Google Stadia is releasing through a Founder’s Edition limited pack this November, but won’t feature a beta before launch, as shared by project manager Phil Harrison.
The news is quite disappointing if you consider that new services always need a proper time to be tested not only internally but also as a preview of the experience players will have to check, just like it will happen with Project xCloud this October.
Phil Harrison said that the company doesn’t need to test the technology as it is very confident of the way it’ll work and doesn’t have enough time to build a beta if it wants to launch the streaming platform by this year. When it was called Project Stream, on top of that, it had already been tested, but only in the United States and with a minimal amount of users.
“Geographically, the US is the most complex place to test; just because of the size of the country,” said Harrison. “And actually, Europe – and particularly the UK – are much… relatively, they are relatively easier to launch. So we are not going to do another test in the UK or Europe. If we had time, we probably would have done so, but we don’t need to.”
Every time we hear such things, like for example with Fallout 76, we know it’ll end up being a total disaster. Google Stadia is doing a very risking maneuver here, as it isn’t just a new game but an entirely new platform and way to have gaming content at your home; something that would have required careful testing in all territories. Hopefully, everything will work fine in November, but surely we can’t grant anything now.
