You know it’s E3 time when everyone has something to say about the future of gaming. This time around it’s Google with more on Stadia, their upcoming streaming solution.
Clocking in at under thirty minutes it also revealed that Baldur’s Gate III will be on the platform (also available on PC), a new trailer for Ghost Recon Breakpoint, The Division 2 coming to Stadia, pricing (US$9.99) and details of Destiny 2 and its upcoming expansion being bundled into a “Founders Edition” package.
Network requirements are pretty high if you want 4K streaming but it scales down to more manageable levels. If you’re in a gaming family though I’m thinking everyone will be fighting for that bandwidth and there’s going to be a lot of losers in that scrap. And with Australia not being part of the initial rollout there’s little incentive for me to try it until Stadia expands to the Oceania region.
Still… Google are putting on a good show at the moment. They just have to deliver on it too.
The Late Night Session 
Google have made some really weird decisions with this, most notably the requirement to buy (some) games rather than having a Netflix-style subscription model. I mean, I hate the very concept of the thing anyway so I wouldn’t have been jumping on board regardless, but at least a flat-rate, pay-once-a-month model to get access to everything would have been convenient if you just want to, say, try out things before buying a “proper” copy of them for a real console or computer.
Having to “buy” stuff you then have no actual ownership of, though — and which, as we’ve seen in several cases of digital-only games, could potentially be withdrawn at any time — is an absolutely baffling decision. It’s like they learned nothing from the failure of OnLive and the struggles of Sony to make PlayStation Now relevant and/or desirable.
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Totally agree! A big deal is made by Google about taking the console out of gaming yet they force you to adopt a purchasing model that’s still very old fashioned. In the end you could fairly say it’s not really that much of a step forward.
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I’m honestly glad. The amount that some people were hyping this up as “the future of the gaming” was rather concerning, but with how many fundamental missteps they seem to have already made, I think they’ll struggle to get a foothold with this. Particularly with a new generation of consoles on the horizon once again!
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