Google Stadia: Everything you need to know

Both Microsoft and Sony are getting into the video game streaming business. Google Stadia and Xbox Project xCloud both look like rather similar offerings on the surface, but are they?

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Microsoft’s Xbox has been one of the dominant gaming platforms for a long time now, but times are changing and a lot of focus is shifting to cloud-based platforms. With just a few months to go until launching its next Xbox, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has said he views Google Stadia and Amazon as the company’s “main” competition.

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Every week, Google offers a recap of the biggest happenings in its library of games. Today, a new game, Monster Energy Supercross 3, has released on the Stadia Store, alongside two major updates arriving for Destiny 2 and Mortal Kombat 11.

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With the year well under way, it’s time for the next round of titles available to subscribers of Google’s cloud streaming service. Two new Stadia Pro games will be available for February 2020.

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Besides games, Google’s Stadia roadmap revealed four upcoming platform features slated for Q1 2020. A Stadia Controller update is presumably required to enable that upcoming functionality, with one beginning to roll out.

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Google has a lot of things to work on with Stadia right now, but perhaps its biggest task is getting more games on the service. The Unity 3D engine powers a lot of games available today, and with its latest release, the engine is making it easier to bring games to Google Stadia.

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Beyond the usual monthly perk of free games, Google Stadia Pro members are offered exclusive discounts on purchasing new games. Closing out January and stepping into February, Google has prepared a new set of deals for those Stadia Pro members, including 60% off Mortal Kombat 11.

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Google Stadia launched late last year in four colorways, with many more scrapped options teased in photos. However, there’s actually an official fifth “Clear” color scheme for the Google Stadia Controller, which uses transparent plastic to reveal the controller’s inner workings.

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Getting the Stadia Controller Claw has been a bit of a saga. Earlier this week, it went on sale at Power Support before the manufacturer stopped taking new orders. It’s now available on the Canadian Google Store.

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For the past several years, Google has had a presence at the Game Developers Conference focused on mobile and cloud services. The company today detailed their “Google for Games Developer Summit” at GDC 2020 this March.

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The first update for the Google Stadia app of 2020 arrived earlier today, bringing a handful of improvements and features. Looking deeper into the app, we’ve found evidence that Google Stadia on Android will soon let you zoom in on screenshots, use the Assistant, and more.

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An update to Stadia for Android and iOS rolled out today with a number of small tweaks. Most notable is “Pro” badging for free subscription games, as well as Google providing an estimate for how much data Stadia’s Balanced 1080p tier uses.

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For over two months now, I’ve been playing video games almost exclusively on Google Stadia. In that time, Stadia has shown itself to be simultaneously both the best and the worst platform for multiplayer gaming.

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Last week, BT in the UK became the first European distribution partner for Stadia. A similar partnership is now happening stateside with Google and Verizon announcing that new Fios subscribers will receive Stadia Premiere Edition for free.

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Stadia yesterday laid out its initial 2020 roadmap by noting how many games are in the works and what features are coming in the next three months. BT in the United Kingdom has just announced a partnership with Google to offer subscribers free access to Stadia.

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Since the holidays, there’s been a lull in Stadia news that’s upset some early adopters. Google today kicked off the new year with a features roadmap for the next three months, and revealed that 120 titles are coming in 2020.

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Yesterday, we spotted how the manufacturer Google partnered with to make a phone holder for Stadia pegged availability for “mid-December.” You can now buy the Stadia Controller Claw directly from Power Support.

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One of the big promises of Google Stadia is that Stadia Pro can bring games in up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second with HDR colors, but unfortunately not every game can check all of those boxes.

As of today, Google won’t tell you the resolution or frame rate at which Stadia runs each game, but thankfully a Stadia fan site has taken up the task.

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