Google Stadia: 10 Questions We Need Answering ASAP
There's still so much we don't know.
Google, one of the world's biggest companies, has long been considering a move into gaming, and it made some moves in the past few years by hiring top-notch industry talent like Ubisoft's Jade Raymond and Sony's Phil Harrison.
March 19 was the day it decided to pull back the curtain and reveal its plans to the world, and the result is Google Stadia.
A streaming service that aims to remove all barriers from gaming such as installing, updating, loading and more, Stadia aims to work on any smart device.
You can play a AAA video game on your web browser, phone, tablet, PC or TV, over the internet, and just with Google's controller (or your own). Google promises no lag or reduction in visuals, even going so far as to state that Stadia's GPU's are more powerful than the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X combined.
What does this mean, however? I, like you, was left with a lot of questions. In fact, there are even more questions than answers following the keynote, as what was billed as the unequivocal 'future of gaming' seems like more of a tech demo.
Google Stadia has a long way to go and a lot to prove to make it must-have, and here's why.
10. What Is The ACTUAL Release Date?
Google provided a rather vague "Launching 2019" as the release window for Stadia. Considering we're coming up on April, and therefore a third of the way through the year, that's a little too vague.
Even a seasonal window wold have given us more to go on, but we're left knowing little more than we did prior to the keynote.
Is this something Google will simply announce one day and launch the next? Or will it build towards a big Fall launch? At the end of the keynote the company said that we would see more in the summer. So either it launches then, or we get the official fall launch date at the next keynote.
And then there's the question about other territories. So far Google announced that Stadia would launch in the US, Canada, U.K, and "Most of Europe". Once again that's quite vague; which European countries? What about South America? Asia?
Ironically, considering Stadia is all about removing wait times, we'll have to wait to find out.