Over the past months, I’ve read a lot of articles and tweets talking about cloud gaming, and how similar (or not) are the two main platforms in this area: Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now.
Since I’ve spent a lot of time repeating myself again and again on this subject, I’ve decided to write an article on how similar and different both of them are.
All the information I used to write this post comes from publicly available sources.
What is cloud gaming
Cloud gaming is the ability to play a video game with a remote hardware. This is something you could also call game streaming, because that’s what it is.
Basically, instead of owning a powerful machine to run the latest game with the highest performance, and having to renew it every few years, you’re just going to use someone else’s hardware for a cheap monthly price. The game is going to run remotely, your local controller input will be sent to the datacenter, executed on the machine, then the display will be streamed back to your home.
You only need a screen, a device capable of playing a video stream, and that’s all. Easy to set up, easy to play, nothing to worry about (except maybe your internet connection).
There’re a lot of advantages to use cloud gaming:
- No need to download, install, or update a game.
- No need to worry about physical storage.
- No need to have a powerful computer.
- Play almost everywhere: computer, phone, tablet, TV.
But this also comes with some downsides:
- A really good internet connection is needed.
- Impossible to play offline.
- Input lag higher than a local PC.
Cloud gaming is not something new, and it has been here for years, waiting for the good time to rise. You do not need to have a powerful device to use cloud gaming, but you do need to have an excellent and unlimited internet access to play. And that was the major issue for the past years: bad network connection, high latency, data caps.
You should have at least 10/15 Mbps of download speed for the lowest quality. For the 4K experience, plan to have a connection of at least 35 Mbps to enjoy the game.
Also, since you’re basically streaming a video, you definitely need an unlimited internet plan. For a session of one hour playing the best quality (4K), you’ll use up to 20 GB of data. For a month playing one hour a day in 4K, it could be up to 430 GB.
Finally, and that’s maybe the most important part, the latency. This is the major difference between streaming a video (like Netflix), and streaming a video game. When you watch a video, you don’t really care about the latency between your home and Netflix datacenter, because you don’t have any live interaction with the video itself.
For a video game, this is something totally different. If you press jump on your controller and you need to wait a full second to see it happening on the screen, this is totally unplayable. And that latency, based on the type of game you’re playing, will be perceived totally differently.
The input lag is the addition of all the latencies behind the gaming: controller latency, processing latency, display latency, … and of course for cloud gaming network latency is one of the most important parts.
Nvidia GeForce Now
Introduction
Nvidia GeForce Now is the cloud gaming service launched by Nvidia in February 2020. After more than seven years of development and beta testing, the service is now available to everyone.
Unlike Stadia, GeForce Now is not a platform on its own. It’s rather a way to stream games you already own in your personal library: Steam, Uplay, Epic, … you just have to link your account to GeForce Now, and you’ll be able to play. Not every game is available, but Nvidia GeForce Now offers hundreds of games you can already play, and they’re constantly adding new games to their list.
Nvidia uses a mix between their own datacenters, and some partners’ datacenters. They have a total of nine datacenters in North America, six in Western Europe, two in Russia, one in Japan and one in South Korea for a total of 19 datacenters.
Pricing
Nvidia Geforce Now comes with two offers: a free one, and a paid one.
With the free membership you get the standard access. Depending on when and where you play, you’ll be queued with other free players until a server becomes available. Also, you’ll be limited to session of one hour max. After that you’ll have to save your game and re-enter in the queue system to play for another one hour.
The Founders membership is a paid subscription of $4.99/month. It gives you priority access (no waiting time) to the servers, and the ability to play up to six hours per session. You’ll also be able to experience the best quality with the Nvidia ray tracing technology.
Keep in mind that the Founders subscription is a limited time offer, and there is no guarantee that the price won’t go up at some point.
Requirements
To use GeForce Now, you’ll need one of the following device to stream the video:
- A Windows computer.
- A Mac computer.
- A Nvidia Shield TV.
- An Android phone or tablet.
On the connection side, you’ll need at least:
- 15 Mbps for the 720p at 60 fps.
- 25 Mbps for the 1080p at 60 fps.
How does it work
Nvidia GeForce Now is able to stream games you already own. For that, they have a number of pre-installed Windows servers with launchers (Steam, Uplay, Epic, …) and games already deployed. So when you want to play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Nvidia will use a Windows server with Uplay installed and the game ACO already downloaded, so you don’t have to wait before playing.
It’s exactly as if you were launching the game on your computer, but this time the computer is not in your home, and you just get the video stream.
When you press the jump button on your controller, it’ll be sent to your computer, which will forward it to the server in the Nvidia datacenter. The action will be executed on the remote game, and then the display will be streamed back to your screen.
Stadia
Introduction
Stadia is a new gaming platform announced by Google in 2018.
Unlike Nvidia GeForce Now which is only streaming PC games, Stadia is really a new platform, with games designed and developed for cloud gaming. Stadia has its own catalog of games, and as you would have to rebuy a game you already own on PC to play it on a Xbox/PS, you’ll also have to rebuy games if you want to play them on Stadia.
The good news is you’re playing games designed to be streamed. The publishers and the developers need to integrate the game for Stadia, and make sure everything works perfectly on the platform. For that purpose, Stadia is designed with dev tooling (latency, packets lost, …) to simulate multiple internet connection types, and see how the game runs in each condition.
There’s no precise list of Stadia datacenters, but the idea is to be as close as possible from the players to minimize the latency and the number of hops. For that, Google has more than 7500 edge nodes around the world already used to cache contents for other services like Youtube or Google Play. These locations are also used by Stadia to put the gaming hardware as well.
Pricing
Like Nvidia, Stadia also has two different ways of playing: the base and the pro access.
The base access allows you to access the platform for free. Once connected, you need to buy games as you would do for any other platform. There’re also some restrictions regarding the maximum quality: you can only play with content up to 1080p and stereo sound.
If you want more, you can subscribe to Stadia pro for $9.99/month, and unlock more features: streaming up to 4K with 5.1 surround sound. With the pro subscription, you also have regular discounts on games, and free games every month.
If you buy a game with a pro discount and then you switch back to Stadia base, you’ll still be able to play that game. If you claim a free pro game and then you switch back to Stadia base, you won’t be able to play that game unless you reactivate your pro subscription again.
How does it work
As Stadia is a new platform, the infrastructure is totally different from Nvidia. Games are running on Linux servers, and are specifically developed to run on Stadia. When you start a game, you get a Linux instance with the build already available on it and up to date.
When you press a button on the Stadia controller, the input is directly sent to the wifi router, removing one additional hop. The action will be executed on the Stadia server, then the video will be streamed back to your computer.
If you want more information on how it works behind the scenes, the Stadia Streaming Tech from the Google I/O’19 is really interesting.
Requirements
To play on Stadia, you’ll need one of the following device to stream the video:
- A computer with Google Chrome installed.
- An Android phone or tablet.
- A Chromecast Ultra.
On the connection side, you’ll need at least:
- 10 Mbps for the 720p at 60 fps.
- 35 Mbps for the 4K at 60 fps.
Cloud gaming benchmark
Environment
For this benchmark, I’ve used the following hardware:
- Computer: MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, basic config).
- Network: Google Wifi in 5Ghz, and priority device given to the MBP.
- Internet speedtest (on fast.com): 400 Mbps download, 30 Mbps upload, latency 6 ms.
For Nvidia GeForce Now, I’ve the following setup:
- Nvidia Shield controller in Bluetooth.
- Nvidia Founders access.
And for Stadia:
- Stadia controller in Wifi.
- Stadia Pro access.
Startup time
First test, let’s check how much time the game needs to start on both platforms. I’ve recorded my screen, and started the stopwatch at the moment when I released the click on my mouse.
Stadia is a clear winner here with only 21 seconds to be ready. Nvidia is far behind and needs 3x more time to start with 1min03.
The explanation is quite simple, GeForce Now is just a streaming wrapper around Steam: it uses a Windows server, has to start Steam and then launches the game. On Stadia, the game directly starts on a Linux server, and that’s all.
Input lag
The input lag is one of the most important things in cloud gaming. It could make your game totally unplayable if it’s too high. When running a game remotely, the network latency will be a huge part of the input lag.
On both platforms, we have a server running the video game binary, let’s try to see if we can find “how far” this server is.
Wireshark is a tool to listen and capture traffic going through the network card. While playing the game, I was able to sniff my network packets to find the remote server’s IP address. Cloud gaming has a huge bandwidth consumption. It’s not too hard to find the server address in the packet list, looking for a UDP connection.
For Nvidia, the remote server IP address is 24.51.19.228, and its remote port used to send the video stream is 18671.
For Stadia the remote IP address is 136.112.42.157, and the remote port is 44700.
Knowing both the IP addresses and the remote ports, I can now check what is the latency between my computer and the remote server. To do that, I’ve used the traceroute command with UDP packets.
As the output shows, there are 10 hops between my computer and the Nvidia server. The time for a packet to start from my computer, reach the server, and return to my computer is 30 ms.
For Stadia, the server is closer, only 8 hops, and a round trip time of 15 ms.
Again, Stadia wins here with 2 less hops. The Nvidia latency is 2x higher than the Stadia one.
But how does this latency affect the game? To check it in game, I’ve recorded two small gameplay sequences making my character jump. In order to know when I pressed the controller button, I also recorded my room sound.
When I had to press the jump button, I pressed it very loudly. The point was to have a “reference” in my video to start the stopwatch.
Keep in mind this is not the more accurate method, and my screen was recorded at 60 fps (16.67 ms per frame). But since the same method is used for both platforms, it should show some interesting results.
I was able to sync both sequences using the sound spike: the first spike indicates the button is pressed and the second one is when the button is released. Since the action starts when the controller button is pressed, I just had to start the stopwatch at that moment.
And once more, Stadia wins. Only 119 ms between the time I pressed the button and when the character started to move. For Nvidia, this is 50% more with 182 ms.
Once again, it’s quite easy to understand why: I’m closer to the Stadia server as we saw with the latency. Also, I’m playing like I would play on my TV: with a wireless controller. For Stadia, the controller is connected to the router in Wifi. For Nvidia, the controller is connected to my computer in Bluetooth, that’s one more hop.
Summary
So now, what’s the best cloud gaming solution? Which one should you pick, and why? First, let’s review each aspect of the two solutions.
Games availability
That’s a major win for Nvidia GeForce Now. The service has been here in beta for years, and since it’s a wrapper around launchers like Steam, Uplay, Epic, … it has a huge number of available games, almost 600.
Stadia as a totally new platform is far behind Nvidia, and only has 50 games available for now.
Game quality
Both platforms support 720p and 1080p. But Stadia wins with the 4K resolution.
Startup time
Stadia is way faster than Nvidia in the startup period. Even if it’s something you just do once when you start playing the game, Stadia is 3x faster for opening your game.
Input lag
On the input lag, Stadia is also faster. The way the solution is designed with the controller directly connected to the router in Wifi, and the Google worldwide infrastructure make Stadia 30% quicker than Nvidia.
Conclusion
In my opinion, on the tech side, Stadia is way better than Nvidia GeForce Now and is the winner of the cloud gaming solution.
On one hand, the fact it’s a new platform allows games to be developed for cloud gaming purposes, and gives it way better performance than GeForce Now.
On the other hand, as it’s a new platform, you can’t play games you already own on your PC library as you would be able to do with GeForce Now. And the catalog is reduced because developers need to integrate Stadia.
So, which solution to pick? I would say it depends on how you play.
Nvidia GeForce Now
If you have a huge Steam, Uplay, Epic, … game library and you love to replay them all the time, Nvidia GeForce Now is the solution to go. It allows you to play your games, the library is huge, and you don’t have to rebuy them.
Pros
- No need to rebuy games you already own on PC.
- Huge library: you can play games from Steam, Uplay, Epic … even if they were not designed for cloud gaming.
Cons
- It’s more game streaming than cloud gaming.
- Need to login to the other platforms (Steam, Uplay, …).
- Impossible to buy the game directly from GeForce.
- Huge startup time.
- Biggest latency and input lag.
Stadia
If you’re more like me, you buy a game, you play it, then you switch to a new one, Stadia is the solution for you. It has the best tech features, and will likely give you the best performance.
Pros
- Real cloud gaming solution.
- Small latency and input lag.
- Game developed to be played with cloud gaming: integrated, tested, and validated with the Stadia infrastructure before the release.
- Buy and be already playing the game in ~30 seconds.
Cons
- Not a huge list of games for now.
- Need to rebuy games you already own on PC.
