March 20, 2019
Google’s New “Stadia” Game Controller Embeds a Voice Assistant
Yesterday, Google announced its vision for the future of gaming with its “Stadia” cloud platform. As this Verge article notes, many of the details about how Stadia will actually work are still unknown – it won’t be publicly available until later this year.
But the Stadia controller – the only physical piece of Stadia – was made available and a Google Assistant is embedded within it (here’s a 2-minute video of when the controller was announced). The first game controller with voice directly available!
It’s too soon to know how big a role will voice play in Stadia – it will depend on how game developers create in-game experiences utilizing it. But it’s definitely something that distinguishes this controller from all others…
By the way, the Verge reporter loved the controller, the first one that Google has ever made. Watching the Stadia launch was uplifting – all sorts of new possibilities for video & gaming were readily apparent. Hope springs eternal…