Google Answers a Few More Stadia Questions in an AMA

Google’s Stadia streaming platform will launch later this year and ahead of that release, the company took to Reddit to answer a bunch of questions today. If you want to take a look at the thread for yourself, you can find it here, but below, I have posted the key questions that help to clarify the service, including new features that were not previously announced.

The AMA was hosted by Andrey Doronichev Director of Product for Stadia  at Google:

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Q – Can you clarify what the free game situation is for Stadia pro as it is confusing due to mixed messages

A – To be clear, Stadia Pro is not “Netflix for Games” like some people have mentioned, a closer comparison would be like Xbox Live Gold or Playstation Plus. The Pro subscribers get 4K/HDR streaming, 5.1 sound, exclusive discounts and access to some free games. Roughly one free game per month give or take. Starting with Destiny 2 (yay!).

Q – Are there plans for an achievement system?

A – Oh yes, achievements… as a lifelong gamer and a pathological overachiever, I love achievements! Of course, we’ll have something similar to other platforms. However, it will not be there immediately at launch. Will come a little bit later.

Q – When will more details about the UI coming?

A – You’ll see the UI in November, once we launch. For now you have to trust me – it’s looking good. We have a great UX team and we’re putting a lot of love into it.

Q – Will free to play games be available on Stadia Base?

A – No free games on Stadia Base. But hey, Stadia Base gives you free access to the state-of-the-art gaming hardware in our datacenter 😉 You spend your money to buy games you want.

Q – What announced features will be available at launch?

A – We’ll get all the basic functionality at launch – play games across screens, no waiting for downloads or patches, social, store, etc. Of course, it’s not going to be every feature we announced at our vision announcement at day 1. But that’s the beauty of a cloud platform – it’ll be constantly improving!

Q – If the Stadia service is discontinued, do we know what (if anything) will happen with game purchases? (Alternately, are they any minimum EoL guarantees, etc. You get the gist of it.)

A – We get this a lot. I hear you. Moving to the cloud is scary. I felt the same way when music was transitioning from files to streaming. I still have all my old CDs in the garage… although it’s hard to find a CD player these days 🙂

The same happened to Movies and Photos and my Docs and other files… And it’s great! Games are no different. Eventually, all of our games will be safely in the cloud too and we’ll feel great about it. We’ve been investing a ton in tech, infrastructure and partnerships over the past few years. Nothing in life is certain, but we’re committed to making Stadia a success.

The games you buy on Stadia are yours to play. From day one we’ll support Takeout, so that you can download your game metadata, including saves if you want to.

Of course, it’s ok to doubt my words. There’s nothing I can say now to make you believe if you don’t. But what we can do is to launch the service and continue investing in it for years to come. Exactly how we’ve been doing with Gmail, Docs, Music, Movies and Photos. That’s exactly what we’re committed to.

Q – Will Stadia have its own Global Chat and Friends System, or will it depend on the game developer to implement these features?

A – First and foremost, I personally think of Games as the main social platform of the future. So we’re investing a lot in Social, Communications and Safety on Stadia. At launch you’ll be able to manage your friends list, create parties and use platform-level voice chat. And that’s just the beginning. We also have a healthy pipeline of social features going forward.

Q- Does the controller support Bluetooth audio? Can I use Bluetooth headphones on Stadia?

A – The Stadia Controller comes with a headphone jack for wired audio, but won’t support Bluetooth audio at launch in November. If you’re playing on the computer or a Pixel phone you can connect the BT headset to it directly and use it in Stadia.

Q – Is there anything being done to combat Data caps? Or is that purely on us to converse with our ISPs? 50 dollars extra a month for me to just NOT have a data cap.

A- I can’t predict the future, but I’ve seen that ISPs adapted in the past – I saw it when I was at YouTube – and we’d expect that to continue. For players concerned about data usage we’ll definitely have some tools in the Stadia app to manage your data usage to adapt to your unique data situation, but I’m not sure if that will be on day one or a bit later. There’s a lot of great ISPs offering plans with 100s of mbps or even gigabits and no caps. We’re seeing different progress in different countries and are certainly expecting ISPs to continually improve the services.

Q – Can you discuss a little bit more about the plan for families? Like that of Google Play Music and YouTube TV?

A- I guess you’re asking about sharing content with Family members? Yes, we’ll enable Family Sharing early next year. Working on it, but won’t be ready by November — need a bit more time. At launch we’ll have Parental Dashboard to give parents control over their kid’s experience.

Q – When can we expect support for non-standard resolutions (ex. 3440×1440 or 3840×1080)?

A – We’re covering the most widely used resolutions first because, to be honest, we have to start somewhere 🙂 you can expect more options added as Stadia gets released into the wild.

Q – Any chance of steam partnership?

A – Great question! My PR guy will kill me…we’re always evaluating our options to make Stadia a better place for the gamers 🙂

Q – Will there be Mod Support for Stadia ?

A – In November, no. We’d like to in the future. We’re working with developers now to find the best way to do this.

Q – If you are streaming a game to your phone and are using the Stadia controller, does your phone and the Stadia controller have to be connected to the same WiFi network?

A – Yes, the controller and the screen must be on the same WiFi network to work, or you can plug the controller in via USB.

Q- Will there be any kind of support for alternative inputs like gyro or for wheel/pedal setups?

A – If it’s HID compliant we support it and we’re adding more controllers as we go.

For those who have been following Stadia closely, there isn’t a lot of new information but a few nuggets like achievement and family sharing accounts. During the AMA, Andrey hinted that they will have a Connect event soon that will unveil more information about the service.

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Conversation 14 comments

  • skane2600

    18 July, 2019 - 3:30 pm

    <p>The Google+ of game streamers?</p>

    • Stooks

      18 July, 2019 - 3:32 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#443615">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p>And I predict the same success as Google+.</p>

    • Lauren Glenn

      18 July, 2019 - 4:26 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#443615">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p>Google+ was kept around far after people dismissed it in general. If this doesn't take off, they're going to dump it. And you'll have games that you can't play because they won't keep the servers up running to play them. You can migrate to another platform but you can't get the games…. now, if they had some kind of ultraviolet / Movies Anywhere type thing with games….. OK, maybe I'd give this a shot….. </p><p><br></p><p>Like buy it once on Stadia and get it on XBOX 2 for free or PS Five….. </p>

    • dontbe evil

      19 July, 2019 - 2:31 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#443615">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p>let's bet on the shutdown date</p>

  • yoshi

    Premium Member
    18 July, 2019 - 3:35 pm

    <p>I was really hoping he'd answer my question about the controller and if it supports rumble, but it didn't help that I showed up late for the AMA. I've also pinged their twitter account, but no response to that either.</p>

  • Lauren Glenn

    18 July, 2019 - 3:38 pm

    <p>Although its hard to find a CD player? I have a laserdisc player, DVD/Bluray drive, car CD player… they're not that hard to find.</p><p><br></p><p>I still have an iPod Classic with all my music, videos, and TV shows on it. Cloud services are nice but they go away and you're at the mercy of the license holder. Try finding Black Sabbath's Cross Purposes album on streaming….. and not from an illegal warez type MP3bear like site. You can't. But it's a decent album.</p><p><br></p><p>There's something to be said about having a copy you can pull up for many things including retro gaming.</p><p><br></p><p>He basically just didn't answer the question at all. The difference between docs, music, and things in the cloud is that you still own them. You're just offloading a backup to the cloud. But you don't just have the tags from your pictures, do you? Or do you also have the images themselves?</p><p><br></p><p>I trust Google less with this thing now.</p><p><br></p>

  • MrKirbs

    Premium Member
    18 July, 2019 - 3:40 pm

    <p>"You can take out your save data!" is not the thing I care about when Google shutters this thing and takes all my paid for games with it. The reason I don't care about ownership with other cloud media services is the cost is nothing past the subscription. There is nothing to lose after a service shutdown other than time spent curating a collection</p>

  • soundersfan

    Premium Member
    18 July, 2019 - 5:46 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"Exactly how we’ve been doing with Gmail, Docs, Music, Movies and Photos." and Google Reader :(.</span></p>

  • codymesh

    18 July, 2019 - 6:08 pm

    <p>It's quite disappointing that they don't offer a game pass kind of option. </p><p><br></p><p>It's also quite unfortunate that they're entering the market in the middle of a pretty large platform exclusivity war and when PC gamers are expressing "launcher fatigue" </p>

  • Rycott

    Premium Member
    18 July, 2019 - 11:46 pm

    <p>Man… the dodge the question about what happens when they can it like the Matrix.</p><p><br></p><p>And Destiny 2 free first up! When it's going F2P in September anyway… how kind.</p>

  • dontbe evil

    19 July, 2019 - 2:30 am

    <p>Can you tell us more about how are you going us our data, tracking us, send us targeted us and sell our privacy? (even if we pya for the service)</p>

  • Patrick3D

    19 July, 2019 - 12:57 pm

    <p>Meh, maybe there will be a cheap indie game to use some leftover Play Store credit on to try the service out. Hinging the success of your service launch on the (non-existent) popularity of Destiny 2 is a big mistake.</p>

  • chaad_losan

    19 July, 2019 - 6:16 pm

    <p>Dear Google. F U and the horse your rode in on. </p><p>They totally dodged every meaningful question.</p><p>Which comes down to "Trust Us!". Ummm no.</p>

  • dontbe evil

    20 July, 2019 - 12:37 pm

    <p>What will happen when this service will die like many other google services? </p>

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