Stadia games not running native 4K 60fps due to developer choice
When Google Stadia was formally announced, during a dedicated launch event earlier this year, its boss, Phil Harrison, claimed that all launch games would support 4K.
However, that has proved not to be the case. Instead, games are running at 1080p 30fps - 1440p at best - and are upscaled to 4K with frame doubling in place to provide 60fps.
That is unlikely to be a major problem for many, especially those who play Stadia games using a free Stadia Base account, but Stadia Pro subscribers might be a little more put out. They are paying £8.99 / $9.99 per month for "up to 4K 60fps" gameplay. And, while 1080p and 1440p are "up to 4K", they aren't exactly what was expected.
It seems that, rather than the Stadia hardware being at fault, it is actually developer choice currently limiting resolutions. Developers have opted to restrict the resolution of their games at source - presumably to ensure they run smoothly on new equipment.
Claims are that Bungie has purposely restricted the Stadia version of Destiny 2 to 1080p 30fps, while Rockstar seems to have limited Red Dead Redemption 2 to 1440p.
We can vouch for the fact that they still look great, with HDR enabled on a Pro account too, but not quite at the console-beating boasts originally made.
Indeed, it made us slightly reevaluate our review for now.
The one good bit about all this is that the technicalities of the hardware - the servers, infrastructure and Chromecast Ultra - are all capable of running 4K 60fps. So, it's up to the developers to improve their own launch offerings in time.
As Google said in a statement posted by Eurogamer: "Stadia streams at 4K and 60fps - and that includes all aspects of our graphics pipeline from game to screen: GPU, encoder and Chromecast Ultra all outputting at 4K to 4K TVs, with the appropriate internet connection.
"Developers making Stadia games work hard to deliver the best streaming experience for every game. Like you see on all platforms, this includes a variety of techniques to achieve the best overall quality. We 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.
"We expect that many developers can, and in most cases will, continue to improve their games on Stadia. And because Stadia lives in our data centers, developers are able to innovate quickly while delivering even better experiences directly to you without the need for game patches or downloads."
That means you might not be getting the exact experience you expect right now, but could in the near future. And, we have to say, our experience with Stadia so far has been highly positive anyway. We've been running it through a Chromecast Ultra on a 65-inch LG OLED TV and, graphically, it's still impressive considering there isn't a games console in sight.
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