sandbagger writes: BioShock: After Midnight is an original story detailing events that took place in Rapture before the protagonist of the first BioShock game arrived at the city of Rapture. It's a sprawling noir story, following a private eye, an Adam fiend whose fallen in love with Atlas, and the crazed cult members of Sofia Lamb.

In June, Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, a new iteration of the Xbox that the company said would "set a new bar for console power, speed and performance." What Microsoft didn't say is that it is also working on a lower-cost, disc-less version of Scarlett, code-named Lockhart, Kotaku reported Wednesday, citing four people briefed on the company's plans. From a report: If those names sound familiar, that's because they've been floating around for a while. The earliest rumors about Microsoft's next-gen roadmap, circa 2018, suggested that Project Scarlett would consist of two Xbox models: the high-performance Anaconda and the lower-end Lockhart. In June, however, Microsoft announced that Scarlett was a single, high-end console, which led to speculation and then press reports that Lockhart had been canceled. But Kotaku has learned that Lockhart is in fact still in the works as a cheaper, digital-only alternative to Scarlett, as the original rumors suggested. What we don't know -- and what likely isn't finalized yet -- is how the pricing will shake out. But it's easiest to think of Anaconda as a successor to the Xbox One X and Lockhart as a successor to the Xbox One S, with a similar performance disparity. Game developers will be expected to support both Anaconda and Lockhart, which some are worried might hamper their ambitions for next-gen games in the coming years.

As of this week, players who owned a legitimate copy of Tron: Evolution they paid for but never played it, no longer can. From a report: Tron: Evolution, a tie-in game for the 2010 Tron: Legacy film, used SecurRom, a form of digital rights management (DRM), and publisher Disney hasn't paid its bill. This means Disney can no longer authenticate purchases and "unlock" copies of the game that people bought but haven't used yet. Players first noticed they couldn't play the game after purchasing it in October, but a thread on Reddit today brought more attention to the issue. "I often buy games on sales, but don't play them immediately," user Renusek said on Reddit. "Yesterday I decided to play Tron: Evolution, maybe even practice speedrunning it, so I install the game, try to activate it (game still uses SecuROM DRM) and... the serial key has expired (?!)." SecurROM is DRM software that companies attach to video games to make sure they aren't downloaded illegally. It was popular among big game publishers some years back, often causing havoc and annoyance to players.

According to Motherboard, the FBI applied for a search warrant in October compelling Sony to provide data on a PlayStation 4 user who was allegedly part of a cocaine distribution network. The application even asks for what games the alleged drug dealer played, and his progress in them. From the report: "The Provider is hereby ordered to disclose the above information to the Government within 14 days of service of this warrant," the search warrant application, filed on October 22 in the Western District of Missouri, reads. The case revolves around Curtis Alexander, also known as "Dola," who the FBI alleges used PlayStation's online service to coordinate the sale of large quantities of cocaine.

"The CHS [Confidential Human Source] stated ALEXANDER was currently charging $34,000 per kilogram of cocaine. The CHS stated ALEXANDER utilizes the PlayStation username 'Speedola20,'" the application reads, referring to an unnamed informant for the FBI who helped investigate Alexander. The CHS said Alexander contacted them through the PlayStation game "during game." "The phase 'during game' is a reference to audio communication held during the CHS and ALEXANDER's participation in an online multi-player game," the application continues. "Investigators believe that ALEXANDER likely believes that audio communication during the course of his participation in an online game is secure. As such, ALEXANDER likely believes that he can use audio communication during game play on the PlayStation to arrange the details of a drug transaction." The FBI and CHS went on to setup a sting in which the Bureau surveilled Alexander selling the informant a bag of around 100 grams of white powder for $4,400, and Alexander told the CHS he wanted to talk again later that evening on the "game," the court document adds. The FBI asked for essentially all info that Sony may have held on the user, "including stored or preserved copies of emails, chats, or other messages sent to and from the Account, drafts of such, and the source destination addresses associated with each, the date and time at which each was sent, and the size and length of each," the search warrant application reads. It's not known if Sony provided the data.

"On the 25th anniversary of the original Sony PlayStation, The Verge shares the story of the PlayStation supercomputers," writes Slashdot reader jimminy_cricket. From the report: Dozens of PlayStation 3s sit in a refrigerated shipping container on the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's campus, sucking up energy and investigating astrophysics. It's a popular stop for tours trying to sell the school to prospective first-year students and their parents, and it's one of the few living legacies of a weird science chapter in PlayStation's history. Those squat boxes, hulking on entertainment systems or dust-covered in the back of a closet, were once coveted by researchers who used the consoles to build supercomputers. With the racks of machines, the scientists were suddenly capable of contemplating the physics of black holes, processing drone footage, or winning cryptography contests. It only lasted a few years before tech moved on, becoming smaller and more efficient. But for that short moment, some of the most powerful computers in the world could be hacked together with code, wire, and gaming consoles. "The game consoles entered the supercomputing scene in 2002 when Sony released a kit called Linux for the PlayStation 2," reports The Verge. Craig Steffen, senior research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and his group hooked up between 60 and 70 PlayStation 2s, wrote some code, and built out a library.

"The PS3 entered the scene in late 2006 with powerful hardware and an easier way to load Linux onto the devices," the report adds. "Researchers would still need to link the systems together, but suddenly, it was possible for them to imagine linking together all of those devices into something that was a game-changer instead of just a proof-of-concept prototype."

Valve has confirmed to The Verge that it will stop making its Steam Controller. Currently, the gamepads are on sale for just $5 -- 90 percent off its original price -- but once these controllers are gone, Valve doesn't plan to make any more. From the report: [W]hile I can't recommend it wholeheartedly like I did when Valve discontinued its amazing Steam Link wireless HDMI cable-in-a-box, I will say that $13 is a pretty excellent price if you ever plug your PC into your television, or sling your PC games wirelessly to the Steam Link app on your phone and need an accurate solution. That's because the controller, originally introduced in 2013 as part of Valve's failed Steam Machines initiative, is one of the most fully customizable gamepads ever made, and perhaps the only one to offer mouse-like pinpoint precision. That's because it uses a pair of trackpads, complete with tiny solenoid actuators for haptic feedback, so you can emulate a mouse or trackball. Plus, there are paddles around back for crouching, jumping, strafing, you name it without needing to take your thumbs off those trackpads.

But that's just the beginning. Thanks to Valve's robust configuration software, the Steam Controller has developed something of a cult following with thousands of gamers uploading their custom configurations for their entire game libraries on Steam. It's not uncommon to fire up a game and find dozens of fancy profiles that place the game's functions at your fingertips plus add entirely new control modes. One common modifier is to hold down a button to switch the entire gamepad into a gyroscopic aiming mode, not only readying your character's weapon, but slowing down your aiming sensitivity while allowing you to physically shift the controller a small amount to line up a shot using its built-in gyroscope. [...] I doubt I'm actually going to convince you to buy a Steam Controller if you've never been sold on the idea before. (Plus, paying $8 for shipping seems a bit much.) But I'm keeping mine around as a piece of gaming history, and I'm a little tempted to buy a second just in case I ever lose its USB dongle.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A master player of the Chinese strategy game Go has decided to retire, due to the rise of artificial intelligence that "cannot be defeated." Lee Se-dol is the only human to ever beat the AlphaGo software developed by Google's sister company Deepmind. In 2016, he took part in a five-match showdown against AlphaGo, losing four times but beating the computer once. The South Korean said he had decided to retire after realizing: "I'm not at the top even if I become the number one." "There is an entity that cannot be defeated," the 18-time world Go champion told South Korea's Yonhap news agency. Lee Se-dol is considered to be one of the greatest Go players of the modern era. "On behalf of the whole AlphaGo team at DeepMind, I'd like to congratulate Lee Se-dol for his legendary decade at the top of the game, and wish him the very best for the future," said Demis Hassabis, chief executive and co-founder of Deepmind. "During the AlphaGo matches, he demonstrated true warrior spirit and kept us on the edges of our seats to the very end."

In an interview, Xbox chief Phil Spencer downplayed VR as an "isolating" experience, saying that "nobody's asking for VR" -- at least, from his customer base. From a report: He said, "the vast majority of our customers know if they want a VR experience, there's places to go get those" he explained, though he also said "nobody's selling millions and millions" of VR headsets. For these reasons, the company isn't planning to support VR on its next Xbox console, codenamed Project Scarlett. [...] Spencer's take apparently didn't sit well with Sony's Shuhei Yoshida, who led the company's worldwide studios through much of the growth of PlayStation VR -- a headset that has, in fact, sold well over 4 million units. This morning, Yoshida tweeted that "we oftentimes work hard to make things that no customers are asking for," a fairly gentle retort that recalls the supposed quote from car pioneer Henry Ford, "if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since March, Google has been promising that its streaming Stadia platform would be capable of full 4K, 60fps gameplay (for users with a robust Internet connection and $10/month Stadia Pro subscription). But technical analyses since launch have shown that some of the service's highest profile games aren't hitting that mark. A Digital Foundry analysis of Red Dead Redemption 2 on Stadia, for instance, found that the game actually runs at a native 2560x1440 resolution, which is then upscaled to the 4K standard of 4096x2160 via the Chromecast Ultra. And a Bungie representative said that the Stadia version of Destiny 2 runs at the PC equivalent of "medium" graphics settings and that the game will "render at a native 1080p and then upsample [to 4K] and apply a variety of techniques to increase the overall quality of effect."

Over the weekend, Google issued a statement to 9to5Google that essentially places the blame for this situation on Stadia developers themselves (emphasis added): "Stadia streams at 4K and 60fps -- and that includes all aspects of our graphics pipeline from game to screen: GPU, encoder, and Chromecast Ultra all outputting at 4K to 4K TVs, with the appropriate Internet connection. Developers making Stadia games work hard to deliver the best streaming experience for every game. Like you see on all platforms, this includes a variety of techniques to achieve the best overall quality. We give developers the freedom of how to achieve the best image quality and frame rate on Stadia, and we are impressed with what they have been able to achieve for day one. We expect that many developers can, and in most cases will, continue to improve their games on Stadia. And because Stadia lives in our data centers, developers are able to innovate quickly while delivering even better experiences directly to you without the need for game patches or downloads."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After a tease earlier this week, Valve has revealed more details and a new trailer for the first new Half-Life content in over a decade. The "full-length" Half Life: Alyx will hit Steam in March 2020, Valve says, with support for "all PC-based VR headsets." Pre-orders are already available for $59.99, though the game will be free if you own a Valve Index headset. The game, which Valve says is "set between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2," has been "designed from the ground up for Virtual Reality" (i.e. you can stop hoping for a 2D monitor release). "Everyone at Valve is excited to be returning to the world of Half-Life," Valve founder Gabe Newell said in a statement. "VR has energized us."

Today's video trailer shows that next year's Alyx-ization of Half-Life is equal parts abstract and concrete. The VR perspective from today's trailer doesn't include any floating body parts or feet; the only part of your virtual self you'll see, at least in today's trailer, is your hands, covered in a pair of gloves. Yet we also hear Alyx's voice, which indicates that this game's protagonist won't be nearly as silent as Freeman in his own mainline adventures. Today's announcement includes video footage that confirms a data-leak examination by Valve News Network earlier this year: a new manipulation system dubbed the Gravity Gloves. And boy do these things look cool. Need to grab or pick something up? Point at whatever that object is (whether it's close or far away) with an open hand until it glows orange, then close your hand and flick your wrist toward yourself to fling the item in your direction. At this point, you get a moment to physically "catch" the object in question. Point, clench, flick, catch.

Today's trailer also confirms bits and pieces of the exciting HLA details I've previously heard about from multiple sources. For instance, the trailer includes teases of the game's approach to VR-exclusive puzzles, particularly those that require moving hands around a three-dimensional space. Some of these puzzles will require scanning and finding clues hidden inside of the virtual world's walls (and moving or knocking down anything hindering your ability to see or touch said walls). Other puzzles will require arranging what look like constellations or grids of stars around a 3D space in order to match certain patterns. And then there's the matter of familiar Half-Life creatures coming to life for the first time in over 12 years, which means they're that much more detailed and gruesome as rendered in the Source 2 engine. The Half-Life website specifies that this game can be played sitting, standing, or with "roomscale" movement. Players can use finger-tracking or trigger-based VR controllers and move around the VR environments by "teleporting" from point A to point B, "shifting" smoothly to a new position, or just walking continuously with an analog stick.

According to CNET, Amazon is planning to announce a cloud gaming service next year, and it may offer integration with Twitch and its other services. From the report: It's begun recruiting people from large game companies like Microsoft to help with the launch, as well as hiring for jobs in a "new initiative" within its Amazon Web Services team, which sources said is involved in Amazon's future gaming service. "We believe the evolution that began with arcade communities a quarter at a time, growing to the live streams and e-sports of today, will continue to a future where everyone is a gamer and every gamer can create, compete, collaborate and connect with others at massive scales," one job posting this month showed. And in at least one other job posting, the company said it wants to "drive innovative new use cases like machine vision and game streaming."

Amazon said in yet another job posting that it plans to integrate its new initiative with Twitch and the company's other services. The Information earlier reported on Amazon's plans, citing a possible launch next year. Industry insiders believe Amazon's plans for a future video game service are a foregone conclusion, despite struggles in its game-making studios, which saw layoffs earlier this year. Instead, these people cite the company's sprawling $119 per year Prime subscription empire, which already includes music streaming, lauded video projects like The Man in the High Castle, free grocery delivery and more.

Brad McQuaid, best known as a formative hand in the creation of EverQuest, has passed away at the age of 51. From a report: McQuaid's death was reported by the official Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Twitter account, which is the MMO he was working on until his death. A message was also left on the Pantheon MMO forums by user BenD -- Visionary Realms' director of comms Benjamin Dean -- who writes that McQuaid passed away in his home. "Brad was a visionary, a mentor, an artist, a trailblazer, a friend, a husband, a father," the message reads. "He touched thousands of lives with his dreams and concepts. He changed the landscape of video games forever. He will be deeply missed and forever remembered in life and in Pantheon. Thank you, Brad, for bringing us together through your worlds. Rest in peace, Aradune. All of us at Visionary Realms offer our deepest condolences to Brad's family and during this most difficult time, we kindly ask that you respect the privacy of Brad's family."

Known as Aradune in the MMO community, McQuaid joined Sony Online Entertainment in 1996 as a lead programmer and later producer on EverQuest, before later becoming chief creative officer. In 2002 he left SOE and founded Sigil Games, which shipped the MMO Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Sigil Games was eventually purchased by SOE. He briefly rejoined SOE in 2012-2013 before going independent. Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen was successfully Kickstarter funded in 2014.

Password data and other personal information belonging to as many as 2.2 million users of two websites -- one a cryptocurrency wallet service and the other a gaming bot provider -- have been posted online, according to Troy Hunt, the security researcher behind the Have I Been Pwned breach notification service. Ars Technica reports: One haul includes personal information for as many as 1.4 million accounts from the GateHub cryptocurrency wallet service. The other contains data for about 800,000 accounts on RuneScape bot provider EpicBot. The databases include registered email addresses and passwords that were cryptographically hashed with bcrypt, a function that's among the hardest to crack.

The person posting the 3.72GB Gatehub database said it also includes two-factor authentication keys, mnemonic phrases, and wallet hashes, although GateHub officials said an investigation suggested wallet hashes were not accessed. The EpicBot database, meanwhile, purportedly included usernames and IP addresses. Hunt said he selected a representative sample of accounts from both databases to verify the authenticity of the data. All of the email addresses he checked were registered to accounts of the two sites. [...] While there were 2.2 million unique addresses in the two dumps, it's possible that corresponding password hashes or other data isn't included with each one.

Yesterday, Valve announced Half-Life: Alyx, the first new game in the acclaimed Half-Life series in well over a decade. And unlike the previous Half-Life installments, this game will be playable exclusively in virtual reality. The Verge reports: We don't currently have any details beyond the tweet from Valve above, which appears to be the first tweet from a new, Twitter-verified Valve Software account established in June. But clearly, we'll be learning more on Thursday, presumably from this social media account, at 10am PT. Despite being some of the most influential and critically acclaimed PC games ever made, Valve has famously never finished either of its Half-Life supposed trilogies of games. After Half-Life and Half-Life 2, the company created Half-Life: Episode 1 and Half-Life: Episode 2, but no third game in the series. The closest we've come to knowing anything about where Half-Life was headed was this thinly veiled fanfic from former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw.

Scott Stein, reviews Google Stadia cloud gaming service for CNET: Stadia's launch day was earlier this week... sort of. Really, consider this the start of Stadia's early-access beta period. Because Google's big promises haven't arrived, and at the price of the Stadia's Founder's Edition, I can't recommend anyone jump onboard at the moment. Google's experimental game streaming service, Stadia, launches without many of its promised features, and just a handful of games. It works, but there's not much incentive to buy in. We've heard about the promises of streaming games over the internet for a decade. Stadia really does work as a way to stream games. I've only played a couple of the 12 games Google promised by Tuesday's launch, though. That short list pales compared to what Microsoft already has on tap for its in-beta game-streaming service, xCloud. It's no match for what Nvidia's game streaming GeForce Now already has or what PlayStation Now offers. Prices of Stadia games at launch in the US are below. They're basically full retail game prices. This could get crazy expensive fast.

[...] Stadia has so few games right now, and I'm trying them with no one else online. It isn't clear how things will work now that the service is going live, and what other features will kick in before year's end. I'm curious, but I might lose interest. Others might, too. I have plenty of other great games to play right now: on Apple Arcade, VR and consoles such as the Switch. Stadia isn't delivering new games yet, it's just trying to deliver a new way to play through streaming. One that you can already get from other providers. Until Google finds a way to loop in YouTube and develop truly unique competitive large-scale games, Stadia isn't worth your time yet. Yes, the future is possibly wild, and you can see hints of the streaming-only cloud-based playground Stadia wants to become. But we'll see what it shapes into over the next handful of months and check back in. Raymond Wong, writing for Input Mag looks at the amount of data playing a game on Stadia consumes and how the current state of things require a very fast internet connection to work: Like streaming video, streaming games is entirely dependent on your internet speed. Faster internet delivers smooth, lag-free visuals, and slower internet means seeing some glitches and dropped framerates. Google recommends a minimum of connection of 10Mbps for 1080p Full HD streaming at 30 fps with stereo sound and 35Mbps for 4K resolution streaming (in HDR if display is supported) at 60 fps with 5.1 surround sound. Reality didn't reflect Google's advertising, though. Despite having a Wi-Fi connection with 16-20Mbps downloads in a hotel room in LA, streaming Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Destiny 2 to my 13-inch MacBook Pro wasn't 100% stable. The visuals would glitch out for a second or two about every 10 minutes of playtime. [...] A fast internet connection isn't the only thing you need for Stadia to work right. You need a lot of bandwidth, too. One hour of playing Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1080p resolution on my 46-inch HDTV via a Chromecast Ultra ate up 5.3GB of data. This seemed insane until I saw an hour of Destiny 2 on a Pixel 3a XL with 6-inch, 1080p-resolution display gobbled up 9.3GB of data!

An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian: "Give us more guns!" is a common battle-cry among players of first-person shooters, the videogame industry's bloodiest genre. Doom co-creator John Romero has a rather different opinion. "I would rather have fewer things with more meaning, than a million things you don't identify with," he says, sitting in a Berlin bar mocked up to resemble a 1920s Chicago speakeasy. "I would rather spend more time with a gun and make sure the gun's design is really deep -- that there's a lot of cool stuff you learn about it...."

Modern shooters are too close to fantasy role-playing games in how they shower you with new weapons from battle to battle, Romero suggests. This abundance of loot -- which reflects how blockbuster games generally have become Netflix-style services, defined by an unrelenting roll-out of "content" -- means you spend as much time comparing guns in menus as savouring their capabilities. It encourages you to think of each gun as essentially disposable, like an obsolete make of smartphone. "The more weapons you throw in there, the more you're playing an inventory game." Romero contrasts this to the sparing design of the original Doom, which launched in 1993 with a grand total of eight guns. "For Doom, it was really important that every time you got a new weapon, it never made any previous weapons useless...."

Doom is also a game that knows how to keep a secret. It isn't just a firefight simulator but a treacherous, vaguely avant-garde work of 3D architecture. Its levels are mazes of hidden rooms and camouflaged doors that screech open behind you -- sometimes revealing a pile of ammunition, sometimes disgorging enemies into areas you've cleared. Today's shooters set less store by secret spaces, Romero says, because they cost so much to make.

Microsoft's November 2019 update for Xbox One consoles is now headed out to everyone. From a report: After a period of testing with Xbox Insiders, several new features are now rolling out to the public, including Google Assistant support, the option to use any Gamertag, text filters, and more. Perhaps the biggest update here is support for Google Assistant. While it doesn't run on your Xbox, Google Assistant support allows you to issue commands to control your Xbox from your phone or smart speaker. It works much like the Amazon Echo integration that hit Xbox consoles several months ago, letting you turn your Xbox on, launch games, and more with your voice. The Gamertag updates in the November 2019 update bring more choice to players on consoles. Microsoft announced a plan earlier this year to revamp Gamertags, allowing you to choose any name you want. If you pick a Gamertag that's already taken, you'll have a numbered suffix added to it. "With the November 2019 Xbox Update, these gamertag options are now supported on console, including profiles, friend lists, messages, Clubs, LFG and more," Microsoft says.

Microsoft has added more than 50 new games to the preview of its Project xCloud game streaming service, including Devil May Cry 5, Tekken 7 and Madden 2020. Engadget reports: In a blog post today, Microsoft said it'll send out a new wave of xCloud preview invites to gamers in the US, UK and South Korea. Starting next year, it also plans to expand the preview to Canada, India, Japan and Western Europe. If you live in one of those countries, you can sign up for the preview here and hope you get selected.

For now, the xCloud preview is only available for Android phones and tablets, but Microsoft says next year it'll also be headed to Windows PCs and other devices. I'm sure Roku owners would be pleased, but it'd be even more intriguing if Microsoft could eventually bring the xCloud preview to smart TVs and Apple devices. While testers need to use Xbox controllers with the service now, Microsoft also says it'll work with other bluetooth controllers next year, including Sony's Dual Shock 4 and Razer's entries. Yes, you'll soon live in a world where you can play Halo with a PlayStation branded gamepad. Among other tidbits, the xCloud preview will also let gamers stream titles they already own next year, as well those made available through Xbox GamePass for subscribers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google has a long and well-documented history of launching new services only to shut them down a few months or years later. And with the launch of Stadia imminent, one launch game developer has acknowledged the prevalence of concerns about that history among her fellow developers while also downplaying their seriousness in light of Stadia's potential. "The biggest complaint most developers have with Stadia is the fear that Google is just going to cancel it," Gwen Frey, developer of Stadia launch puzzle game Kine, told GamesIndustry.biz in recently published comments. "Nobody ever says, 'Oh, it's not going to work,' or 'Streaming isn't the future.' Everyone accepts that streaming is pretty much inevitable. The biggest concern with Stadia is that it might not exist."

While concerns about Stadia working correctly aren't quite as nonexistent as Frey said, early tests show the service works well enough in ideal circumstances. As for the service's continued existence, Frey thinks such concerns among other developers are "kind of silly." "Working in tech, you have to be willing to make bold moves and try things that could fail," Frey continued. "And yeah, Google's canceled a lot of projects. But I also have a Pixel in my pocket, I'm using Google Maps to get around. I only got here because my Google Calendar told me to get here by giving me a prompt in Gmail. It's not like Google cancels every fucking thing they make." "Nothing in life is certain, but we're committed to making Stadia a success," said Stadia Director of Product Andrew Doronichev in July. "Of course, it's OK to doubt my words. There's nothing I can say now to make you believe if you don't. But what we can do is to launch the service and continue investing in it for years to come."

As we approach the November 19th launch date of Stadia, Google has revealed there will be just 12 games available to start. ExtremeTech reports: Stadia is similar to GeForce Now and Microsoft's upcoming xCloud service. Instead of downloading a game or buying a physical copy, Stadia renders the games on a Google server and streams the video down to your devices. Companies have been trying to figure this out for almost a decade, ever since OnLive began offering cloud gaming services in 2010. Even if Stadia works perfectly, it won't matter if it lacks content. The initial launch lineup has a little of everything, but the emphasis is on little. Here's the list of games you'll be able to buy on November 19th: Assassin's Creed Odyssey; Destiny 2: The Collection; GYLT; Just Dance 2020; Kine; Mortal Kombat 11; Red Dead Redemption 2; Rise of the Tomb Raider; SAMURAI SHODOWN; Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition; Thumper; and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition.

Google has, of course, announced other games for Stadia. Anything previously announced like Darksiders Genesis and Borderlands 3 will come later. Google promises the latter will launch on Stadia in 2019 along with more titles like Rage 2, Grid, and Metro Exodus. Stadia launches on November 19th exclusively for players who ordered the Founder's Edition starter kit. That comes with three months of Stadia Pro ($10 per month after), a limited edition controller, a Chromecast Ultra, and a copy of Destiny 2. The base version of Stadia, which lacks 4K support will be available early next year. That one doesn't include a monthly fee, but you still have to pay for the games.