It’s exactly what we’ve seen happen on services like PlayStation Now, so it’s not entirely unexpected here. But for PC gamers with fast solid state storage, or gamers with the new Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 consoles, those platforms have significantly faster load times than games on Stadia just due to the nature of their storage. The actual game play is unaffected, but sometimes it does feel weird that a cloud gaming service does have longer load times.

For me, I’m still playing on the 3 month free trial of Stadia Pro that I got when I signed up for the service. Unfortunately, Google shuttered all first-party development for the platform even before the closure was announced, so we never saw what this could've brought. I had a game session completely fail on me once while playing, dropping me back to the Stadia home screen on the TV.I’ve only used it a couple of times to test, as I haven’t really found any compelling reason to use it when I have many other Google assistant enabled devices. Also, Google offers a one-month trial for the Pro service to everyone, so you can still test it out, but you don't need the Premiere Edition for that. Long story short is that gamers that live in a good metro location and pay for above-par internet will likely love the service's performance, while those who don't won't. Instead, As someone with a gaming PC, and anew Xbox Series X, the Stadia controller is not going to be the first thing I pick up when I want to play a game. For our last test, we tried Stadia on a new Wi-Fi network that, according to an Ookla speed test, maxed out around 15Mbps.

This means that there is no official way to play Stadia on more than one TV if you do not currently own a Chromecast Ultra. Two years ago they gave away "Stadia Premiere Edition" kits for free, which was a Chromecast Ultra and a Stadia controller which I believe retailed for USD 100.

In fact, once the spike happened we could usually go for another few minutes without another major spike occurring. Previously, he was the Senior Editor of Home Entertainment at TechRadar, covering TVs, headphones, speakers, video games, VR and streaming devices. There isn’t really anything special to say about the Chromecast Ultra, it is the same device that has existed since 2017, and does its job. On desktop you’ll have the option to find friends and add them to a party, as well as access your screenshot collection with photos of games you’ve taken.

Try to stream on any other phone and the app will either ask you to connect to Chromecast Ultra or reinforce the three main entry points with a wall of explainer text.Higher latency means that the delay between when you push a button on the controller to when the game registers that action is visible and noticeable, which is bad for fast paced action games, or multiplayer games. I find that it handles very nicely, and although I prefer the offset thumb sticks, I didn’t mind this after a few hours of use! Google most recently showcased Stadia as part of Gamescom 2019, confirming Cyberpunk 2077 will come to Google Stadia, while eight other games were announced for Stadia as well during Gamescom.