Friction is the mind killer when it comes to cloud gaming. You still can’t just click on a game trailer to instantly start playing. But this week, Google appears to be rolling out a feature that could reduce that friction: If you simply search for a game’s name in Google search, you may be presented with a “Play” button that can instantly launch the title.
Looks like google search has a new update for cloud gaming platforms!!!
When searching for a game, players can now launch a game directly from the search results using @GoogleStadia. pic.twitter.com/xblOsBpF6O
— Bryant Chappel (@BryantChappel) August 11, 2022
Nerf Report’s Bryant Chappell seems to be the one who noticed the change, and he quickly discovered that it wasn’t limited to Google’s own Stadia cloud gaming service. It says it also works with Amazon Luna, Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia’s GeForce Now.
There’s still some friction — you have to be signed into an account that’s linked to these cloud gaming services, or else you’ll just get a signup page and there may still be intermediate prompts. It also doesn’t seem to work with all games.
But with Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming, at least one click from a Google search result will take you as far as you can get by going to your favorite cloud gaming service’s website, selecting your title, and hitting the play button you want I would find there.
Forgot to turn off Dark Mode for these screenshots, sorry. Screenshots by Sean Hollister / The Verge
It’s unclear when or if Google will fully roll out this feature. We initially saw it live this afternoon, but suddenly it disappeared and no longer appears in our search results. Then it came back for me, but only for my Google Workspace account, which isn’t connected to any cloud gaming services and can’t play Google Stadia at all. Chappelle confirmed to The Verge that she still sees him working from his home in Austin, Texas. 9to5Google saw it too.
I guess Google is running an A/B test with this feature to see how people react. Or maybe it’s overstepped the gun, not unlike GeForce Now in 2020, by releasing it without the permission of game studios.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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