After a tease earlier in the year, Google has revealed much more about what Stadia is going to look like. We’ll explain some of the highlights below, but here is Google’s official 25-minute release video if you’d like to watch that instead:
The Details
Price: The service will cost $9.99/mo, and will include some games, but you’ll need to purchase most of the games to have them in your account. No details on game pricing yet, but it seems likely they’ll be similar to existing video game prices.
Hardware: Stadia will work with your existing laptops, desktops, tablets, phones and Chromecast devices, but it’ll be a limited selection at launch, expanding over time. On Google’s side of things, your “system” will be running at 10.7 GPU teraflops, which is more than the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X combined. The power behind it is crazy, and it’ll work amazingly well on almost any hardware — if you have a fast enough internet connection.
Controllers: Google has it’s own controller that you’ll be able to purchase and use, but you should be able to use your existing controllers and Chrome even supports Switch controllers, so that’s a possibility. The official Stadia controller uses wifi instead of bluetooth, so that your inputs can go directly to Google for the lowest possible latency.
Internet Speed Requirements: You’ll need at least a 15Mbps connection to stream, and at least 35Mbps for full 4K HDR at 60fps.
Games: Google has confirmed quite a few games for Stadia, which can all be found in our games section.
Launch Date: They’re planning to launch Stadia in November 2019. In order to play on launch day, you’ll need a Stadia Founder’s Edition kit, which costs $129 and includes a controller, Chromecast, and three months of service. You can pre-order it here. In the future, that won’t be a requirement and anyone can join the service and use their existing hardware if they’d like.
We’ll keep you posted as more details are announced.