Stadia Pro to offer ‘roughly 1 free game per month’

Stadia Pro subscribers will receive approximately one free game per month, Google has said.

During a Reddit AMA on Thursday, Stadia’s director of product, Andrey Doronichev, compared the $9.99/£8.99 monthly service to subscription offerings from Microsoft and Sony.

“To be clear, Stadia Pro is not ‘Netflix for Games’ like some people have mentioned, a closer comparison would be like Xbox Live Gold or PlayStation Plus,” he said.

“The Pro subscribers get 4K/HDR streaming, 5.1 sound, exclusive discounts and access to some free games. Roughly one free game per month give or take. Starting with Destiny 2.”

Doronichev said users will accumulate a “growing pool” of free games while they’re subscribed to Stadia Pro.

A lapsed subscriber who later rejoins the service will regain access to the Stadia Pro games they claimed in the past but not the ones that were offered to users while they were unsubscribed.

Google Stadia will launch in November 2019 with over 30 games available to purchase on day one.

To access Stadia this year, users will need to buy the $129/£119 Founder’s Edition, which will include a Chromecast Ultra, a limited edition controller and a three-month Stadia Pro subscription.

Doronichev also touched on a number of Stadia features that will and won’t be available at launch.

“We’ll get all the basic functionality at launch – play games across screens, no waiting for downloads or patches, social, store, etc,” he said, “Of course it’s not going to be every feature we announced at our vision announcement at day 1. But that’s the beauty of a cloud platform – it’ll be constantly improving!”

Achievements won’t be available at launch, but “something similar” to what’s offered on other platforms “will come a little bit later”.

And the Google Stadia Controller won’t support Bluetooth headsets at launch. “The Stadia Controller comes with a headphone jack for wired audio, but won’t support Bluetooth audio at launch in November,” Doronichev said. “If you’re playing on the computer or a Pixel phone you can connect the BT headset to it directly and use it in Stadia.”

• Related: Updated Stadia FAQ includes game ownership and local multiplayer details