Far be it for us to throw around accusations of desperation, but Google has decided to give away £90 ($99) of Stadia hardware for free to new YouTube Premium subscribers in the UK and US.
It’s better than burying them in the desert, we suppose, but before you all rush out and subscribe, there’s a catch: in order to get your moderately popular game streaming hardware, you need to have signed up for the moderately popular video streaming service before November 6. We tried claiming one with a longstanding Premium account, and were rejected. So either Google hates us, or there's more going on here than meets the eye. Click here to try.
If you fall into this narrow category, it’s actually a pretty good deal. The hardware bundle comes with a Chromecast Ultra (in a triumph of joined-up thinking, the new Chromecast with Google TV will not support Stadia until 2021), a Stadia controller (which you can also use with your PC), and three months' subscription to the service.
For the rest of us, Stadia saw a price cut from £119/$129 to £90/$99 back in the summer, and received a recent update to support USB Type-C headphones and headsets. YouTube Premium, which also includes YouTube Music and Google Play Music, costs £/$12 a month, and a Stadia sub is £9/$10 a month.
New titles such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Cyberpunk 2077 are confirmed for the service, which has seen criticism in the past for its sparse game library and upsampling of games. The Stadia promotion ends on December 31.
