It has been seen that Google appears to be rolling out a feature that could reduce that friction: if you simply search for the name of a game in Google search, you might be presented with a “Play” button that can instantly launch the title. When it comes to cloud gaming, friction is the mind-killer. You can’t just click a game trailer to instantly be playing a game quite yet.
“The Nerf Report’s Bryant Chappel appears to be the one who noticed the change, and he quickly discovered it’s not limited to Google’s own Stadia cloud gaming service, either. He says it works with Amazon Luna, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Nvidia’s GeForce Now, too.” Verge reported.
There is still friction
However, there’s still friction — you need to be logged into an account which is associated with these cloud gaming services or else you’ll just get a signup page, and there may still be intermediate prompts. Also, it doesn’t appear to work with all games.
But with Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming, at least, a single click from a Google search result will take you just as far as you get by navigating to the website of your favorite cloud gaming service, picking your title, and pressing the play button you’d find there, The Verge reported.
What reports say
According to 9 to 5 Google, “For years now, Google Search has acted as an aggregator of the world’s streaming services. If you want to watch a particular show, you can use Google Search or Google TV to get accurate info about what services it’s on. For example, searching for The Simpsons reveals that the show can be streamed from a variety of apps, including Disney+ and Hulu, or purchased from multiple stores.
In the last few days, Google Search has expanded this capability to include support for video games. However, rather than including links to various consoles’ storefronts or to the many PC gaming retailers, Google is strictly focusing on cloud gaming.
This makes perfect sense, given Google has skin in the game thanks to Stadia and Google Cloud’s Immersive Stream. Of course, as you’d hope, Google Search isn’t only surfacing results from Stadia, with confirmed support for Amazon Luna, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Xbox Cloud Gaming.”
