Google Stadia Game Line-Up Doubled, But Is That Enough?
A surprise 48 hour-before-launch announcement by Google has pushed 12 more titles that were supposed to be released on Stadia at the end of the year up to the systems launch day.
But seriously, is that (mixed with the required bandwidth needed, plus missing features at launch) enough to keep the device above water in the long haul?
Google Stadia launched yesterday on November 19th, in 14 different territories which includes USA, UK and Canada, with 22 games at launch, for an initial price of $130 for a hardware starter kit with three months of premium service, and $10 a month afterwards. There’s another free tier coming in 2020 that has been detailed. But a 22 game launch was never the initial plan. Prior to yesterday’s release, Google Vice President and General Manager Phil Harrison announced via Twitter that the day one line-up of games has been increased to 22, and still, only one game in the line-up is Stadia exclusive, which is the indie-adventure puzzle title Gylt.
Stadia’s launch went with the approach of having too many triple-A already released titles instead of a variety of indie and console exclusive titles that could have drove more curious early adopters. We all loved and praised Apple’s avenue of offering subscribers access to approximately 70 exclusive games day 1 amongst others. Fans were hoping for more with Stadia.
Through a Reddit AMA, with Google’s Andrey Doronichev and Beri Lee responding to questions, they mentioned that a few key features will be missing from Stadia’s launch. A few of these features no doubt upset some of its fanbase. For example, one “high priority” key feature that is not available is Family Sharing, so early adopters will have to purchase games separately for a child’s account until some time next year. Another “wow” feature missing that stood out from the June GDC announcement was that YouTubers are not able to simultaneously play and live stream a game to YouTube yet, or even invite their viewers to join in. Along with other key features like 4K streaming for PC and achievements missing, fans are now questioning Google’s overall dedication to the service.
Another thing that scares consumers are internet data caps as well as how much data is trafficked to the system. According to Venture Beat, who has been tracking Google Stadia’s data usage since reviewers could get a hold of it, says that in the 13 minutes of playing Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1080p and 60FPS, Stadia ate up 119MB of data per minute, which is estimated at about 7.14GB every hour.
“That means just to play through the story of Red Dead Redemption 2, you will use more than 335GB of data on Stadia. Again, that’s at 1080p60. At 4K, you’re likely using at least twice that.”
As of right now, Stadia is far from the cloud gaming future that players had envisioned. But it’s still in the early days and players can expect even more cloud gaming options in 2020, when Microsoft is set to release xCloud, the Xbox family answer to Stadia.
