Google is rolling out an exciting new feature to its search engine that should allow gamers to launch video games even faster on cloud gaming platforms.
If you sometimes search for movies or even music on Google Search, you probably know that a section of the results displays on what platforms is available the music or movie you are looking for. If we type for example “Loki”, whose filming of season 2 has just started, we can see that it is only available on Disney +.
This feature is therefore very useful to better identify the platforms on which the content you are looking for is located, and Google now wants to extend this to video games. Some users have reported that when they search for a game on Google Search, the search engine shows multiple cloud gaming platform choices.
Games can be launched directly on Google Search
As shown by several users on social networks, typing for example Destiny 2, Google Search will show that the title is available on Google Stadia and Nvidia Geforce Now. A “Play” button is next to the name of each cloud gaming platform, and clicking on it will directly launch the game on the selected service. Google Search is able to list games that are on four different platforms: Amazon Luna, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Note that Google even specifies when the game you are looking for is available for free on Stadia for a trial of a few hours before purchase. Otherwise, Google Search simply indicates whether a game is ” free (like Fortnite on Xbox, or Destiny 2 on Stadia) or if you can only stream it with a ” premium subscription (as is the case for games on Luna).
For now, this feature seems to work perfectly with Stadia, Google’s cloud gaming service, but less so with Xbox Cloud Gaming, which doesn’t always seem to support links to the Android app. Furthermore, you must be logged into an account associated with these cloud gaming services, otherwise you will only get a registration page, and there may still be prompts in between. Nevertheless, Stadia has the advantage of do not always ask to have an account to play certain titles.