Well, Stadia has confirmed its twelve launch titles. Yes, a whole twelve, and they are a weird mix of “blockbuster” games and something I would welcome like a cold pint of vomit. Some are the previously announced Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Red Dead Redemption 2, Destiny 2, and the recent reboot of the Tomb Raider series. It is a fairly dull line up to sell a new service with one exclusive announced at Opening Night Live at GamesCom this year. Though it isn’t the console/service exclusives Stadia are looking for, more so the content thereof it seems.

With the announcement of the first twelve, we are also promised another fourteen by the end of the year. Most interestingly it includes Grid (2019), as it is bringing an online multiplayer not featured in the PC port or either of the consoles. According to wccftech, the streamed Stadia release of the game is to see the multiplayer mode and a maddening 40-car mode. It is the game’s director, Mark Green, who suggests that it is not even possible to get this same mode out of the consoles or PC at all.

While talking about the excitement and challenges of developing for Google’s could-only streaming service, Mark made the suggestion it is a better platform for multiplayer games. “Perhaps the area with the biggest difference was the streaming, but also the ability of Stadia to talk to other Stadia so quickly transforms some ideas around multiplayer,” he said, “for example developing a whole new mode for GRID Stadia which has 40 cars on track at the same time, something that just isn’t possible with other hardware.”

As we’ve yet to see Stadia in action, I’m not going to assume it to be faster than PC or consoles based on its obvious bottlenecks. If Google has somehow made Stadia negate bandwidth as well as data caps, I’d be willing to give it a second chance to impress me, though I don’t see how they could have or would have done it. Nevertheless, this may be how Stadia is banking on selling it to a number of prospective players. At least it nullifies the weak exclusives lineup on launch.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.