Here’s an announcement that was omitted from Google’s Launch Night In event: the new Chromecast with Google TV doesn’t officially support Stadia at launch.
Stadia, Google’s much-maligned cloud streaming service, was given a small spotlight during the show – mostly to show how it’ll benefit from 5G and to remind everyone it still exists.
Google also encouraged people to check out the one month free trial of Stadia Pro, and noted that all purchases of the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G would come with a three months’ subscription to the service.
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What Google didn’t care to share, however, is the fact that Stadia isn’t officially supported on the new Chromecast with Google TV, and won’t be until sometime in the first half of 2021.
You can get Stadia working via sideloading, which The Verge managed successfully, but the omission of official support for the game streaming service is surprising.
So is this a case of Google simply shunning Stadia? Probably not. Stadia is supported on the current Chromecast Ultra, which doesn’t have an interface as such, and relies on streaming video from the internet as directed by your device (or Stadia controller).
The new Chromecast with Google TV works slightly differently, then. It now has an operating system, which is Android TV, a user interface that’s home to thousands of apps, Google TV on top of that, and Cast. It’s likely that Stadia has an issue with one or more these areas, hence the lack of official support at launch.
Castaway
If you’re a Stadia user that was interested in picking up the new Chromecast with Google TV, our advice is to stick with the Chromecast Ultra for now. The device is no longer being sold separately by Google, but you can still grab one as part of the Stadia Premiere Edition, which comes with the Stadia controller.
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