Google Stadia Will Be Faster Than Local Gaming Thanks to Input Prediction

Stadia’s VP of Engineering, Majd Bakar, recently stated that Stadia would be capable of running games faster in the cloud than they would be, locally. Furthermore, Bakar believes that this could be achieved within a year or two. While it might seem impossible at first, it appears that Google might actually be able to pull it off thanks to the new technology that Stadia will be relying on. https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/1181934031027474433 Instead of basing its assessment on strong and fast internet connections, Bakar claims that Stadia will rely on the new streaming tech that has negative latency. Simply put, the new technology will be able to predict gamer input, and react even before the gamers themselves do. In other words, Google’s new technology will allow the game to react in a way that the user wants even before they press the button, which will result in the reaction seemingly being instant once the button is actually pressed. That way, it would be as if there is no lag between the action and the game’s response. Furthermore, Google also plans to increase the frame rate between the press of a button and the action within the game, which will allow it to catch up to the player at greater speeds. Of course, that would indicate that the player is not the one who actually plays the game and that the game is really playing itself. With that in mind, what if the game predicts the player’s actions wrong? What are the odds that the game will predict each action for each user perfectly during the entire game? This might only work well in games where there is low input, but otherwise, it will be a huge hurdle for Google to overcome. What do you think about Google’s new claims? Can a game ever completely predict the player’s actions? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

---

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Forbes.