It looks like new Stadia games will cost just as much as on consoles, as a survey reveals only 23% of UK gamers are interested in streaming.
Final Fantasy VII Remake wins Best Of Show in Game Critics: Best of E3 2019 awards
With no new information being revealed at E3, there are still a lot of questions to answer about Stadia. We know the basics – that it launches in November and the monthly Stadia Pro subscription is £8.99 – but not the cost of individual games.
A new problem that’s come to light is that Stadia Base, the service you don’t need to pay a subscription for, doesn’t launch until 2020 and so you’ll have to buy both individual games, at full price, and have a subscription to play new games this year – meaning there’s a good chance they’ll end up more expensive than buying on a console.
That’s a detail Google hasn’t really emphasised until now, and while there are expected to be ‘free’ games to play via Stadia Pro, just like on Netflix, it seems most of the new ones – things like Doom Eternal and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint – will have to be paid for separately.
‘I don’t know why it would be cheaper,’ Stadia’s Phil Harrison told Eurogamer, in regards to comparing prices with standard console releases.
‘The value you get from the game on Stadia means you can play it on any screen in your life – TV, PC, laptop, tablet, phone,’ he added. ‘I think that is going to be valuable to players.’
That’s not exactly how most people would imagine a ‘Netflix for games’ and a recent survey suggests that gamers may not be quite as interested in Stadia as Google hope.
According to a survey conducted on behalf of GamesIndustry.biz 70% of gamers in the UK, France, Germany, and Spain say they have no interest in video game streaming services.
These weren’t just random people though, but those that self-identified as gamers, with only 15% saying they were actively interested in a Netflix style service for games. Just 3% said they were ‘very interested’.
The UK is the most keen though, with 23% claiming to be interested and 5% being ‘very interested’.
Interestingly, worries about the speed and reliability of their Internet connection did not seem to be the major concern, with 54% of UK gamers confident theirs would be up to the task.
Instead, the main concern seems to be price, with only 22% agreeing with the statement that subscription-based services will be good value for money.
So you can imagine how the news about pricing is going to go down with them…
Email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk, leave a comment below, and follow us on Twitter
