Chromecast with Google TV to officially gain support for Stadia next year

Google’s new Chromecast with Google TV was officially shown off to the public yesterday. Much of what was revealed was confirmed after the device, like all of Google’s other hardware, leaked in full. The biggest blow to Stadia fans was that the packaging failed to include the cloud gaming service at all and people have resorted to side-loading the Android app instead with varying success.

Luckily, over on The Keyword, Google says that Stadia support will officially be added in the first half of next year, which means you can expect it sometime before June. We’re unsure of why the new device isn’t supported on day one. It can play up to 4K resolution with high dynamic range and 60 frames per second, which I expected Google to reserve for a new Chromecast Ultra down the line, but this newly released dongle doesn’t have an ethernet port, so we’re getting mixed signals here.

Instead, they have opted to provide us with an official ethernet adapter which can pair with the new Chromecast. It’s already available too, making their lack of Stadia support even more puzzling to many. In a recent interview, Google’s director of product development for Android TV, John Gildred, shed some light on the situation.

“Google TV is going to be on third-party devices that have been working on Android TV OS over the years,

“We are now working with them for 2021 products to include the Google TV experience on their next-generation televisions and OTT devices.”

Gildred added that not every partner device in 2021 will get the Google TV experience, but by the following year he expects Google TV to completely replace its predecessor. 

via CNET

So it looks like the idea here may be to roll out official Stadia support once Google TV fully replaces Android TV across all third party devices. If they’re planning to do this before June 2021, however, they still wouldn’t have all third parties completely switched over yet. Perhaps they’re trying to maintain uniformity and consistency and we just don’t have all of the pieces of the puzzle yet. It seems inconsistent to have Stadia operational on their previous Chromecast, yet not on their new one, but we’ll just have to wait and see when everything falls into place.

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