Initially, Stadia was set for just 12 games, before the last minute addition of ten more. This included recent releases like Football Manager 2020 and Rage 2, so it did bolster the line-up slightly, but it still feels lacking. 22 games still isn’t that many, especially when you’re launching a platform which is not only supposed to break into the industry, but revolutionise it.
For a price of £8.99 a month, plus an optional controller and Chromecast set for £119.99, it’s steep
Stadia has been labelled as ‘the Netflix of games’ but imagine if Netflix only had 22 movies; three of them How to Train Your Dragon. For a price of £8.99 a month, plus an optional controller and Chromecast set for £119.99, it’s steep. This is even more-so the case when considering that the subscription only grants one free game a month, with the rest needing to be bought separately.
The full list of launch titles can be found below, separated by the initial announcement then the late arrivals.
The list of launch titles aside from the Tomb Raider games include notable ones such as Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, Destiny 2, Mortal Kombat 11 and Red Dead Redemption 2.
First off, yes, it turns out that Samurai Shodown is indeed spelt that way...Secondly, most people have already played the great games there (Red Dead, Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat), while the most recent releases of the sports sims and Just Dance simply won’t draw in an audience for this sort of service.
GYLT looks intriguing, but it’s hardly a killer app, even considering the subpar exclusives of the Xbox One and PS4, Ryse and Knack.
The only exclusive is GYLT, a Tim Burton-esque mystery adventure made by Tequila Works, the developer of 2017’s The Sexy Brutale and Rime. It looks intriguing, but it’s hardly a killer app. Xbox One and PS4 famously launched with subpar exclusives in Ryse and Knack, but they both had established fanbases and a proven track record; Google Stadia has neither.
Google is so popular for finding content online that it’s become synonymous with the term ‘search engine’ itself. Despite this, it’s a deeply unpopular company, ranked in a 2018 Statista poll as the fifth lowest trusted company in the world, behind Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Uber.
People will use it to search, because it’s clearly the best around. As a gaming console though? Well, that’s yet to be determined, but the absolutely spectacular launch it needed just doesn’t seem to be coming together.
