Google Stadia Premiere Edition - White

Product Information

Admittedly, this is probably the way we’ll continue to play games on Stadia, especially those that require ultra-specific timing (shooters and fighting games, as you’ll see in a second) or games that simply work better with a keyboard and mouse. If you want to use the controller with your phone, tablet, Chromebook, or PC, you need to use a cable; Stadia currently has no method of pairing the controller wirelessly with anything besides a Chromecast Ultra. Google sent us a phone clip and a short USB-C-to-USB-C cable for testing, but if you're just buying the controller or Premiere Edition and want to play Stadia on your phone, you'll have to supply your own USB-C-to-USB-C cable or the appropriate USB-C adapter for your mobile device. The Google Stadia Is A Good Product And Is Ok For It's Price However It Does Get Warm Now And Then But That Is Because Of The People Who Made The Product/Item. Also The Games Or Options On The Stadia Are Sort Of Limited Due To Only Being A Bit Of Games Available On There To Be Playable. Both Google Stadia subscriptions have game achievements, the ability to instantly share gameplay captures to YouTube, and cross-platform voice chat.

Even if you're not a streamer, what Stadia did offer right out of the box is screen capture, a useful feature in the social media age, and a Friends List, which is nice if you want to party up with friends to play Destiny.Whether or not you should "buy" Stadia is a complicated question. Chances are, if you're reading this right now, you've already got a device that can play games on Stadia. Maybe that's your PC, or smartphone, or a Chromecast Ultra you've used for streaming movies and TV. You do need the Stadia controller still if you want to play games on Chromecast, but every other platform works with other input methods. The horror game is said to be heavily inspired by the fan-favorite Resident Evil 4--though it's also gotten the very meme-able Lady Dimitrescu for good measure. Capcom recently released PC system specs for the upcoming game and warned eager players not to fall for an apparent phishing scam. Finally, Stadia needs to keep pushing for more games on the platform. Getting Madden (and soon FIFA) is huge for mainstream audiences, but where is Fortnite? What about Call of Duty, or even just Warzone? Why don't we have Grand Theft Auto Online yet? Those are the kinds of games that could really shine on a platform like Stadia, especially in the case of Warzone which is now pushing nearly 200GB of space on modern game consoles.

The Stadia controller is wireless, but only when paired with a Google Chromecast Ultra. This is a problem, because the Chromecast Ultra offers the worst gameplay experience of all the ways to access Stadia, as I will explain below.

Google Stadia slowly added in the features it promised at launch. For example, the service rolled out direct streaming to YouTube via YouTube Gaming. For streamers, Stadia held real potential as a way to unify the gaming and streaming platform - and that in itself was pretty exciting.

Even if you do meet the speed requirements, you’ll need to be careful if you have a data cap. Cloud gaming chews through a lot of data, especially when gaming at 4K resolution. Here’s what you can expect: Smaller ideas for expansion and improvement are more Google Assistant integration features, the ability to view YouTube videos/streams within Stadia in the app or on Chromecast, streaming from the app or on Chromecast, and so on. On desktop you’ll have the option to find friends and add them to a party, as well as access your screenshot collection with photos of games you’ve taken. The mobile layout has a similar home screen, but also has tabs for the Stadia Store and a feed with videos, news and blog posts from the Stadia team. Stadia was announced with a long list of features, including family sharing, an in-depth achievement system and 4K/HDR gaming on PC. However, upon launch, most of those features are missing, making Stadia feel like it’s in beta rather than fully released. Naturally if you ever cancel the Stadia subscription, the kit is still yours to keep. And games are always available to buy and play, regardless of whether you have a Stadia Pro subscription or not. That being said, if you do keep it active you’ll be able to share your games with friends and family, which might make you quite popular. Especially if they also get to claim the free equipment.

Since the games are licensed to Stadia and not a platform like Steam or Origin, the location you’re in matters. That’s not true for other platforms where you can still access, say, your U.S. Steam account through the cloud gaming server. The Verdict The Daily Bugle won't cover it, but Marvel's Spider-Man 2 hero Peter Parker holds the Rubik's Cube world record Before getting to the hardware, let’s talk about Stadia as a service. There are two hardware bundles: Founder’s Edition and Premier Edition. Diablo 4 just made all of your Duriel-farmed Uber Uniques into perfect rolls, and all future drops will be flawless too Under the right conditions, Google's Stadia service provides streamed video games with crisp, smooth graphics and responsive controls. Those conditions are easy to access on your compatible smartphone and reliable in a Chrome tab, but not through the Chromecast Ultra. And even when working optimally, Stadia doesn't rise above the performance you can get with Shadow or GeForce Now. The potential for 4K60 is there, but don't expect to see it with any consistency.

You can also play on any computer with a current version of Chrome. This includes Chromebooks, making Stadia very appealing for Chromebook users who want to play games without being limited to iffy Android app implementation. The service works in any Chrome tab. Stadia on a smartphone with a good 5GHz Wi-Fi connection is fantastic. Controls felt responsive and graphics looked sharp on every game I tested. Playing Destiny 2 on a small screen is a particularly unique experience, and the fact that aiming was spot-on, with no discernible input lag, and the action looked and sounded consistently crisp is downright impressive. Both the signup and streaming service are activated through the Google Stadia app on Android and iOS. Once you’re logged in, you can then either Cast a game from the app to your Chromecast Ultra that comes with either of the two editions or go to Stadia.com to start streaming to your PC. For this test, we tried something that we knew would look good on a 4K HDR TV - Destiny 2 - Cast from the Stadia app on our phone to Chromecast Ultra in the living room. Despite our reservations, Destiny 2 ran in 4K/60 without any issues on a 50Mbps wireless connection with no noticeable delays or artifacting - even in particularly intense firefights.Other competitors exist, but they're all in slightly different verticals. For example, Stadia can't really compete with Microsoft's Game Pass Ultimate with Xbox Cloud Gaming in terms of value, but that library is often shuffled in and out, is fragmented across console, PC, and cloud streaming, and doesn't allow ownership. PlayStation Now is solid, but offers mostly older games and doesn't have the same performance quality and flexibility as Stadia. GeForce Now and Shadow are good PC streaming services, but they aren't truly cloud-based platforms, you just stream access to a remote desktop, more or less. At one time, you could only access Stadia through a Stadia Pro subscription, but that requirement has since been lifted. You're now allowed to use Stadia for free. In fact we even saw free demos periodically that you can try at no cost. Google Stadia is set to launch this November but a solid date is yet to be confirmed. When pressed, a Google rep told me that it would be ready to "share a specific date soon" and that we will "have to wait to see why" we haven't received that information already. Google also confirmed that the Stadia Premiere Edition will ship shortly after the Founders Edition bundle – giving Founders the opportunity to secure their Stadia Name – and that the Premiere Edition bundle will be the "the new version of Stadia that we're going to have for the foreseeable future".