The upcoming streaming platform Google Stadia won’t just follow the Netflix model, as many fans had hoped. It will instead have both a subscription and games for sale individually, as Kotaku previously reported. Here’s everything we learned today during Google’s “Stadia Connect” stream.




Stadia, which was announced in March, is a streaming platform designed to let you play games without a high-end console or computer. If it works as promised, it’ll let you plug a Chromecast into your television and access games through the cloud, no hardware required. The base subscription price is $10/month, with a free version planned for next year, and a Founder’s Edition bundle available for $130 this November when Stadia launches.

It’ll be a slow rollout, Google says—you’ll need that Founder’s Edition to play in 2019—the platform won’t open up further until 2020. You won’t be able to subscribe to the standard Stadia Pro subscription until next year, either.


In an official stream today, Google detailed the pricing, game lineup, and other specifics. First of all, here’s how your connection will correlate with your Stadia resolution:

Some other announcements:

Google announced Baldur’s Gate 3 and Ghost Recon: Breakout for Stadia, the latter with a new trailer. (Don’t worry—the former is also coming to PC

Other games announced include Gylt, an adventure game from developer Tequila Works, and a multiplayer Overcooked-style game called Get Packed from Moonshine Studios.

The Division 2 will be there, too. Ubisoft overload!

Stadia Pro is the official service, at $10/month, which will give you access to the service’s games at 4K resolution/60 frames-per-second. This won’t include all the games, though—newer ones will be purchasable separately.

The controller is $70 standalone.

The Stadia Founder’s Edition will launch later this year for $130. It comes with a Chromecast Ultra, a Stadia controller, a copy of Destiny 2 (along with the new Shadowkeep expansion), and a three-month subscription along with a three-month buddy pass.

Other Stadia games include Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Doom, Doom Eternal, the new Tomb Raider trilogy, Final Fantasy XV, Darksiders Genesis, Metro Exodus, and many others.

Google says it’ll be one user per Stadia account, tied to your Google ID—you can have a guest account for splitscreen, but other than that, no sharing. ( Update (2:43pm): A Google spokesperson reached out to say that family sharing is coming in the future.)

A Google spokesperson reached out to say that family sharing is coming in the future.) “At launch, if you’re a Stadia user, you can play Stadia exclusively on Pixel 3 and 3a devices. However, you’ll be able to create your account and make subscription and game purchases from any Android M+ or iOS 11+ device that has access to the Stadia app.”


Note: This post has been updated with official Google Stadia news following a leak this morning.