Google tries to reassure gamers about Stadia speed and latency concerns

Google's Phil Harrison (you may remember him from his days at Sony).



SAN FRANCISCO—Google's Phil Harrison tells Ars that Stadia game streaming should provide a smooth, full-resolution experience on Internet connections above a threshold of 20 to 30mbps, a level that should allow for 'hundreds of millions of potential players in the markets that we're talking about.'
While the company set a threshold of 25mbps for its beta testing late last year, Harrison told Ars that 'in actual fact, we only use an average of 20mbps; it obviously bounces up and down depending on the scene.' Since that beta, Harrison said infrastructure and codec improvements 'now allow us to get up to 4K resolution [at 60 frames per second] within about 30mbps. So we saw a dramatic increase in quality between then and now without a significant increase in bandwidth.'
Even at that threshold, Harrison acknowledges that 'I know [Stadia] won't reach everybody [and] I respect that some people will be frustrated by that. But I suspect that some of those people don't get a great YouTube experience, they might get a good Netflix experience today. The good news is the Internet continues to grow in quality and reach. So there is a bit of a rising tide that lifts all boats, with 5G potentially helping that equation in the future. That's a little bit over the horizon today, but it's I think going to come into view pretty quickly.'
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