Stadia's Free Tier Coming In The "Next Few Months"

Google's cloud gaming service, Stadia, arrived to a thoroughly negative reception back in November, but the tech giant isn't quite ready to throw in the towel yet. In an interview with Protocol, Google vice president Phil Harrison said that the company is planning to launch a free version of Stadia later in 2020, titled "Stadia Base." No other details regarding the timing of release were provided.

"The big strategic difference is that over the next few months you will be able to experience Stadia for free," Harrison said. "No money down, without having to put a box in your home, you can just click and play amazing games straight from our data center."

Such a move would improve upon Stadia's current payment scheme, which asks players to pay a $10 monthly fee for a smattering of free games, in addition to the $130 Founder's Edition--games that aren't included in the Pro package must be purchased individually. Though our reviewers felt that the streaming tech itself is in a good place, the library of games on offer is lacking compared to traditional consoles. Recently, Google announced that it'll be bringing 120 more games to the service in 2020, but details on most of those games are sketchy at this point.

With the recent emergence of Nvidia's game streaming service, GeForce Now, and ongoing rumors about Amazon stepping into the space, it seems that the game streaming wars are only starting. But it's clear that Stadia has a lot of ground to make up if they plan on winning.