Stadia Connect June 2019 Event Recap

Today Google delievered on its promise to give us more details on Stadia, its upcoming streaming service with its newest Stadia Connect event. We now know pricing, more details on product requirements, and launch games. If you'd rather catch the entire event check out below. This article includes a full recap and some still unanswered questions.

Pricing

First up is the thing everyone really wants to know. Price. And you can take a sigh of relief and breathe, because Google was pretty smart about this. The pricing is very very reasonable. They obviously want this to be widespread and have high adoption.

Google revealed two forms of plans, Stadia Pro and Stadia Base. The Stadia Pro is a reasonable 10$ a month, and that includes free games. Compare that to the ridiculously priced Nvidia GeForce Now, also only on PC/Mac. Also, considering that even PSNow is 20$ a month, exclusive to PS4 and Windows, and doesn't work nearly as well as Google claims Stadia does, 10$ seems like a bargain. However, they didn't stop there; Stadia Base seems to be free, treating Stadia like a store platform where you buy and own forever individual games. So Google isn't even forcing players to pay for their streaming platform at all, which is incredible considering the power and capability they claim it to have. Google really seems to be giving players the choice to pay them money as they are also not making the Stadia Controller optional as well, allowing support of existing controllers, even mouse and keyboard.

Stadia Founder's Edition

To sweeten the pot even further, Google is tempting early adopters with the Stadia Founder's Edition which will include a Limited Edition Night Blud Stadia Controller, a Chromecast Ultra for us on any TV, 3 months of Stadia Pro for you AND a friend, promised first access to Stadia and a Stadia Username. They also are throwing in Destiny 2: The Collection, which includes a newly revealed expansion Shadowkeep. Google promised that Destiny 2 will support cross save allowing those who may already own Destiny 2 the ability to transfer their games, including Google is working with Sony to make it happen with PS4 versions. This early bundle is 129$ and Google stressed that bundles were limited so get your pre-orders in at stadia.com

Intenet Requirements

Google also detailed exactly the break down of intenet requirements needed to play Stadia games. Considering the performance claims Google is making about these games, it seems very reasonable for most of us in residential areas. For max performance to only require 35 Mbps is pretty impressive. All we have to wait and see is now is the real world performance.

Supported Platforms:

Many, including myself, were hoping Google was going to take some existing partners to get Stadia on your TV. Since they've been upfront about not needing a new console it makes sense to get it on as many platforms as possible. This is a service not a box afterall. I've said before that the future consoles needs to be 100% backwards compatible for amoung other reasons a growing lack of free HDMI ports on the back of our TV's. I really wanted Google to announce that they were taking partners to have a Chrome/Stadia app on existing boxs we may already have under our TV. Xbox? PS4? Switch? Apple TV? Nope. So far only Chromecase, and Chromecast Ultra to be exact. As for what we do know, we know that it should work on any PC. Google also unveiled the first and only smartphones to support Stadia at launch is the newest Pixel phones. Considering the small market segment of Google phones over Samsung and Apple, while an understandable decision, it was still a dissappointment. They were also pretty vague about their platform plans. They said absolutlely nothing about Samsung or Apple devices specifically. They just kept using generic terms like "tablets" and "smartphones". With only ever demoing on google branded hardware, they need to eventually come out and talk about what tablets and smartphones they were working on supporting. They say "anything that can run the chrome browser" but does that mean only "desktop browsers" or would that include mobile versions of the chrome app? Many tablets only have a mobile chrome app so what tablets can run it? As far as what devices EXACLTY we can play stadia on at Launch or after is still not clear.

Games, Games, Games

Lastly but definitely not least, the event was peppered with games, and game reveals. Unlike the initial reveal where we only saw Doom Eternal and Assassin's Creed Odyssey, this event was packed with games.

World Premier of Balders Gate 3 was unveiled at Stadia Connect.

Not only did we get a new second trailer for Ghost Recon Breakpoint, we got confirmation that is coming to Google Stadia

Here's the unveil of Destiny 2 coming to Stadia, along with the news on the expansion Shadowkeep

While not during the event exactly, Darksiders Genesis, a Diablo style spin-off of the franchise with fourth yet unplayable horsemen Strife, dropped a new trailer around the same time. How this connect to Stadia, as Darksiders Genesis was included in a flash of a sizzle real of upcoming Stadia titles. It was so fast and so quick and so new that I almost thought it was an accidental leak. At the time of this image flash during the sizzle, THQ and Darksiders twitter had no mention of it. I did find the trailer on youtube eventually. This looked too cool to skip over like they did.

(Stadia Sizzle Reel)

For more news as it drops on Stadia make sure to stay tuned on everything Game Infinite.