Stadia, Google’s still fledgling game streaming service, has been around for over a year, but still has many needs and significant space to grow. Here are some of the biggest areas Stadia is focusing on in its 2021 roadmap.
Missing features
Throughout 2020, Stadia consistently met many of the expectations that Google outlined at launch. However, there are some “obvious” things that are still tragically missing from Stadia.
The most notorious of these is the lack of any search functionality, both in the Stadia Store and in the player’s library. With the steady growth of the Stadia game market and expansions, the task of hunting down the exact game or add-on you are looking for has become more frustrating. Even researching your own games can become frustrating as your library expands. Stadia’s integration with Google Assistant helps with that, but unfortunately it’s only available for Chromecast Ultra.
In addition to the “new” features, Stadia also desperately needs to align its various applications with each other. The Android app doesn’t offer party features or voice chat, nothing, but Chromecast Ultra offers Google Assistant, the web app can’t be used to set up a Stadia controller for the first time, and more.
Playerbase
Another critical goal for Stadia’s 2021 roadmap is to expand the player base. In the past few months, Google has worked hard to make more people aware of the name Stadia, especially with the recent raffle for YouTube Premium. Then, with the release of Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia proved that it was more than capable of executing the latest releases.
Next year, Google needs to continue its outreach efforts to ensure that, as more games reach Stadia, older games will still have enough players to sustain a community.
One way to expand the player base is to take Stadia to more countries around the world. By formally expanding into countries like India, Mexico and Brazil – of which the latter two have already tasted cloud games through Microsoft’s xCloud Streaming Beta – Stadia has seen an explosion of new players almost overnight.
Games library
Obviously, one of the most surefire ways to expand the number of people playing at Stadia is to actually offer the types of games that people want to play. Google has already made some progress on this, offering completely free games like Destiny 2 and Super Bomberman R Online. Undoubtedly, games like Fortnite and Apex Legends would bring a great opportunity for Stadia to win more players.
A much more complicated strategy for Stadia to get more players is to offer the latest “viral” games – think of the Fall Guys and Hades lines, some of the biggest nightly hits of the year. There is no denying that Stadia is one of the most convenient ways to play a particular game, just buy and play. Unfortunately, there is almost no way of knowing in advance which game will be the next big thing.
Overall, Google needs to put Stadia in a position of success, ensuring that the 2021 roadmap is filled with games that have same-day releases on Stadia, instead of the months-late releases we saw in 2020.
Unique features of Stadia
Typically, each new generation of gaming hardware comes with features that would otherwise have been impossible on previous consoles – things like lightning tracking, integrated streaming tools or unique controller features. Since the day it was first revealed, Google has been publicizing the unique things that Stadia games should be able to do through cloud-enabled features or by integrating with the Google ecosystem. So far, all we’ve gotten is the first views of features like Crowd Play on YouTube and State Share, which only work with a game.
And that is a pity, considering that there is an infinite wealth of possibilities to be explored. Imagine if a game could be linked directly to Google Assistant. As suggested at GDC 2019, players could one day ask the Assistant for help in overcoming a level. But let’s go deeper. A horror game could – theoretically, if allowed – use the Wizard to control the lights in your smart home to suddenly darken your room in a dramatic moment.
Regardless of the actual implementation, more games should try to take advantage of Stadia’s exclusive features in 2021, as this gives players a reason to play on Stadia instead of other consoles they already own.
Graphics update
One of the most unlikely items for Stadia’s 2021 roadmap is the possibility of a “hardware” update. With the latest generation of consoles now in many homes around the world, Stadia’s seemingly next-generation performance will not age well, especially with the arrival of games that optimize for these new consoles.
It has been rumored for a long time that a kind of “Generation 2” is coming to Stadia, bringing resources that we haven’t seen yet. For example, the developers of the next Chorus game indicated – but then deleted – that the Stadia version of the game will offer ray tracing, a computationally difficult lighting technique not used by any of the current Stadia games.
It remains to be seen what more a “Generation 2” update can bring, but the important thing to remember is that the “update” would be perfect and shouldn’t cost players or even need you to think about it. Since everything is in the cloud, Stadia can simply launch more demanding games on better server hardware.
Android TV support
I am mentioning the latter, as it is the only thing that has been fully confirmed. Although Chromecast with Google TV was launched as an effective successor to Chromecast Ultra, the latest Google TV / Android TV device cannot (officially) play on Stadia.
Fortunately, Google has confirmed to us that Stadia will arrive on Chromecast with Google TV in the first half of the year, with broader support for Android TV later. In the meantime, our APK Insight team is closely following the development of the fledgling Android TV experience with each update of the Stadia app for Android.
How long will this take?
Unfortunately, for many of these improvements, as well as those we don’t think about, Google is intentionally keeping quiet about its plans. As described by John Justice in a recent Escapist podcast, the Stadia team is making an effort to no longer make exaggerated promises about the future of the service. This means that we probably won’t know when these improvements are due until the day of their release.
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