Google launches Stadia, the subscription cloud-based streaming game service

Probably not what everyone was hoping for, yesterday, Google formally launched the much anticipated cloud-based game streaming service, Stadia. The new service, which allows users to stream games including “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” and “NBA 2K20” on Chrome web browser, failed to meet the expectations of die-hard gamers. Reports from early users of Stadia showed the service had many problems including lagging and syncing issues with the service.

Some users pointed out Stadia’s video quality, which Stadia automatically adjusts based on your connection speed, regularly drop down for some players to 720p, well below the expected 4K resolution Stadia is supposed to be able to handle. In response to users’ complaints, Google said on Stadia Support page: “Stadia is a new way to play games and we understand setup is a bit different than other platforms,” Google Stadia’s Patrick Seybold said in an email to Quartz. “We recommend consumers go to our help center for optimizing their connections to get the best gameplay experience.”

We wrote about Stadia back in June when Google first made the announcement about the to launch. Stadia as  launchedto users from 14 countries: U.S., Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, U.K. with at least 31 games from 21 different publishers. Google is working to expand to additional countries in 2020.  According to the announcement, the streaming service starts at $9.99 a month.