an analyst target price of US$1,349.88, which represents upside of 12.26 percent from its current price.

Image via Google Game Developers Conference.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Bala Yogesh, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.