Partial Stadia on-screen UI for Chromecast shown in photo from Gamescom booth

Gamescom is in full swing and the Stadia booth is right in the middle of the action, displaying Google’s streaming game platform to the most critical of gamers during the conference. We’ve been scouring for hands-on videos and real impressions from the booth and have yet to see very much being reported. Whether it is Google discouraging pics/videos or just the normal wait for content, there hasn’t been much coming from the Stadia booth so far.

Reddit user S3basuchian just dropped a post into the Stadia Reddit, however, that not only gives us a pic of the booth, but an actual photo of the UI for the on-screen, in-game portion of Stadia. While we think there will be much more to the overall UI for users with a Chromecast and Stadia controller, it is great to see a tease of what this interface will look like for those in a game.

So, what are we seeing here? The Reddit user said they were able to access this fly-in menu with a press of the Stadia button on the controller, so no worries that this is some sort of persistent thing. If you look closely, you’ll see a few items in the menu of note:

• username
• connection settings
• controller settings
• audio settings
• friends list

I’d assume that navigating through these settings will bring you to a deeper menu, but that is all assumption. It is great to see a working menu with settings for your controller, connection quality, audio and friends, however. We’re not fully sure how the audio will work at this point, but it looks like there will be a simple way to get chats up and going via this UI.

Additionally, having a quick way to see and find friends online is a very useful tool. Again, we aren’t sure how any of this actually behaves in real-world use, but it is exciting to know that Stadia will have a UI that can likely be navigated with a mouse or controller once it is launched. With so much focus on Stadia via Chromecast and little to no details on a UI, I know many users were becoming a bit worried about what a UI would be like on a service built around Chromecast. After all, most cast services have absolutely no UI whatsoever.

Shop Chromecast on Amazon

We’re keeping a close eye on all things Stadia, of course, and will report if we see or hear anything further from the booth at Gamescom. Huge shout out to Reddit user S3basuchian for snagging this pic and another to the /r/Stadia Reddit that has become a treasure trove of info for those of us interested in Google’s upcoming gaming platform. If you want to be on the bleeding edge of Stadia news, you should check it out immediately.