From the very beginning, Google Stadia and YouTube were supposed to work together — thanks to the magic of cloud computing, you’d be able to click a YouTube ad to instantly begin playing a game, YouTubers would be able to invite their viewers to instantly join their game, and — perhaps most importantly — creators would be able to instantly, effortlessly be able to livestream their Stadia games to YouTube just by pressing a button on the controller.
None of those things happened at Stadia’s launch last November, but the biggest one is apparently arriving tomorrow: every Stadia user will be able to livestream directly to YouTube starting tomorrow, a representative confirms to The Verge.
This afternoon, 9to5Google noticed that the feature appeared to be rolling out, and we spotted the ability to link a YouTube account in our Stadia accounts as well — though not the ability to actually stream yet. I guess we’ll try that tomorrow.
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According to 9to5Google, you’ll still have to give your stream a title and tweak a few settings, like whether your stream is appropriate for kids (to comply with children’s protection rules). It’s also not clear whether you’ll be able to stream in 4K quite yet, as Stadia originally promised. You’d also likely need a $9.99 a month Stadia Pro subscription for that, like you do for 4K gameplay.
The feature couldn’t come at a more important time for Stadia: the service’s most important game yet, Cyberpunk 2077, is arriving this week, at a time when next-gen consoles and the latest graphics cards to build your own powerful PC are incredibly difficult and expensive to buy. It’s the biggest test for Stadia yet, and one the company is banking on: buying Cyberpunk on the service comes with a full set of free Stadia hardware for a limited time — not unlike the set it gave free to YouTube Premium subscribers.
People streaming Cyberpunk 2077 from Stadia to YouTube could be the single biggest opportunity yet for Google to prove what its service can do.
