Stadia Base, the free tier option that Google announced last year, is due out soon. The head of Stadia, Phil Harrison, echoed this exact sentiment in a recent interview with Protocol.
In that same report, Xbox boss Phil Spencer noted that he sees Google’s Stadia service as the biggest competitor to Xbox.
According to Harrison, the option for users to try the service on the Stadia Base plan will arrive within a few months. More specifically, Harrison says it’ll be available “over the next few months,” which is more or less the same exact thing.
He doesn’t name any specific dates, but he does give a general time frame. The question is whether or not over the next few months is too late.
The Stadia Base option should already be available
Stadia launched in November of 2019. And the only way to gain access was to purchase a Founders bundle or a Premiere bundle. With those you got three months of Stadia Pro for free for 90 days.
A service plan that you’ll end up having to pay $9.99 a month for. That 90-day time frame is ending soon though. For anyone who claimed their Stadia Pro access the day of launch, which was November 19, Stadia will cost $9.99 a month in just a couple of weeks.
With no option to continue using Stadia if you don’t resubscribe. It’s more understandable from a consumer standpoint, that Google wouldn’t have the free option ready for anyone who hasn’t already tested Stadia via the bundles.
But for those who have already paid money, unless they want to pay the $9.99 a month until Base is available, all of their now acquired games will be unplayable.
Now over the next few months could be a wide-cast net, as Harrison may not want to immediately divulge that Google plans to launch Stadia Base sooner rather than later. But it also makes sense that Google wouldn’t launch this tier of the platform until at least one month of paid subscriptions goes by.
Competition from GeForce NOW could force Google’s hand
Stadia still has a loyal following of users. That much is evident if you browse through the official subreddit. But it would be foolish to overlook the fact that some of the people who have been dedicated since the beginning are a little unhappy with the way things have gone so far. At least to some degree.
The good thing, is that Harrison has now confirmed that Base is sort of just around the corner. And with the arrival of GeForce NOW, which NVIDIA just launched out of beta yesterday, it may force Google to launch Base in the earlier part of that “next few months.”
Time will tell of course. Whatever Google’s reasons for holding off on it, Stadia Base would no doubt get some people to try it out that haven’t yet given it a chance. Which is probably not a bad thing for Google.