id=”article-body” class=”row” section=”article-body”> Sarah Tew/CNET Google Stadia, the megacorp’s service to stream playable games on TVs and mobile devices without a console or PC, is the company’s leap into the melee of cloud gaming. Google is typically the biggest fish in any pond, but in cloud gaming it competes with other heavy hitters like Microsoft (xCloud), Nvidia (GeForce Now) and Sony (PlayStation Now).
As with all these services, Stadia games run on powerful datacenter servers, which makes it possible to render and stream demanding games to lightweight hardware like phones. Sometimes using a custom Stadia controller, sometimes not. Google also provides a platform and tools for developers to create Stadia-optimized versions of their games; your subscription fees go for for extra features, such as 4K and freebies.
If you think Stadia sounds confusing, you’re not alone. Fortunately, we can help cut through the hype and promised, but still missing, features.
Buy Stadia Premiere Edition Now playing: Watch this: Google Stadia: Everything you need to know about the… 7:02 When Google initially announced Stadia at GDC 2019, it hyped a lot of its grand ambitions, such as Crowd Play and State Share. But while those all may eventually come to fruition, at the moment it’s quite a pared down version of the company’s vision. That’s common with the incremental rollouts of these services.
For instance, Stadia only works over Wi-Fi now; network connection speed and quality is so important for a decent cloud gaming experience that all the companies who offer the option to play non-native mobile games over cellular networks are being very cautious. Hence the excitement around 5G. And Google is a latecomer to cloud gaming, so it’s still at the working-out-the-basic-kinks stage while others have leveled up on to refining the experience. That partially offsets the advantage of its extensive network of datacenters.
How much does it cost?
Stadia’s pricing can get a little confusing, mostly because Google hasn’t begun offering the subscription-only or free plans yet, just the hardware bundles. At launch it offered — and has since discontinued — a Founder’s Edition, which included a limited-edition blue controller, a Chromecast Ultra streaming device, 카니발카지노쿠폰 three months of Stadia Pro, Bungie’s full Destiny 2 experience, first dibs on a username and 샌즈카지노 a buddy pass that gave a friend three months to try Stadia Pro.
That has since evolved into the $129/£119 Premiere Edition, which comes with a white Stadia controller, Chromecast Ultra and three months of the Pro subscription. In mid-January 2020, Verizon announced it would be bundling Stadia Premiere Edition with new subscriptions to its top-end Fios Gigabit broadband plan beginning January 29th.
Stadia subscription tiers
Stadia Base Stadia Pro
Cost Free $9.99/£8.99 per month
Availability Coming some time this year Now (only with Premiere Edition bundle)
Quality Up to 1080/60fps, stereo sound Hardware permitting, up to 4K/60p HDR and 5.1 surround
Free games No Periodic limited-window offers
Game discounts No Limited time discount offers, percent varies
Google hasn’t provided any time frame for the rollout of the standalone subscription plans or expanded regional debuts yet; it’s currently available in North America (plus Puerto Rico and Alaska, but not Hawaii or Guam) and selected countries in Western Europe and Scandinavia, including the UK.
How do I buy games?
At the moment, the Stadia game store is walled off behind a login that you can only get with a Premiere Edition account. Games are only available from Google.
Game prices are typically the publisher prices and sold only through Google, so if you’re a subscriber, you’ll really want to pay attention to those discount offers.
Cancellation policy
If you decide to cancel your Stadia Pro subscription, it reverts to Stadia Base, so you can still play any Stadia games you’ve paid for. However, you lose access to any free games or content that you got as a perk of the Pro subscription. Google saves your progress and add-on history so you can resubscribe and pick up where you left off.
If you return the entire Premiere hardware bundle for a refund within the 15-day window, you lose the Stadia Pro 3-month trial and the aforementioned freebies. Game purchases can be refunded within two weeks and less than 2 hours of gameplay.
The flip side of this, though, is what happens if a game publisher “cancels”; we’ve all seen content disappear from IP-heavy subscription plans like Netflix and Amazon Prime (I still haven’t gotten over Doctor Who disappearing at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s eve), and some games have been known to drift in and out of subscription services. Google intends to keep games available to play if you’ve spent the money on them, but that’s a little too fuzzy to consider a policy.
Stadia requirements
In its current state, you can officially play Stadia games on select Android phones (Pixel 2, Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, or Pixel 4), iPhone and iPads, TVs (with a Chromecast Ultra and Stadia Controller), in the Chrome browser on laptops and desktops, or on Chrome OS devices. As usual with iOS apps, you can’t actually buy games within them, just manage games and play them. However, that doesn’t mean people haven’t been running them with various degrees of success on unsupported devices, including the Nintendo Switch and not-Google phones.
Since launch, Google has expanded its controller support beyond its own Stadia Controller ($69/£59) to any HID-compliant one, which includes many Xbox Controllers and the DualShock 4. It supports TVs via the Stadia Controller (over Wi-Fi) and Chromecast Ultra; the service requires at least Android 6.0/iOS 11 or tablets running Chrome OS 77. You can connect controllers via USB or selectively via Bluetooth, and Stadia does support keyboard and mouse play using Chrome.
Now playing: Watch this: Playing Google Stadia for the first time 7:03 Stadia itself still only runs wirelessly over Wi-Fi — no cellular connections yet, though you can always try running that way using your phone as a hotspot — but a wired Ethernet connection is still the preferred method for all these services. Google specifies minimum bandwidth requirements for each quality level of 10Mbps (720p), 20Mbps (1080p) and 퍼스트카지노쿠폰 35Mbps (4K). As for data usage, the company says it sucks up to 4.5GB, 12.6GB or 20GB per hour for either of those resolutions, respectively. If your connection is a little erratic or drops, Google buffers the game state for a few minutes to give you an opportunity to fix it.
February’s Stadia Pro games
Gylt
Metro Exodus
Current game lineup
Destiny 2: The Collection
Kine
Gylt
Red Dead Redemption 2
Thumper
Tomb Raider Definitive Edition
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition
Mortal Kombat 11
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Just Dance 2020
Samurai Shodown
Borderlands 3
Attack on Titan 2 Final Battle
Darksiders Genesis
Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2
Farming Simulator 19
Final Fantasy XV
Football Manager 2020
NBA 2K20
Grid
Rage 2
Metro Exodus
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Trial Rising
Upcoming games
Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 3
Doom Eternal
Marvel’s Avengers
Cyberpunk 2077
The Elder Scrolls Online
Watch Dogs: Legion
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
What’s next?
The Google Stadia team laid out the plans for the first three months of 2020 on Jan. 16. Along with more features rolling out, the team expects 120 games to be released this year. Here are the features promised to arrive next:
Expanded capabilities for 퍼스트카지노주소 gaming via stadia.com, including 4K support, Google Assistant improvements and wireless gameplay with the Stadia Controller
Support for more Android phones
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