Stadia, Google’s service for still streaming games, is now more than a year old, but it still has a lot of needs and a lot of room to grow. Here are some of the major areas where Stadia is focusing on its 2021 roadmap.
Missing features
Over the course of 2020, Stadia gradually met many of the expectations set by Google at the time of its launch. However, there are quite a few “obvious” things that are still tragically missing at Stadia.
The worst of these is the lack of search features, both in the Stadia Store and within a player’s library. As Stadia’s market for games and expansions gradually grew, the task of finding the exact game or add-on you were looking for became more frustrating. Even searching for your own games can get frustrating as your library expands. Stadia’s Google Assistant integration helps with this, but unfortunately it’s only available for the Chromecast Ultra.
In addition to ‘new’ features, Stadia also urgently needs to adapt its various programs to each other. The Android app does not offer party or voice chat features, but Chromecast Ultra offers the Google Assistant, the web app can not set up a Stadia controller for the first time, and more.
Playerbase
Another critical goal for Stadia’s roadmap in 2021 is to expand the player base. Over the past few months, Google has gone to great lengths to make more people aware of the Stadia name, especially with the recent YouTube Premium gift. With the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia has proven that it is more than the latest versions.
Over the next year, Google must continue its outreach efforts to ensure that the older games will still have enough players to sustain a community as more games arrive at Stadia.
One way to expand the player base is to bring Stadiums to more countries around the world. By formally expanding to countries such as India, Mexico and Brazil, the latter two of which have already been given a taste of cloud games through Microsoft’s xCloud Streaming Beta, Stadia can see an explosion of new players almost overnight.
Game Library
One of the safest ways to increase the number of people playing at Stadiums is, of course, to offer the kind of games that people want to play. Google has already made some progress with this by succeeding in offering completely free games like Destiny 2 and Super Bomberman R Online. Games like Fortnite and Apex Legends will undoubtedly provide a tremendous opportunity for Stadia to gain more players.
A much more difficult strategy for Stadia to get more players is to present the latest “viral” games – think in the vein of Fall Guys and Hades, some of the biggest successes of the year. There is no denying that Stadia is one of the easiest ways to play, buy and play a specific game. Unfortunately, there is almost no way to know in advance which game is going to be the next big thing.
Overall, Google should position Stadia for success by ensuring that the 2021 roadmap is filled with games launched on Stadia on the same day, instead of the month-delayed launches we saw in 2020.
Stage-exclusive features
Normally, each new generation of game hardware comes with features that would otherwise be impossible on previous consoles – things like jet tracking, built-in streaming tools, or unique control features. From the day it was first announced, Google has highlighted the unique things that games on Stadiums can do through cloud-enabled features or through integration with the Google ecosystem. So far, all we got was early previews of features like Crowd Play on YouTube and State Share that just work a match.
And that’s really a shame, as there is such an infinite wealth of possibilities to exploit. Imagine being able to link a game directly to Google Assistant. As suggested at GDC 2019, players may one day ask the assistant for help beating a level. But let’s go deeper. A horror game can – if it gets permission – theoretically use the assistant to control your smart home lights to suddenly obscure your room in a dramatic moment.
Regardless of the actual implementation, more games should try to take advantage of the exclusive features of Stadia in 2021, as this gives players a reason to play on Stadia above other consoles they already own.
Graphic upgrade
One of the more unlikely items for Stadia’s 2021 roadmap is the possibility of a “hardware” refresh. With the latest generation of consoles currently in many households around the world, Stadia’s seemingly last generation performance will not age well, especially as games that are optimal for the new consoles arrive.
There have been rumors for some time that something of a ‘Gen 2’ is coming to Stadia, bringing features we have not seen before. For example, the developers of the upcoming game Chorus have indicated: but later deleted – that the Stadia version of the game will provide beam tracking, a computer-difficult lighting technique not used by current Stadia games.
It remains to be seen what such a ‘Gen 2’ upgrade could bring, but the important thing to remember is that the ‘upgrade’ would be seamless and would not cost players or even think about it. Since everything is in the cloud, Stadia can simply launch more demanding games on better server hardware.
Android TV support
I call this one last because it is the one thing that has been directly confirmed. Although the Chromecast was introduced with Google TV as an effective successor to the Chromecast Ultra, the newer Google TV / Android TV device is currently unable to (officially) play games on stages.
Fortunately, 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 wider support for Android TV later. Meanwhile, our APK Insight team is closely monitoring the development of Stadia’s latest Android TV experience with each update of Stadia’s Android app.
How long will it take?
Unfortunately, for many of these improvements, as well as the ones we did not think of, they deliberately stick to their plans. As stated by John Justice in a recent Escapes podcast, the Stadia team strives to no longer hinder the future of the service. This means that we probably will not know when these improvements are intended before they start.
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