One of the main announcements of Google’s recent virtual event, Stadia Connect, is the introduction of the “Click to Play” feature.
Google Stadia is a promising cloud gaming platform that launched last November 2019. With the recent Stadia Connect event, the gaming community was educated about a new amazing feature—Click to Play.
The July 14 Stadia Connect virtual event revealed quite a lot of game announcements and a more social approach to the cloud gaming services of Google.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwb6d2wK3Qw
What is Click to Play?
Google Stadia has since promoted seamless gaming without the hassle of added hardware of going through the installation process, something that Microsoft wants to achieve with its Project xCloud for its Xbox game.
To make the Stadia experience more seamless, its makers introduced the Click to Play feature during Stadia Connect.
With just a simple click of a link, gamers will be redirected to the game itself and be able to start playing the game. The head of UX research in Google Stadia, Meagan Timney, explained further using PUBG as an example, saying:
“You’re a Stadia Pro subscriber, you’re watching your favorite YouTube Creator play PUBG, and you feel like starting your own game with some friends. Just click the link they’ve shared in the description and you’re playing PUBG instantly on Stadia.”
This is actually quite a useful tool to use for streamers who like to interact with its players in-game. Adding this to last year’s announcement of Crowd Play—games have never been this social.
All Click to Play links can be used on any Stadia-supported devices.
However, as GameRant points out, one of the downsides of the Click to Play feature is that it won’t be as extremely accessible as the devs portray it to be. This is because the Click to Play links will only correctly direct players to the game if they already own the game.
If not, then players will reportedly be rerouted to Stadia’s store page instead.
Nevertheless, the presence of the Click to Play feature level ups the gamers’ “no download, no update” experience on the cloud-based platform.
Gematsu is quite positive with this feature launch as it may, hopefully, pave the way for “Google to roll out its promised State Share feature later on.”
How to subscribe to Google Stadia?
This might be the best time to be a Google Stadia user, as the platform is offering a month’s worth of subscription for free.
Also, per Video Games Chronicles, Google has significantly cut the price for Stadia last month. The internet giant is also offering a Stadia Premiere Edition for only US$99.99[AU$142.83], instead of its original $129 retail price. The Premiere Edition will allow players to stream on their TV as it’ll include a Google Chromecast Ultra and a Stadia Controller.
Meanwhile, the Stadia Pro subscription is set at $9.99 per month.
There are great titles coming to Stadia this 2020 and the years to come, such as NBA 2K21 and Cyberpunk 2077.
Featured image courtesy of Stadia/YouTube Screenshot