Plus, according to their FAQ [1], "you will need a Stadia Controller and access to Stadia to play". So apparently you have to drop $170 CAD just to get started, and that's in addition to the subscription cost (but it comes with 3 months of subscription).

[1] https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9338946

This FAQ page DOSE NOT have this quote right now!

From this FAQ page: > Do I need to use your Controller? (Stadia Controller) > No, you can use many popular HID compliant controllers when playing via USB cable on Chrome or mobile. To play on your TV you will need to use the Stadia Controller and Google Chromecast Ultra.

It is under "Which Chromecast devices are compatible with Stadia?". I refreshed and still see the quote.

Is there a difference between playing in Chromecast vs playing in Chrome browser? And why do you need a controller at all if you're just playing desktop games?

> Is there a difference between playing in Chromecast vs playing in Chrome browser? And why do you need a controller at all if you're just playing desktop games?

Playing on Chromecast is for playing on TV. Chrome is for playing on PC.

You need a controller presumably because you need a way to provide input if you're playing on TV. On PC you can use keyboard and mouse but Chromecast doesn't have a way to connect to keyboard and mouse as far as I know

IF you want to play on a chromecast specifically, THEN you need to use the Stadia one.

IF you want to play on a windows pc/chromebook/... you can use most controllers, e.g. dualshock, xbox etc, or choose to not use a controller.

Pretty sure you won't need that when the free 1080p base version comes out next year. I played 30 hours of assassins creed during the beta last year on my macbook pro with a xbox 360 controller.

Is Stadia only targeting console games? Maybe I'm confused by this controller requirement because I'm assuming that I should be able to play e.g. Cities: Skylines on my Chromebook without a controller. (something which you can already do on NVIDIA GeForce NOW in the beta)

I don't get why the marketing has to be so confusing for these platforms. Stadia in Google Store focuses on these physical products instead of the digital subscription, and NVIDIA decided to reuse their name for a previous cloud gaming product that can also be confused with their GPUs. It's like they all want their products to fail.

I'm not sure, but I think it's targeting only console games. It feels like a gigantic value-add for Chromecasts first (which generally live in living rooms with more controllers than keyboard/mice), which also happens to be capable of working on phones/pcs using the same streaming technology so it's also available there.

Here's the list of the launch day games [1] -- I'm not familiar with them all, but even ones like Farming Simulator say they have full controller support on their Steam page. I wouldn't be surprised if Stadia required a controller at least for a while, but eventually got PC-only games that could use a mouse/keyboard.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-play-games-on-google-stad...

Have you checked out the Xbox plus subscription, it includes PC games now.

Do you mean the Xbox Game Pass? That doesn't offer streaming it seems.

There will almost certainly be some tie-in with Microsoft's impending xCloud-based streaming service. Given that they will be starting from a position where people already own games on their platform plus the addition of Xbox Game Pass, I expect that service to really eat into any potential Stadia users.

no streaming, but works on Xbox and PC.