With the announcement of Google Stadia‘s bandwidth requirements, some people are wondering if the service won’t play nice with the data caps on their internet service. Now, Google’s Phil Harrison has stated that it will be ISPs who will fix these issues.
Talking to Gamespot, Harrison stated that internet data caps aren’t a “universal challenge.” He then continued to explain that it would be the internet service providers themselves who would solve the data cap issue once Google Stadia became popular enough.
“The ISPs have a strong history of staying ahead of consumer trend and if you look at the history of data caps in those small number of markets–and it’s actually a relatively small number of markets that have [data caps]–the trend over time, when music streaming and download became popular, especially in the early days when it was not necessarily legitimate, data caps moved up,” stated Harrison. “Then with the evolution of TV and film streaming, data caps moved up, and we expect that will continue to be the case.”
Relying on the ISPs to increase their data caps based on the needs of a video game streaming service does raise some eyebrows. When presented with this concern, Harrison held fast. He claimed that “ISPs are smart [and] they understand that they’re in the business of keeping customers happy and keeping customers with them for a long time.”
Of course, the question remains of whether Stadia will become big enough to warrant attention from internet service providers in the first place. A recent survey showed that gamers in Europe were mostly uninterested in game streaming services such as Google Stadia.
As it stands now, Google has a lot to do, and a lot it can do, to win the hearts and minds of gamers. Can Google pull this off? We’ll find out when Stadia launches in November.
