Did you know you can launch cloud games straight from Google Search? It’s a feature that’s been around for a while – and one that Google has been improving on over time. This week, the company has prominently highlighted the feature on social media while ignoring the elephant in the room of the imminent death of Stadia.
Back in August of this year, Google Search started showing cloud gaming services in Knowledge Panels for various games. Services shown included Nvidia GeForce Now, Xbox Game Pass, Amazon Luna, and of course, Google Stadia. When clicking the “play” button in Search, the game would open directly in the service of your choice.
Nothing has really changed since that time besides Google showing this shortcut more commonly, as pictured below. Though, notably, GeForce Now still doesn’t show for as many games as it probably should.
It’s not clear why Google is suddenly showing off this feature on Twitter, but the timing certainly isn’t ideal.
The clock is currently ticking on Google’s own cloud gaming service, Stadia. The platform first launched in late 2019 and grew to support a couple of hundred games over the course of three years but was confirmed to be shutting down on January 18, 2023.
Highlighting this Search feature certainly feels a little insensitive, given that context. But at the very least, this feature might help those leaving Stadia to find their games on other platforms.
More on Cloud Gaming:
- Stadia ‘dev node’ teardown shows off the hardware Google sent to developers
- Amazon Luna can now play games you own on PC, no channel subscriptions required
- Review: Acer Chromebook 516 GE brings out the best of cloud gaming
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