If you’ve been reading the tea leaves after a host of publishers pulled their games from Nvidia’s GeForce NOW in recent weeks then today’s news will likely not surprise you. Electronic Arts and Google have announced a partnership to bring over a handful of EA games to Google’s burgeoning Stadia streaming service.
I doubt Electronic Arts will be the last company to announce such a deal, but what we do know about the two tech companies budding bromance has been brought to us by Business Wire. The announcement is brief, but in it we learned that EA will add five of their games to Stadia’s library, including recent Respawn hit Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Madden and FIFA will follow shortly thereafter.
These games won’t arrive on Stadia overnight, with Fallen Order alone slated for the end of the year. While five games are a minuscule portion of EA’s complete library, the partnership shows EA is willing to throw their hat into Google’s ring. The five games likely means EA is either holding back until they see how well Stadia performs, or are perhaps looking into a cloud platform of their own.
Stadia is currently running a free trial of their Pro membership, which has a handful of games available without purchase. I should jump in and see how the platform has improved, though I’m still not a fan of their overall business model. Time will tell if Stadia sinks or swims, but for now EA seems willing to bet on the service.
