When Google launched its cloud gaming service, Stadia, in November 2019, we were impressed by the concept but execution was lacking. Almost a year and a half after its debut, Stadia slowly gained the features that Google initially boasted about, bringing it closer to the service it has the potential to be. Stadia is far from perfect and Google still has a lot of work to do, but it is a much better service today than it was at launch.
The news that Google has decided to leave the business of making original games for Stadia has led some to question whether the service is long for this world. So we decided to reevaluate Stadia to see if it has a future. Obviously, we don’t have a crystal ball, but after diving deeply to see Google’s progress since the launch of Stadia, we still think it has potential – if Google doesn’t give up completely.
Over the past year and a half, Google has been constantly improving Stadia with features that make the service more fun and much easier to use. One of the most “omg finally” additions to the Stadia platform was the ability to use the wireless Stadia controller with your PC. The controller itself can connect to wifi and Bluetooth, so it didn’t make much sense not to offer a wireless option at launch, when you could connect the wireless controller to a Chromecast. This, however, has changed.
Stadia added wireless capability to the PC last May, and while this is a huge improvement, I admit that getting the controller to connect to my PC was a problem. I found out that it was automatically connecting to my Chromecast and I unlinked it manually, but I still had trouble connecting it to my PC. Apparently, this is a common problem, because a quick search found a solution: running Chrome in Windows 7 compatibility mode is an easy solution to an annoying bug.
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Google recently added State Share timed with the launch of Hitman 3 last month on the platform. Basically, the new feature allows a player to create a link to a specific point in their game, which can be shared with other Stadia players. These players can click on the link and they will be taken to exactly the same point in the game, with all the same health statistics and inventory items, and will try to play the same part of the game. Developers will need to add this feature to their games, and there’s no telling how many will do it – but it’s cool.
Another welcome addition to Stadia is Crowd Choice, which was finally released to users with the release of Baldur’s Gate 3 Last October. When enabled, streamers can give viewers the option to vote for the choice they should make in the game. The option that receives the most votes will appear in the live stream of the game. This feature is now also available at Dead by daylight, and it’s a really cool way to create more interaction with viewers.
The direct stream to YouTube was launched last December, just in time for Cyberpunk 2077’s launch. After Twitch, YouTube is probably the second largest platform for streamers, and having an integrated function to stream directly from Stadia to YouTube must have been a good resource for some streamers. I’m not a professional, but I stream from time to time to my friends on Twitch and I never liked playing with XSplit. Direct streaming is much more convenient.
Completing the list of exclusive Stadia features that Google first announced in March 2019, Crowd Play finally made its debut last December in games like Mortal Kombat 11, Borderlands 3, Dead by daylight, and some others. If someone is broadcasting any of these games, you can invite your viewers to play with them on Stadia. Of course, this is a cooperative and multiplayer feature, so it makes sense because the games above were the first to get it.
This is too much! I need a break? A little bit of water? A snack? Caffeine? That’s only half of the changes that Google made to Stadia last year.
Many big name and indie titles added to Stadia since it debuted—Cyberpunk 2077, Hitman 3, Borderlands 3 and Baldur’s Gate 3 are the most notable. But the quarantine prompted my partner and me to look for more cooperative games to play together, or puzzle games for a player that we can still play together. I have to thank Stadia for introducing me to some games that were released several years ago, but that went unnoticed by my radar, as The Gardens Between, a beautiful but moving puzzle game about two best friends and neighbors reminiscing about all their backyard adventures just before … well, I’m not going to ruin that. The Turing Test and Jotun are just a few other examples of games on Stadia that we have enjoyed.
However, Stadia definitely needs more recent titles. It may seem problematic that Google closed its internal game studio, but the company has already closed deals with other studios, including Supermassive Games (the mentors behind Until dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology) to create new content for your library. The platform now allows players to access their Ubisoft + account, just like Amazon’s Luna, but of course users will need an active subscription from Ubisoft. Stadia has a free level, so you don’t have to pay for two game subscriptions. The company plans to open its streaming technology to other game publishers, so we hope to see more exclusives or timed launches alongside other platform launches in the next year.
Having enough bandwidth to play is another story. A game like The Gardens Between it doesn’t need a lot of bandwidth just because of how it’s graphically designed. It will run at 15 Mbps at 1080p on the PC, which is slightly higher than Stadia’s minimum download speed. A game like Cyberpunk 2077, which is incredibly demanding, needs more than 100 Mbps at 1080p to work without pixelation, elastic or input delay. Otherwise, the game cannot be played. However, this is a problem with cloud games in general and has not changed much since the launch of Stadia.
My only complaint with Stadia is still how the games in his library are organized. If you’re looking at your library on the phone, it’s not too bad – there’s a drop-down menu that lets you organize games you’ve played recently or in alphabetical order, and you can scroll through two columns of games at the same time. But on the PC and on your TV, it is unnecessarily laborious, with TV being the worse of the two.
On the PC, you can see a 3×3 grid of your games, but the order in which they are organized is a combination of the games most recently played and the games most recently added to your library. There is no option to put them in alphabetical order, which makes it difficult to find a game that you have not played or purchased in a while. On TV, not only do the same strange organizational rules apply, but your library is organized in a single line that you have to go through until you find the game you want. If you roll too fast, the system will skip some thumbnails of the game from time to time. There really needs to be a uniform way to organize your game library across all Stadia platforms.
I would also like to be able to buy games directly from Stadia through my TV instead of having to pick up my phone or go to my PC to buy a game from there. You can do that with Xbox and PlayStation, and it seems incredible to me that any platform with a console-like configuration doesn’t have the same function. Of course, it is not difficult to turn off the controller and get my phone, but I will be picky about this unnecessary step. I have the controller in my hands. Just drop me off at the game store!
However, Stadia has greatly improved the way it manages screenshots. When the platform was first launched, you could catch them with the screen capture button on the controller, but you could only view them on your phone and there was no way to share them. You can now view them on the PC and in the app on your phone, share screenshots and share states with a link, and video clips will now include voices if you save a clip when you’re in the game chat or broadcast live directly to the YouTube. You can also download screenshots and clips from Stadia to your local PC, but you can’t do the same on your phone.
And I can’t forget that iOS users can now play Stadia Games at Apple Safari Browser from that last December. Because of Apple strict App Store policies on cloud gaming platforms, Google has never been able to allow iPhone and iPad users to play in the Stadia app on the App Store. But cloud games via WebRTC implementation, which is like GeForce Now users can play on Chromebooks, is totally fine.
Oh, and if you have a 4K monitor, you can play in 4K on your PC if you have a Pro subscription – and Family Share is one thing now, so you can add people to your family group and they can play any of the games that you have in your account. You do not need an active Stadia Pro account to share games or play shared games.
Phew, right. That was too much. And most of it is good.
The only thing stopping Stadia now is the lack of recently released games and games that support its unique state sharing and crowd-pick features. These are not small obstacles to be overcome to make Stadia more attractive to players, not to mention the bandwidth limitation that will always be one. problem with cloud games services in general until we really try to end the digital divide in the US. But I digress. Stadia has made measurable strides in the past year. The service just needs to regain some momentum – if Google is committed to it.