Later this year, Google is launching the cloud gaming platform Stadia and shaking up the home console market. Google has slowly rolled out info on how it could work and, now, set the stage for Stadia’s launch with pricing info, game reveals like Destiny 2 and The Elder Scrolls Online, and more ahead of E3 2019.
The first game revealed was Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 and the studio’s founder Swen Vincke shared that the development team had to triple its size to work on it. Larian elevated its profile with the tactical RPGs Divinity: Original Sin and Original Sin 2 and get a chance to take major steps forward by handling the long-awaited sequel to a beloved franchise. Baldur’s Gate 3 is also notable because it shows that Stadia is taking advantage of the recent resurgence of classic RPGs and tactical RPGs coming to home consoles. Larian Studios and Pillars of Eternity creator Obsidian have been instrumental in this and old-school classics like Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment are being ported to PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One by developer Beamdog. Baldur’s Gate 3’s release date wasn’t revealed.
The next title revealed was a Google Stadia version of the recently announced Ghost Recon Breakpoint. No new information on the game itself was shown, but the reveal did end with a tease of four-player cooperative play powered by the stream connect feature. This feature allows for split-screen gaming with online companions, emulating local co-op play. The Ghost Recon Breakpoint trailer was immediately followed by the announcement of Gylt, a stealth horror game. That was followed by the top-down title Get Packed, which features four-player gameplay in a chaotic physics sandbox.
The Division 2 is also going to be one of Google Stadia’s launch titles, giving the platform a second multiplayer loot shooter alongside Destiny 2, which was confirmed as a launch title near the end of the stream. Google Stadia Pro subscribers will get Destiny 2: The Collection, which includes the base game, all previous expansions including Forsaken, the new Shadowkeep expansion, and the annual pass for that expansion.
There were additional games revealed in a montage at the end of the stream and in a splash page listing devs and publishers contributing to Stadia:
Access to Google Stadia is handled a couple of ways, and there’s a founder’s pack for the platform that will include a handful of items to get players started. Google Stadia launches in fall 2019, so there is still a lot of time left for additional launch announcements.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.