Google’s gaming platform Stadia has been in development for a long time and can now offer an impressive selection of well over 200 titles. So that there will be many more in the future and that bigger names will come to Stadia, Google has now introduced the Stadia Porting Toolkit. This one opens the big world of Windows games, which can be transferred more easily.
Both the development and the game selection have never stood still at Stadia because both are progressing at a fast pace and yet the future seems unclear. But now Google is stepping on the gas again and turning several screws to increase the acceptance and thus the spread of Stadia. First, we reported on the Stadia cloud offering and now we present the plans for the actual gaming platform.
Google wants to make porting Windows games to Stadia as easy as possible, so developers of all sizes can bring their Windows games to Stadia. You now have the Stadia Porting Toolkit that was introduced for this purpose, which is supposed to literally “translate” the games from Windows to Stadia or Linux. This is exactly the hurdle that many developers are not ready to go and have had to be supported by Google with large financial resources (sometimes more than 10 million dollars per title).
The Stadia Porting Toolkit ensures that titles written for Windows can also be compiled for Linux. Microsoft’s DirectX has played a very important role in the graphics area under Windows for decades and is used by many developers. Nothing has to change with the Stadia Porting Toolkit, because Google has “translated” the DirectX functionality and its functions for its own platform and made it usable.
So far, Stadia has had the problem that the games run on Linux. However, as is well known, Linux does not play a major role in the games market, so developers often had to port the titles themselves for the new platform. What is worthwhile with Xbox and PlayStation simply because of the reach of the platforms looks different with Stadia. Because Google’s platform still suffers from the chicken-and-egg problem: fewer players because of fewer titles and fewer titles because of fewer players. The Stadia Porting Toolkit aims to break this.
It doesn’t mean Windows games will be usable on Stadia, as originally thought. Because it still requires developer intervention and also some manageable development work. So nothing can be done without a developer, there is no real emulator – at least not yet. But I could imagine that this will also be considered in the long term and that every Windows game can be used on Stadia. If the developers have no effort and can only generate an additional source of income without their own costs, they will hardly have anything against it.
The above studios are currently working with the Stadia Porting Toolkit and plan to bring the first titles originally developed for Windows to Stadia in the coming weeks and months.