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Google’s booming game streaming service Stadia is now over a year old, but it still has many needs and room for growth. Here are some of the biggest areas Stadia is focusing on for its 2021 roadmap.
Missing features
Throughout 2020, Stadia has steadily caught up with many of the expectations Google set for it when it launched. However, there are quite a few “obvious” things that are still tragically lacking in Stadia.
Most blatant of these is the lack of search functionality, both in the Stadia Store and in a player’s library. As the market for Stadia games and expansions continues to grow, the task of finding the exact game or add-on you are looking for has become more frustrating. Even finding your own games can get frustrating as your library grows. Stadia’s Google Assistant integration helps that, but unfortunately it’s only available for the Chromecast Ultra.
Beyond the “new” features, Stadia also desperately needs to align its various applications. The Android app doesn’t offer any party or voice chat features, just Chromecast Ultra offers the Google Assistant, the web app can’t be used to set up a Stadia controller for the first time, and more.
Player base
Another key goal of Stadia’s 2021 roadmap is to expand the player base. Over the past few months, Google has put a lot of effort into making more people aware of the Stadia name, especially with the recent YouTube Premium giveaway. Then, with the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia proved it was more than capable of running the latest versions.
Over the next year, Google must continue its outreach efforts to ensure that as new games arrive on Stadia, older games will still have enough players to support a community.
One way to expand the player base is to bring Stadia to more countries around the world. By officially expanding into countries like India, Mexico and Brazil – the latter two of which have already tasted cloud gaming through Microsoft’s xCloud Streaming beta – Stadia could see an explosion of new players almost overnight.
Game library
Of course, one of the safest ways to increase the number of people playing games on Stadia is by offering the types of games that people are looking to play. Google has already made progress in this area by managing to offer completely free games like Destiny 2 and Super Bomberman R Online. No doubt games like Fortnite and Apex Legends would provide a huge opportunity for Stadia to gain more players.
A much trickier strategy for Stadia to attract more players is to deliver the latest “viral” games – think of Fall Guys and Hades, some of the biggest overnight hits of the year. There is no denying that Stadia is one of the most convenient ways to play a particular game, just buy and play. Unfortunately, there’s almost no way of knowing in advance which game will be the next big event.
Overall, Google needs to put Stadia in a position for success by ensuring that the 2021 roadmap is filled with games that have same-day launches on Stadia, instead of the months-delayed launches we’ve seen. in 2020.
Features exclusive to Stadia
Typically, each new generation of gaming hardware comes with features that were otherwise not possible on previous consoles, such as ray tracing, built-in streaming tools, or unique controller features. From the day it was first revealed, Google has touted the unique things that games on Stadia should be able to do either through cloud-enabled features or by integrating into the Google ecosystem. So far all we’ve gotten are previews of features like Crowd Play on YouTube and State Share that only work with a part.
And that’s a shame, given that there are endless possibilities to be exploited. Imagine if a game could be directly linked to the Google Assistant. As suggested at GDC 2019, players might one day ask the Assistant for help beating a level. But let’s go further. A horror game could – in theory, if you have permission – use the Assistant to control the lights in your smart home to suddenly turn your room off in a dramatic moment.
Regardless of the actual implementation, more games should attempt to take advantage of exclusive Stadia features in 2021, as it gives gamers a reason to play Stadia on other consoles they may already own.
Graphics upgrade
One of the more unlikely elements of Stadia’s roadmap for 2021 is the possibility of a ‘hard’ refresh. With the latest generation of consoles now in many homes around the world, Stadia’s seemingly next-gen performance won’t age well, especially as games optimized for these new consoles arrive.
Something ‘Gen 2’ has been said to be coming to Stadia for some time now, bringing features we haven’t seen yet. For example, the developers of the upcoming Chorus game have indicated – but later deleted – that the Stadia version of the game will feature ray tracing, a computationally difficult lighting technique that is not used by any of the current Stadia games.
It remains to be seen what everything else in such a ‘Gen 2’ update might bring, but the important thing to remember is that the ‘upgrade’ would be seamless and shouldn’t cost players or even need to. that you think about it. Since everything is in the cloud, Stadia can simply start more demanding games on better server hardware.
Android TV support
I mention this one last because it is the only thing that has been outright confirmed. Although Chromecast with Google TV has been launched as a successful successor to Chromecast Ultra, the new Google TV / Android TV powered device is currently unable to (officially) play games on Stadia.
Luckily, Google has confirmed to us that Stadia will be coming to the Chromecast with Google TV in the first half of the New Year, with broader support for Android TV later. In the meantime, our APK Insight team closely follows the development of Stadia’s all-new Android TV experience with every update to the Stadia Android app.
How long will it take?
Unfortunately, for many of these improvements, as well as those we haven’t thought about, Google is intentionally keeping a low profile on its plans. As John Justice pointed out in a recent Escapist podcast, the Stadia team is working hard to stop making excessive promises about the future of the service. This means that we probably won’t know when these improvements are supposed to arrive until the day they launch.
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