One of the great concepts of Google Stadia is online multiplayer and how seamlessly it (hopefully) will work. Since Google is handling all of the processing on their hand, handling multiple players should be as smooth as anything we’ve seen. How about local multiplayer with your friends? Google has some answers for that too.
In the updated Stadia FAQ, Google gives us a few answers that help with this.
First, Google answered the question “How many players can play on a Stadia game?” with the following:
The number is dependent on the game you’re playing. Stadia will support full multiplayer titles, as well as couch based co-op and single player titles.
Second, they got into controller details with “How many controllers can I use at the same time?” by saying:
Your Stadia account will support up to four Stadia controllers during local multiplayer game play.
That’s roughly what we expected, but it’s good to hear Google confirm it. While I still miss the days of PS2 when you could double multi-tap and get 8 controllers at once on games like Madden, it was more chaos than anything. Four on a single screen is about the best you can hope for and should work very well. Personally, I pre-ordered the Founders Edition (which includes one controller) and also pre-ordered a second controller. Whether I end up getting two more remains to be seen.
As we hear more about which games will support multiple players, we’ll keep you updated.