In an interview with GameSpot, Vice President and General Manager of Google Phil Harrison explained that he’s not worried about data caps being a problem when the Stadia, a cloud-based gaming subscription service, rolls out next year. Data caps are not a universal challenge,” said Harrison, who went on to add that he is confident that internet service providers will respond to increased consumer demand for streaming services.
“The ISPs have a strong history of staying ahead of consumer trend and if you look at the history of data caps in those small number of markets … the trend over time, when music streaming and download became popular, especially in the early days when it was not necessarily legitimate, data caps moved up,” explained Harrison. “Then with the evolution of TV and film streaming, data caps moved up, and we expect that will continue to be the case.”
Google’s Stadia service promises to stream high-quality video games at up to 4K resolution, depending on the subscription package, and Harrison is confident that the market will adopt video game streaming at a rate that ISPs can’t ignore. “ISPs are smart they understand that they’re in the business of keeping customers happy and keeping customers with them for a long time.”
Given that many Americans don’t have much (if any) choice in their internet service providers and are often forced to deal with whatever prices and plans they’re given, expecting service providers — who are the source of the self-imposed caps in the first place — simply to meet market demand without consumers being forced to pay extra seems idealistic, given the state of the market. But who knows? Perhaps the demand for streaming game services will be enough for force the industry’s hand.
Optimal Stadia subscribers will be able to stream games with 5.1 surround sound at a 4K resolution, at at a stable 60 FPS, all of which requires a recommended 35 mbps connection (10 mbps is a hard minimum). Harrison also clarified that the Stadia streaming service will make use of compression, which will keep the data estimate of 35 mbps down “significantly.” Acknowledging that the service is demanding regardless of how it’s calculated, he also said that Stadia will “give players information about what [data amount] they’re using and how they can change their resolution if they want to.”
