Google Stadia is set to launch on Monday and a lot of people are excited for the service. You won’t need powerful hardware like a gaming PC or console to play games; rather, a server farm will do the processing and stream it to any screen you own. Whether it’s a TV, a phone, or a computer, you’ll be able to play your favorite games as long as you have a solid internet connection.
Well, that’s the ideal situation anyway. This is Google’s goal but it won’t happen for some time. We already spoke about some reasons to pass on Stadia, but Google gave us quite a few more reasons during an AMA about the new game streaming service.
We learned that many expected features won’t be available at launch. Some will come soon after launch, while some will take months. Things like Stream Connect, State Share, Crowd Play, Family Sharing, and more won’t be available until sometime next year. Google Assistant and achievement support will come soon after launch but won’t be available out of the gate.
You can play games on the Chromecast Ultra included with the founders bundle, but your existing Chromecast Ultra won’t be supported. The update to fix this will come “soon after launch.” On top of that, 4K support isn’t coming to PC users until next year. And of course the limitation to Pixel smartphones will last until at least next year, with no timeline for supporting any other smartphone. So early adopters will be very limited on what device they can use.
On top of that, the Stadia controller has to be used in wired mode with phones and computers as the wireless functionality only works with Chromecasts at launch. And if you want to buy games, you can’t do it via the controller, only your smartphone.
These problems will be fixed, and these missing features will be added. Whether it happens in a matter of weeks or months is unknown. This is Google we’re talking about after all. This whole launch is as Google as it gets and it’s more reason to avoid Stadia as a gaming service. Think of it as a beta. And when all the features we expect of a gaming service are there, and we have access to more than a dozen games, then you can give it a shot.
Source: Ars Technica
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