The Android TV dongle will potentially be compatible with Stadia, and thanks to the discovery of support for a low-latency game mode it may be better suited for the job than the Chromecast Ultra.
XDA Developers has found information that points to ALLM, or Auto Low Latency mode, which suggests that Google wants this device to have game mode support. Most likely for Stadia.
You can play Android games on Android TV. But low latency seems like something that would be much more important for Google’s cloud gaming platform. Given that you need to stream games to play them and the less latency the better.
Users would still need a TV with ALLM to utilize the Android TV game mode
Low-latency game mode support for this dongle is a good start to better gaming experiences. But it won’t do you any good if you don’t have a TV that supports ALLM.
So that’s worth keeping in mind if you plan to pick one of these up after they officially launch and use it for some gaming. If you have one of those TVs though, the dongle should be able to switch on this mode automatically.
Perhaps anytime you boot up a Stadia game, this dongle would be able to detect that and switch over to this low-latency mode. Overall that would probably lead to a better gaming experience.
Android TV support for Stadia is already technically in place
Google pushed out a handful of changes to Stadia earlier this week. Part of that update to the platform included experimental support for more devices.
Of which one of those was Android TV devices. Since this support isn’t official, the app technically has to be sideloaded and there are a couple of workarounds that you have to do to get things going. Like using a mouse and keyboard for the initial sing-in process.
After all that though, you can generally start playing games the way you would if you were streaming from the Chromecast Ultra. With Android TV support being experimental, proper support through this upcoming dongle would make things a breeze.
And there’s a chance that support may be official around the time of the Android TV dongle launch. Whenever that happens to be.
One thing is for sure. Google needs to add support for Stadia Android TV quickly. Because GeForce NOW just gained its own experimental support for Android TV. The app is however much more accessible as it doesn’t need to be sideloaded.
It’s still experimental, so it might not work as well for some. But it’s there.