How Bethesda Could Fix Game Streaming for Slow Internet Connections

Google Stadia and other platforms need all the help they can get

Credit: Bethesda

Streaming platforms like Google Stadia may be the future of the video game industry, but here in the present, it’s unclear if sluggish home internet speeds are up to the task. Bethesda, the publisher behind games like Fallout and Doom, hopes to fix that with its new Orion service. It promises to do what broadband providers can’t, or won’t: make it easier to serve homes that don’t have great internet connections.

Orion is geared toward augmenting existing or coming game streaming services, like Google Stadia or Microsoft’s xCloud, rather than competing with them. It’s an additional tech layer added to game engines that reduces their bandwidth and latency demands. Though Orion could no doubt give Bethesda a competitive edge (imagine the Stadia subscriber with the choice between a silky smooth Doom Eternal experience and, say, a busted Destiny 2 option) it plans to sell the technology to other game engine developers. Ubisoft, for example, could make the newest Assassin’s Creed stream even faster — for a licensing fee, of course.

Developers are going to need all the help they can get with game streaming. According to Stadia’s own website, a 4K stream will require a home…