Google Stadia Premiere kit costs less, but loses its best edge

• The comparison
• Tutorials
• Google Stadia Premiere kit costs less, but loses its best edge

Google announced today that it is lowering the price of its Google Stadia Premiere Edition starter kit, which comes with a Chromecast Ultra and a Google Stadia controller, from $129/$119 to just under $100/$90. The bad news is that the Stadia Premiere Starter Kit will no longer come with a three-month free trial of Stadia Pro... which was actually a nice perk for paying for the appropriate hardware. The lower prices appear to be a way for the game streaming service to boost speed ahead of the launch of PS5 and Xbox Series X, and follows the launch of the free Stadia tier in April that lets you use the service without being a Stadia Pro member. In fact, now that the free tier of Stadia is available, you no longer need to use Google hardware to start streaming, you can just use your PC's browser with a USB-compatible controller to start playing Google's website. Stadia. Really, you only need Google hardware if you want Stadia to be on your living room TV.

The pros and cons of being a professional

Stadia Pro was probably the most confusing and controversial aspect of the Google Stadia launch: you had to be a Stadia Pro member to be able to play Stadia at launch, and you had to use Google hardware. Without exceptions. The advantage of being a Pro member is that games can be played in 4K and Google gives you a ton of free titles every month, as well as a significant discount on a dozen other games, similar to Microsoft's and Sony's Xbox Live Gold plans. Playstation Plus. And Google, to its credit, keeps these benefits going forward. However, at $10/$9 a month, the plan is pretty steep, and the three-month trial that Google included with the Stadia Premiere kit was a good description of the subscription.