Google Stadia: Pricing, games and more announced

Google Stadia
Google Stadia

It's been nearly two months since Google unveiled their upcoming streaming gaming service at the 2019 GDC and since then, we haven't learned too much about it. Until today.

In a "Stadia Connect" video streamed live, Google announced pricing for both services and equipment, games that will be coming to the platform and more. You can watch the whole thing here, but we'll go over the highlights.

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As expected, Stadia offers a monthly subscription service, this one called Stadia Pro. It runs $9.99 a month and includes a copy of Destiny 2 - including all the expansions and the upcoming Shadowkeep, which was also officially announced today.

However, don't expect a Xbox Game Pass style service - while subscribers will more than likely get more free games over time (similar to, say, PlayStation Plus), it looks like they'll still have to pay for what they play as well (albeit cheaper than buying it outright - which you'll also have the option of doing, with or without a subscription).

It's certainly possible that they could eventually move to a service like Game Pass - and, as our friends at VentureBeat (h/t to them, by the way) suggested, this would be a prime announcement for Xbox to make next week at E3 regarding their xCloud service.

So far, there's 32 games announced for the service - including Baldur's Gate III, which was also officially announced during the broadcast...

... and it will be available in 14 countries at launch...

.. and looks to be mainly focused on North America and Europe. But, they're coming to India and other countries soon, they swear!

To get players started on the service, Google is offering what they call the "Stadia Founder's Edition" - a start-up kit featuring a fancy looking controller (it's "night blue"), a Chromecast Ultra, three months of Stadia Pro (including the aforementioned Destiny 2 bundle), a three month pass to give to a friend (get your own controller, mooch!), and first crack at a Stadia username.

So, what Internet speeds do you need? Well, Google assures us that if you're looking to play with 4K graphics at 60 fps, you'll need a connection of 35Mbps. At 10MBps, which is the recommended minimum, you can still get 720p resolution, also at 6fps.

If that all sounds Greek to you, basically if you're getting at least 10MBps on your Internet connection, you'll be fine. And, if you're still confused, well, I don't know what to tell you.

That's the long and short of it. Stadia is looking to launch in November of this year and Google looks set to make a serious dent in the gaming market. We'll publish more details as they arrive.

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