Friday, June 7th 2019
Google Stadia Pro Coming November 2019 for $130 Up Front, $10 Monthly with 31 Games at Launch
Google's Stadia platform will be the first serious effort to bring cloud gaming to the masses - a first, real step in a game that Microsoft and Sony are pursuing as well which will change the outlook for entertainment hardware development as we know it. The company has just announced that its Stadia Pro service will be launching come November of this year, with a $130 upfront cost for a Founder's Edition, which includes a limited edition Night Blue Stadia Controller, Chromecast Ultra, a free copy of Destiny 2, and 3 months of Stadia Pro for users and a special friend of theirs.
Besides this Founder's Edition pack, Stadia will be available in two packages. The Pro, which goes for $9.99 a month and allows you to play games up to 4K at 60 FPS with HDR and 5.1 surround, and the base version, which will be free of charge but limited to 1080p 60 FPS. You will always require a Chromecast Ultra and a Stadia controller, which will run you $70 each, though - so if this is up your alley, the Founder's Edition seems like a good setup, including three moths of games and the free-to-play-going Destiny 2. So they're not actually offering a game here - they're offering access to it through their cloud. Remember that unlike other subscription services, excluding free to play games, you'll always have to purchase each game you're going to play on the platform - it will be a digital storefront like any other.
When it comes to connection requirements, Google says users with an up to 1Mbps connection can play games at up to 720p in 60 FPS with smooth gameplay and stereo sound. However, users that want to take advantage of the 4K, 60 FPS, HDR and 5.1 surround will have to have at least a 35Mbps connection - which seems extremely flimsy for the kind of content we're talking about, but Google must know what they're talking about. Perhaps the best way to go about this will be to try out Destiny 2, which will be free, and see if your internet connection serves you right - there are scarcely other titles where you'll be able to see whether the service holds up well enough for serious gaming than that one. But that does mean at least a $130 investment... For a deal where you'll always be on the unsafe side of.
21 publishers have already signed on the service, and will make their games available through the platform - totaling 31 titles in total, including the just-announced Baldur's Gate 3. Perhaps Google knows something we don't about the release date of this little gem? The full list of publishers and respective games can be found below:
Check out the full Stadia livestream where these details where announced below:
Source:
Google via TechSpot
Besides this Founder's Edition pack, Stadia will be available in two packages. The Pro, which goes for $9.99 a month and allows you to play games up to 4K at 60 FPS with HDR and 5.1 surround, and the base version, which will be free of charge but limited to 1080p 60 FPS. You will always require a Chromecast Ultra and a Stadia controller, which will run you $70 each, though - so if this is up your alley, the Founder's Edition seems like a good setup, including three moths of games and the free-to-play-going Destiny 2. So they're not actually offering a game here - they're offering access to it through their cloud. Remember that unlike other subscription services, excluding free to play games, you'll always have to purchase each game you're going to play on the platform - it will be a digital storefront like any other.
21 publishers have already signed on the service, and will make their games available through the platform - totaling 31 titles in total, including the just-announced Baldur's Gate 3. Perhaps Google knows something we don't about the release date of this little gem? The full list of publishers and respective games can be found below:
- Bandai Namco - Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2
- Bethesda - DOOM Eternal, DOOM 2016, Rage 2, The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein: Youngblood
- Bungie - Destiny 2
- Capcom - TBD
- Coatsink - Get Packed (Stadia exclusive)
- Codemasters - GRID
- Deep Silver - Metro Exodus
- Drool - Thumper
- Electronic Arts - TBD
- Giants Software - Farming Simulator 19
- Larian Studios - Baldur's Gate 3
- nWay Games - Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
- Rockstar Games - TBD
- Sega - Football Manager
- SNK - Samurai Shodown
- Square Enix - Final Fantasy XV, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- 2K Games - NBA 2K, Borderlands 3
- Tequila Works - Gylt (Stadia exclusive)
- Warner Bros. - Mortal Kombat 11
- THQ - Darksiders Genesis
- Ubisoft - Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Just Dance, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, Trials Rising, The Crew 2
Check out the full Stadia livestream where these details where announced below:
48 Comments on Google Stadia Pro Coming November 2019 for $130 Up Front, $10 Monthly with 31 Games at Launch
Cloud gaming and PC gaming is like public transport and personal vehicle. I personally will try to stick to PC gaming and personal vehicle whenever possible.
This would be unacceptable for Stadia though, assuming it lasts even a decade. With Stadia you have to also buy the games. If those games end up disappearing later it becomes a complete no-deal for even more people. Even Steam and GOG, as two examples allow you to keep playing or downloading a game that they no longer offer for sale.
The only people you hear being 'pro-' to this sort of gaming are the absolute casuals that still like to game from time to time. You know, the people who got into busy lives and will never invest as much time in gaming as they'd actually want, realize that and look for a model that suits that - but here is the kicker: they only look for that model because of cost and ease of use! For them buying a new GPU and 'getting back into the game' is a hassle with a very small payoff, they even forget to keep their launcher(s) updated and when they do want to game, they're left staring at a download/install process. I'm totally not seeing how Stadia will be cheaper for this group. The startup fee is a dealbreaker, and they still have hardware that still needs its updates, they are still left in an ecosystem that changes all the time - and it comes with limited, controlled choice. Quite a few drawbacks.
Everyone else who likes gaming and is willing to invest more than a few hours of gaming per week, will echo what you say - especially those at age 20 or older. And that is a massive target audience, and more importantly, its a wealthy target audience. They don't need to cut corners and yes they like their backwards compatibility, its why they stuck to a PC instead of a console.
So what remains? A very vocal group of youngsters who have zero experience, are gullible, and grow up in an on-demand/rental society. They are not surrounded by ownership but by subscriptions - from their phones (a sizeable part of monthly expense for those 12-18 of age) to all the services they might use on those phones, to all the others bits of daily life now permeated with 'use it now, pay later' systems. For them, a service like Stadia is a twisted form of 'ownership' when in fact all they get is a very limited hardware terminal that becomes a brick when the sub ever ends. So I doubt that it will remain popular for this group in the long run, in that sense I think this service has a rather quick expiry date altogether.
'tis a strange world we live in.
Found the proper spec for Ultra:
wikidevi.com/wiki/Google_Chromecast_Ultra_(NC2-6A5-D)
Power brick is only so big, 'cause it has a USB-C to Ethernet interface built-in.
And what's up with the Chromecast Ultra requirement? Many TVs have built-in Google Cast nowadays.
Edit: Also can we stop saying "buy" when we talk about games? The only way to buy a game these days is to buy the rights. Anything else is just licensing the right to use a copy. And use as the publisher deems fit, not necessarily as you'd like.
The contract is in place at the original sale price. They do try really hard making us believe it isn't, by making the base game just about useless over time, but that's another story :)
On the other hand, if I were to choose a subscription service, the Microsoft XBox Game Pass For PC would be the more attractive model because it isn't cloud based gaming per se, although I'm loathe to pay any kind of subscription for gaming anyway.
Let's put this in a better scenario. I just had a business trip last week in Phoenix AZ. My backpack had my work laptop, tablet, nintendo ds, work stuff, and chargers inside it. I have a surface laptop. It is both small form factor and light in weight. It is by no means a gaming laptop. I get back to the hotel after a day of work, grab my laptop, hook it up via hdmi to the hotel tv, open the gaming app, grab my controller, and now I have a mobile console in the palm of my hands without any extra weight added into it besides the controller. I can stream my games freely to the laptop and game happily from the tv.
It only takes 1mbps to stream a 720p stream.....easy enough for a hotel. It is easier on my hotspot.
A 6 hour lay over in Atlanta Airport will make anyone want to play a game or do something besides stand there. The guy I sat beside on my flight back was stuck in Atlanta for 10 hours due to bad weather and flight cancellations last Saturday. He was both pissed and bored out of his mind, but he did have a laptop. It's rare to see people traveling not to carry around a tablet, phone, or a laptop. The airport got so full due to flight cancellations. There were no chairs left so everyone was sitting on the floor waiting on their flights lol. And that is not uncommon. It happens. A few hundred thousand people then become a bottleneck in the busiest airport in the world without much to do besides wait. There is money waiting to be had in that scenario.