Google Stadia has struggled to find any good press recently. Stadia launched with comparatively few games, the service itself was missing many of its promised features, and game technology analysts such as Digital Foundry revealed that many of the games that Google promised would run at 4K60, in fact run with much slower frame rates, and lesser resolutions. In the wake of this, Google has responded, attempting to clarify the situation.

When Google Stadia was first announced, one of its biggest selling points was the promise of 4K60 gaming. The claimed advantage of game streaming by Google was that the only limitation to resolution and frame rates would come from the speed of your internet. One week after the release of Stadia however, and it seems that Google may have broken its promise.

Video game technology and graphical analysts such as Digital Foundry have been testing the games released on Stadia, and have discovered that not only are they not running at 4K60, but some are even lower than their console counterparts, despite having more GPU power than both the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X combined.

Destiny 2, for example, runs natively at 1080p, which is lower than even the PS4 Pro. Likewise, Red Dead Redemption 2 runs only at 1440p30fps. This is made worse by the fact that 4K60 was touted to be one of the main reasons for Stadia Pro, the paid alternative to Stadia Base. While Stadia Pro does offer other incentives, one of its biggest appears to be untrue. The fine print for Google Stadia Pro does state that it will allow for “up to 4K60”, but even so, Destiny 2 at 1080p is too big a disparity for that technicality to hold weight in this argument.

In response to the discovery, Google released a statement, saying “Stadia streams at 4K and 60 FPS – and that includes all aspects of our graphics pipeline from game to screen” but that they “give developers the freedom of how to achieve the best image quality and framerate on Stadia and we are impressed with what they have been able to achieve for day one”. According to Google, “We expect that many developers can, and in most cases will, continue to improve their games on Stadia”. The full statement can be read here.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of Google’s response? Have they successfully explained away the issue, or do you think Google has been deceptive in their marketing? Let us know down below.

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