I really want Google’s Stadia to be the Netflix of video games. Google insists it isn’t, and it’s right. It’s not. Not at launch, anyway, when you have to fork out £119 for a Founder’s Edition to play. But it should be, and I think Google knows this too.
As it stands, Stadia’s bizarre business model means the tech is swimming upstream at launch. Let’s say you’re convinced by the tech (more on that over at Digital Foundry), and fancy dipping in. What you want to do is pay nine quid a month for access to a library of games that work at the push of a button. The reality of Stadia at launch, unfortunately, is very different.
Not only do you have to pay £119 for the Founder’s Edition, which gets you a Chromecast and a controller (which at first looks like the cheap third-party controller you made your younger sibling use when you were playing local multiplayer but after some time feels quite good in your hands), but you then have to pay for games on top. Then you go on the Stadia store, which you access from your smartphone only, and the true horror of Stadia’s business model is laid bare.
Mortal Kombat 11 costs fifty quid. I can get NetherRealm’s wonderful fighting game for under thirty quid from Amazon. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which came out over a year ago, also costs fifty quid. That’s under twenty quid on Amazon. Kine is twenty quid, whereas it’s £16 on the Epic Games store. Red Dead Redemption 2 is £54.99 on Stadia. I can get Rockstar’s cowboy epic from Amazon for just over £40.