26 PCWorld JULY 2019NEWS
IMAGE: GOOGLEGoogle’s play-anywhere Stadia
game service gets a Founder’s
Edition bundle, pricing, and more
‘Stadia’ still sounds like a health insurance company, though. BY HAYDEN DINGMANN
early a week before E3,
Google, of all companies,
kicked off festivities.
On June 6, Google detailed
its Stadia streaming service (go.pcworld.
com/stda), or at least gave us more details
after a relatively info-light reveal at March’s
Game Developers Conference.
It’s a bit complicated, though. Stadia
Pro is the system everyone expected, a
sort-of Netflix-for-games at $10 a month,
with the top-tier technical package—4K, 60
frames per second streaming, and more—
streamed seamlessly to any compatible
device be it a laptop, desktop, Pixel 3 phone,or Chromecast.
Google will curate a selection of games
for Stadia Pro, similar to Microsoft’s Xbox
Game Pass. And there were some great
games Google mentioned in its
presentation, including Destiny 2’s new
Shadowkeep expansion—now with cross-
platform save capabilities—and the long-
awaited announcement of a Baldur’s Gate III
(go.pcworld.com/bld3). Ubisoft showed up
in a big way with The Division II and Ghost
Recon, and a few smaller indies fleshed out
the presentation.
I couldn’t help but notice Google
prominently featured a Rockstar logo in its