Today has been a rough day for Stadia, Google’s new video game streaming service. Reviews from the media are rolling out and they – putting it as kindly as possible – mixed at best. Players are complaining that the promised 4K resolution is actually a 1080p image that is upscaled to 4K. Even worse, there are reports that games like Destiny 2 actually look worse than the Xbox One X version of the same game despite running on hardware capable of 10.2 teraflops. Now we have pricing for most of the Stadia launch games and some of these are laughably bad.
The pricing was originally reported by Corbin Davenport via Android Police. To be perfectly fair, I am looking at these prices from the perspective of someone who owns multiple consoles and a PC. Google claims that the advantage of Stadia is letting people play games without having to first purchase expensive hardware. It is also true that some games are on par with pricing on other platforms. One example would be Samurai Shodown which is listed at $59.99 USD. Let’s just go through the list and you can decide for yourself if you would be willing to pay these Stadia launch game prices. All prices are in US dollars.
It should be pointed out that ponying up for a $9.99 per month Stadia Pro subscription offers some hefty discounts on these prices. For example, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is only $30 if you have a subscription. The problem is that the game has been at that price or cheaper more than once on Xbox One and PS4.
What do you think of the Stadia launch game prices? Did you purchase any of these for Stadia? We would love to know.
