The previously canceled Terraria port for Google's game-streaming service Stadia is back in the pipeline. The decision follows an apparent reconciliation between the game's co-creator Andrew Spinks and Google, which addressed and eventually restored his Google accounts. We don't yet know when Terraria will arrive on Google Stadia, however.
Google's announcement of the shutdown of its own, in-house, first-party game development studio for Stadia has had many doubting the future of the game streaming service, both in this particular case and in general. Stadia, of course, has repeatedly assured customers and partners alike that all is well and the service will grow even more this year, even without the Stadia Games & Entertainment studio. In addition to the promised 100 games planned throughout the year, it is now announcing its four free games for March, including one Stadia-exclusive.
Today Google announced that their newest round of games readied for Stadia will be among "more than 100 games" that'll be added to the platform in the year 2021. Per Google, more than 100 games will be added to the Stadia store "in 2021". This doesn't necessarily mean that all the games will be strictly 100% new to the world, but they'll certainly be new to Stadia.
The viability of the game streaming business was again put on the hot seat last week when Google announced the closure of its in-house Stadia Games and Entertainment (SGE) studio. Amazon, who was undergoing a shift in leadership after Bezos announced his departure as CEO, took the opportunity to reiterate its commitment to the gaming market. Rather than make a big fuss, the other big player in that arena has chosen to work silently instead, quietly pushing out more supported titles and finally releasing a list of compatible games for GeForce NOW streaming.
Terraria is a game that doesn't need much introduction these days. The indie title rose to popularity on PC before spreading to pretty much every platform imaginable. Fueled by periodic updates that massively expanded the content in the game, Terraria remains popular today - more than 9 years after release - but unfortunately, Stadia isn't going to get a slice of that pie.
No one was really surprised though the disappointment and the fear were still thick when Google made a bombshell announcement on Monday. Although it doesn't affect the game streaming service directly, the shutdown of the first-party Stadia Games & Entertainment studio still puts Google's commitment into question. In the midst of that uncertainty both for game streaming and for the e-commerce giant itself, newly-named Amazon CEO Andy Jassy reaffirmed his commitment to this market, despite repeated failures of the company's own Amazon Game Studios.
Google made a big announcement today about the future of Google Stadia, their game streaming service. Back when they first started going public with Stadia, they intended to make some exclusive content and games that'd be significant selling points for the Google Stadia service. Today they announced that they're not going to do that anymore.
If you're a Stadia Pro subscriber, you can now grab the four free games released for January 2021, all of them available as long the player remains a subscriber. The lineup is decent, though not quite as exciting as some of the games gamers got through similar subscriptions with Sony and Microsoft.
Cyberpunk 2077 and its developer CD Projekt RED have quickly become those things that gamers love to hate. But despite its troubled launch on consoles, the game has raked in millions of sales, already excluding returns. It's pretty ironic then that someone was able to play Cyberpunk 2077 smoothly on the technically weakest current-gen console but, truth be told, it's really just smoke and mirrors and involves a process that some Nintendo Switch owners might not be willing to go through.
Last month, Google said that it was testing an iOS implementation of Google Stadia. At one point in the past, we thought we'd never see Stadia come to iOS, as restrictive App Store rules made launching a game streaming service technically possible but realistically challenging. Thankfully, the iOS version of Stadia sidesteps the App Store entirely, launching as a Safari webapp instead.
By now, you've probably already purchased Cyberpunk 2077, and have likely spent all night customizing your character. If you're one of the few who remains interested in the game but haven't pulled the trigger on a purchase, today we're looking at a few reasons why Google's Stadia option might be the best version of your near-future reality. This is the cloud-based gaming future, and it means ZERO wait time.
Few things can be more annoying for gamers when they buy a new videogame than a massive day one patch you have to download and install before playing the game. Developers behind Cyberpunk 2077 have announced that there will be a day one patch with bug fixes. It's become extremely common for developers to launch video games that are riddled with bugs.