Google Immersive Stream for Games is the technology behind Google Stadia, but slowly also being used by other third-party partners. One of the most recent examples is AT&T, adding Control to their offering, but now there’s another. Capcom has launched an online demo of Resident Evil Village and, you guessed it, Immersive Stream for Games is behind it.
Resident Evil Village is already available on Google Stadia, but the new demo is a completely separate product. You go to Capcom’s website, hit the play button, and you’re straight into the game. Keyboard and mouse are supported as well as controller, though not the Google Stadia controller it seems.
“Immersive Stream for Games, Google’s cloud gaming technology, powers both our Stadia gaming platform and publishers’ ability to deliver games directly to their players. And today, Immersive Stream for Games is supporting world-renowned publisher Capcom with their launch of a cloud demo for their award-winning survival horror game, Resident Evil Village.”
The demo itself works really well, albeit capped at 1080p and without HDR, but it plays exactly as you would hope. Stadia already has a standalone demo of Resident Evil Village for its players to try out, but there’s a bigger picture play here. Imagine a future where you land on the website of a new or upcoming game and there’s a button that lets you try it instantly. All without leaving the browser. The ability to push a game in this manner has huge implications for discoverability and even just the future of game demos.
Google has been doing its own work on Stadia with demos, providing one-click access to play full versions of games for a limited time. There’s no technical reason why future partners couldn’t offer the same type of access directly either pre or post-launch. There’s a lot to be said for just being able to click a button and instantly try out a new game.
For Capcom, specifically, this is something of an experiment. Once the demo has been completed players are presented with ways to continue playing on supported platforms. In this case, it’s already on Stadia, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have AT&T’s Batman game, after all. But pushing Immersive Stream for Games to publishers such as Capcom certainly won’t hurt Stadia going forward, either.
Hit up the Resident Evil Village website to take it for a spin yourself.
Source: Google
