Google’s big streaming experiment with Stadia has gotten off to a rocky start, and occasionally good news has gotten hamstrung by often bewildering mistakes. That’s the story this week too, as Borderlands 3 has launched today for Stadia – but it’s a months-old version that won’t reach parity with the other releases for some time to come.

The Stadia version of Borderlands 3 has “the updates and fixes that were released through October 24,” according to Gearbox’s official site. That means new features, including big endgame content like the Maliwan Blacksite and Mayhem 4, will not be there in the Stadia version. Gearbox says it plans to have parity between Borderlands 3 editions “early in 2020.”

Borderlands 3 may also not look or run as nicely as you’d hope, given the power of Stadia’s servers. Early players have noted on Reddit that the 4K stream is capped at 30fps, though you can reach 1080p 60fps via the balanced mode option, comparable to the settings available on consoles.

The Stadia release at least offers a launch discount of 35% off – a welcome respite after Darksiders Genesis launched on Stadia for $10 more than the Steam version, in line with the pricier console editions.

When it comes to other FPS games on Stadia, the number of Destiny 2 Stadia players seems to have stabilised. It’s still got a fraction of the players on other platforms – concerning since there’s no cross-play – but the latest numbers from the usual third-party trackers suggest a reasonable number of players in matchmade game modes.



Posted: Dec 19, 2019 11:00 am
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://www.pcgamesn.com/borderlands-3/stadia