Borderlands 3 boss ‘excited’ for Google Stadia so ‘fans can play on a phone’
BORDERLANDS 3 could be coming to streaming services as well as consoles and gaming PCs.
“I’m really excited that someone will be able to play Borderlands 3 on a phone screen, in a coffee shop,” Borderlands producer Chris Brock told Sun Online.
While a few years ago Brock says he would have been “skeptical” of such a service, it’s “very exciting” now it has “Google’s muscle behind it.”
Talking as Gearbox unveiled the game properly for the first time, Brock revealed the developer was “really excited” for new technologies such as Google Stadia, and how they will let more people play games.
Google Stadia promises to run games on Google’s computers, in its data centres around the world, and let anyone who can connect to the Internet play them on whatever devices they’re connecting with.
A demo shown when the service was revealed showed a player seamlessly switching from a desktop computer to a TV to a mobile phone, all with the same gaming experience.
Google Stadia “really lowers the bar” for new players, Brock said, by totally removing the need for them to shell out hundreds of pounds on a console or even more on a gaming PC.
“The most important thing for us is to make a game that’s fun, and to get it into people’s hands,” Brock says.
“We’re not a tech company… but we’re excited for new technology that helps us hit those goals.”
Borderlands 3 is being developed using Unreal Engine 4, which developer Epic Games has already promised is compatible with Google’s Stadia platform.
Shortly after Stadia was announced, Epic said that the development software was getting “fully-featured integration with Stadia to help developers bring their games to an even broader spectrum of players.”
Borderlands 3 is out on September 21, and is currently slated for PC, Xbox One and PS4.
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Google has promised an update on the service and the games that will be available for it some time this summer. It is currently unclear how much the service will cost, and exactly how you will pay for access to it.
Microsoft is planning a similar service called xCloud, which will exist in parallel to the next Xbox.
Sony, meanwhile, is throwing all its weight behind the PlayStation 5.
Video game streaming – how does it work?
We explain it all...
- When you watch a movie, the images you see are already prepared
- That’s why very unsophisticated computers inside your TV, DVD player, or computer can playback film footage
- But video games render the visuals in real-time, because a game never knows what you’ll do next
- That means you need much more computing heft to produce game visuals, compared to a standard movie
- So if you want amazing 4K PC-style graphics, you’ll need to fork out for an expensive computer
- Alternatively, you could use game streaming technology
- The idea is that a company like Microsoft or Sony would handle the generation of the visuals on powerful computers at its own HQ
- Then it would send what’s effectively a video of that game to your smartphone
- You tap and play, and those commands get sent back to Microsoft or Sony, which then inputs them into the game, and sends you the visuals again
- Because modern internet connections are so fast, this all happens in milliseconds
- The resulting effect is 4K PC-style graphics on a smartphone – which is only possible because it’s not the phone itself rendering the graphics
- It also means that you could potentially be playing an Xbox or PlayStation game on your console, and then leave the house and carry on playing using your iPhone
- This sort of technology could eventually kill off gaming consoles for good, because all you’d need is a TV with game-streaming tech built in, and a controller to play with
- But game streaming hasn’t had any great successes thus far
- Sony bought a game-streaming called OnLive, but shut it down in 2015
- And Nvidia has its own game-streaming service, but laggy performance has prevented it from becoming a mainstream choice
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