Google Stadia Won't Have Every Announced Feature At Launch
The Google Stadia Reddit AMA has been rolling along for the past hour or so, and we've been able to glean some info from it on how fully featured Stadia will be at launch. It seems Google will be taking its time checking off all the boxes.
"Oh yes, achievements..." wrote director of product Andrey Doronichev, responding to a user who asked if Stadia would have something like Xbox Achievements or PlayStation Trophies. "[A]s a a lifelong gamer and a pathological overachiever, I love achievements! Of course we'll have something similar to other platforms. However, it will not be there immediately at launch. Will come a little bit later."
That same sentiment carried over to another question, where Doronichev was asked which announced features would available at launch.
"We'll get all the basic functionality at launch – play games across screens, no waiting for downloads or patches, social, store, etc," he said. "Of course it's not going to be every feature we announced at our vision announcement at day 1. But that's the beauty of a cloud platform – it'll be constantly improving!"
We had to tilt our head sideways slightly at that second response, because a "vision announcement" was not what that opening day sales pitch seemed like. The Stadia unveil was akin to a new console announcement, and what Google showed off as part of Stadia seemed like it would, you know, be a part of Stadia. Imagine if Microsoft had shown off the Xbox One and its TV features and then said, "Actually, those won't be there at launch."
So now we're left to wonder what else won't make Stadia's Founder's launch or the wider release in 2020. Stadia showed off a bunch of streaming integration, along with the ability to share a link to a specific moment in a game for someone else to play. The Stadia Connect feature — which gives each player his or her own instance for couch co-op — is also something we could see missing the launch.
As for what Google has confirmed won't be ready in time (responding to people who asked in the AMA), you can expect to be missing support for non-Pixel 3 mobile devices, achievements, mod support, support for non-standard monitor resolutions, Bluetooth audio support, and Family Sharing.
We'll update you should more Google Stadia news drop ahead of the platform's November launch.