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We’re coming down the final stretch with Stadia’s launch at this point. In just 12 days, gamers who’ve already jumped on board with Google’s streaming game platform will be able to begin leveraging the service to their heart’s content, and we’ll all know exactly how well this entire cloud gaming effort is going to actually pan out in real world use.
The entire Chrome Unboxed team is extremely excited for the launch and as a little nugget before the big day, Google has gone ahead and dropped the official Stadia app into the Play Store. Currently, you can only install this on phones and tablets as Chromebooks aren’t supported. Honestly, this doesn’t really come as much of a surprise since Chromebooks will be leveraging Stadia from the Chrome browser with no app necessary.
The app looks to be built with Flutter – Google’s cross-platform development language – so fully expect the overall look and UI of the app to be identical on other platforms as it rolls out. For the early adopters of Stadia, the phone app will largely be used to launch gaming sessions and control account-level details. Only the Pixel lineup of phones will actually be able to leverage the app for game play at first.
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Right now there isn’t much you can do with the app aside from sign in with the Google account you signed up for Stadia with. After that, without the necessary invite code users will get as the service launches, you can’t get any further into the apps overall UI. Luckily, Google included some screen shots in the Play Store that let us see a bit about the overall UI, and it looks pretty nice. There’s a shot of the home screen, explore screen that show off how you’ll sort games, find games, and connect with online communities and friends.
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Overall, this is simply a nice little tease as we roll into the final days of pre-Stadia life. If early tests, game conferences, and developer support are anything to go by, I think we’re all in for a real treat on November 19th when Stadia becomes a normal part of our daily lives. We are feeling quite confident that Stadia is going to be pretty amazing, and can’t wait for the official release coming soon.
