The 4 biggest questions we still have about Google's Netflix-like game streaming service

Since Google Stadia isn't a game console, but a platform, a major unknown is how pricing will work.

Is there a monthly subscription price for Stadia? Is the Stadia game library similar to Netflix, where your subscription gives you access to everything? Or is it an a la carte setup, where you buy each game? A mix? Something else?

Google hasn't said.

The expectation, given the precedent set by subscription-based video streaming services like Netflix, is that Stadia will offer users access to its entire gaming library tied to a monthly subscription fee.

But that expectation would mean some pretty huge changes to the business side of video game publishing, similar to the painful transition experienced by the music and film industries as consumers migrated from buying individual albums/movies to paying for streaming services.

From Google Fiber to Google Wave to Google Glass, Google's history is littered with initiatives that started big and faded into nothing.

Though Stadia got a big rollout from Google, with the company going as far as to debut the service at the 2019 Game Developers Conference, it's not clear if Google will actually stick with gaming.

This is an especially big question given the history of tech companies entering the video game industry. Microsoft notoriously took years of heavy losses before getting a real foothold with the Xbox brand, and even now the company still struggles to keep its focus.

Stadia exec Phil Harrison — a longtime game industry vet himself, having worked on both Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox — attempted to assuage this concern in an interview with Kotaku:

"I understand the concern," Harrison said, "But I think that all you have to do is look at the level of investment that we have made and continue to make in Stadia. This is not a trivial project by any means. This is a very, very significant cross-company effort that isn’t just my team, but it’s also across YouTube, it’s across our technical infrastructure and networking team. It represents thousands of people who are working on this business."

Google says Stadia will arrive at some point in 2019, and it will share more details about pricing and dates at some point this summer.

Stadia will only be available in a handful of territories to start: The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and "most of" Europe. It's not clear when the service when the service will arrive in other parts of the world.

Given that Stadia depends on a strong internet connection and proximity to Google's data centers, the service is potentially limited.

That's pretty much all we know about the impending launch of Stadia.