Google search will now show which cloud streaming services have a particular video game, building on existing support for movies, TV and music.
For years now, Google Search has served as an aggregator of the world’s streaming services, if you want to watch a particular program, you can use Google Search or Google TV to get precise information on which services it is active. For example, research from The Simpsons reveals that the show can be streamed from a variety of apps, including Disney + and Hulu , or purchased from multiple stores.
In recent days, Google search has expanded this functionality to include support for video games, however rather than including links to the storefronts of various consoles or the numerous PC game retailers, Google is focusing strictly on cloud gaming .
This makes perfect sense, given that Google has the skin in-game thanks to Stadia and Google Cloud’s immersive streaming. Of course, Google’s search isn’t just bringing out results from Stadia, with confirmed support for Amazon Luna , NVIDIA GeForce NOW , and Xbox Cloud Gaming . Oddly, the list of services seems to vary between desktop and mobile, in fact the search for “Destiny 2” on Android only brings up one result for Stadia , while the same desktop search shows both GeForce Now and Stadia.
But that’s not to say that Stadia doesn’t receive a minimum of special treatment, as on mobile devices, when a game has a free trial via Stadia, the page changes the text from black to green to show “Trial available”, otherwise, Search Google simply shows when a game is “Free” (like Fortnite on Xbox or Destiny 2 on Stadia) or if it can only be streamed with a “Premium subscription” (as in the case of games on Luna).
- Google Search now shows which streaming services have specific games (9to5Google)