Day: June 6, 2019

The upcoming streaming platform Google Stadia won’t just follow the Netflix model, as many fans had hoped. It will instead have both a subscription and games for sale individually, as Kotaku previously reported, and the whole model sure sounds convoluted.

Stadia, which was announced in March, is a streaming platform designed to let you play games without a high-end console or computer. If it works as promised, it’ll let you pop a Chromecast into your television and access games through the cloud, no hardware required.

Google plans to release pricing and software details at 12pm ET today, but the news has leaked out early thanks to Canadian newspaper La Presse, which was pre-briefed. A rough translation of the article reveals that:

• There will be a base subscription available when Stadia launches in November, for $11.99 Canadian per month. This one will give you access to some Stadia games at 4K resolution/60FPS.
• Other games—newer ones, especially—you’ll have to buy.
• In 2020, Google will launch a “Stadia Base” model that’s totally free, but only allows you to play games at 1080p resolution.
• A pricey Stadia Founder’s Edition will be for sale this fall ($169 Canadian) that includes a Chromecast Ultra, a Stadia controller, a three-month subscription, and Destiny 2 (which, as Kotaku revealed yesterday, will be on the platform at launch).
• Doom Eternal, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the new Tomb Raider trilogy, and The Division 2 are also part of the Stadia launch lineup.

We’ll update this story with more info once Google officially announces all this.