Stadia celebrated its one-year anniversary last month, and as I mentioned in my one-year review of the service, it has grown a lot, but there are still key features missing from the platform. Arguably, one of the biggest is the integration with YouTube.
One would think getting two of Google’s own services to work together in harmony wouldn’t be too difficult of a feat. Yet, here we are, a little more than a year after launch and many of the features Stadia teased us with are still absent, such as clicking an ad on YouTube to jump into a game, live streaming games on YouTube, and the ability for creators to invite viewers to jump into games with them.
The good news is, one of the most important features is said to launch tomorrow. Speaking with The Verge, a representative confirmed that Stadia users will be able to live stream to YouTube beginning on December 9, 2020. To prepare for the launch of the new live streaming feature you can open up the Stadia settings menu to link your YouTube account.
The feature couldn’t come at a more opportune time with Cyberpunk 2077, one of the year’s most anticipated games, set to launch on December 10, 2020. Google is certainly betting that many Stadia users will be playing the game and streaming will certainly help promote the service. Even better, it doesn’t appear you need the Pro subscription in order to stream. However, you can assume streams for free users will top out at 1080p 60fps since you have to pay for Pro to access 4K HDR at 60fps when playing Stadia games.
In fact, this isn’t the first time Google has used Cyberpunk 2077 to promote Stadia. Last month, there was a promotion offering a free Stadia Premiere bundle with the purchase of the game.
At a time when buying the latest next-gen console or video card can be hard to come by, Stadia might offer the quickest and easiest way to play Cyberpunk in 4K HDR at 60fps for many gamers.