Google's Play-Anywhere Stadia Game Service Gets A Founder's Edition Bundle, Pricing, And More

‘Stadia’ still sounds like a health insurance company, though.

- Hayden Dingman

Nearly a week before E3, Google, of all companies, kicked off festivities. On June 6, Google detailed its Stadia streaming service (go.pcworld. com/stda), or at least gave us more details after a relatively info-light reveal at March’s Game Developers Conference.

It’s a bit complicated, though. Stadia Pro is the system everyone expected, a sort-of Netflix-for-games at $10 a month, with the top-tier technical package—4K, 60 frames per second streaming, and more— streamed seamlessly to any compatible device be it a laptop, desktop, Pixel 3 phone, or Chromecast.

Google will curate a selection of games for Stadia Pro, similar to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass. And there were some great games Google mentioned in its presentation, including Destiny 2’s new Shadowkeep expansion—now with crossplatform save capabilities—and the longawaited announcement of a Baldur’s Gate III (go.pcworld.com/bld3). Ubisoft showed up in a big way with The Division II and Ghost Recon, and a few smaller indies fleshed out the presentation.