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Google divorces Stadia’s connection strength indicator from 4K streaming

In addition to getting a homepage promotion today, Google is rolling out tweaks to Stadia’s connection strength indicator so that it’s no longer tied to 4K streaming quality.

When playing a game, the Stadia menu provides access to various settings. Under “Connection,” the top status icon will now only reflect your connection strength. As part of this change, there are three new status messages:

  • Excellent (green): Your internet connection is strong and games should run smoothly.
  • Fair (orange): Your internet connection may have less than ideal bandwidth, or may be experiencing network congestion. You may or may not notice a slight drop in resolution or frame rate.
  • Game might stop (red): Your internet connection may have less than ideal bandwidth, or may be experiencing network congestion. You may or may not notice a slight drop in resolution or frame rate.

Since “Connection” no longer indicates whether you are streaming in 4K, there is a new dedicated icon in that settings panel. In the past, “Excellent” was technically required for 4K, but users have long encountered that highest quality on “Good” and even “Ok” connections. No other changes are being made today:

Just to be clear, your gameplay quality itself will not be affected. The only difference will be the reporting of connection quality.

The in-game menu is available by pressing Shift + Tab online or the Stadia button on the Controller.

This change is in response to user feedback, and Google hopes it will “provide a more accurate readout for you.” It also comes ahead of “more refinements to the connection panel in the future.” This change to Stadia’s connection strength indicator is rolling over this week.

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com