Today, Google has announced the biggest expansion of Stadia’s potential playerbase, opening the service to eight more countries. While Stadia had previously alluded to this expansion as “more EMEA regions,” the expansion seems to be exclusively in Europe. More specifically, Stadia is now available in these eight European countries:
Austria
Czechia
Hungary
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Switzerland
The list matches up almost exactly with the list discovered last month by the Stadia community, with the addition of Austria. The addition of Poland makes a great deal of sense, considering CD Projekt Red, the developers of Cyberpunk 2077, are based out of Warsaw.
Gamers in these European countries can get started with a free trial of Stadia Pro, giving them access to over 30 free Pro games, as well as two entirely free-to-play games, Destiny 2 and Super Bomberman R Online. By offering these free titles, Google is ensuring people will be able to try streaming some games before they have to lay out any money.
Stadia’s first expansion comes just a month after Microsoft announced that their xCloud streaming was expanding into four new countries worldwide, all of which are still unreached by Stadia.
That brings Google’s tally of countries in which Stadia is available to 22. As long as you have a Gmail address and a decent enough internet connection, you’ll be able to play Destiny 2 or Super Bomberman R Online gratis across a number of devices. New members get a free month of Stadia Pro, which includes a number of additional games. Continuing a subscription and maintaining access to games costs €9.99/month in those countries.
It’s important for game-streaming services to expand to more markets as competition heats up between them. Nvidia’s GeForce Now platform is also available throughout Europe. Save for Romania, Microsoft’s xCloud service is available in all of the aforementioned countries too. Amazon’s Luna, meanwhile, is in beta and only available in the US for now.
