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Google will give you free Stadia hardware if you just please buy one game
$60 for a controller, a Chromecast, AND a game
Stadia may not be the hit that its most die-hard defenders want it to be, but it’s still cruising along, all while regularly adding new games. If your interest in Google’s cloud gaming strategy has been thoroughly piqued, now’s a great time to jump on board. By buying a game at full price, you’ll get a free Stadia Premiere Edition kit — something usually priced at $80 on its own. It's far from the first time the company has offered up some free hardware to potential gamers, but this time, it's one of its most value-packed options yet.
AT&T is offering six months of Stadia Pro to both 5G unlimited wireless and landline fiber customers.
Lenovo gives away 3 months of Stadia Pro with gaming PCs, because Lenovo doesn't know what Stadia is
Why would you need it when you just bought a gaming PC?
Lenovo doesn't seem to get the point of Stadia. It's offering three months of access to the service's $10 Pro tier if you buy a new Legion or IdeaPad Gaming-branded laptop or desktop PC. Which is nice. But the entire point of Stadia is that you don't need local gaming hardware to play it. So what's the point of tying a promotional freebie to gaming machines? Wouldn't it make more sense to offer free Stadia Pro on a low-cost machine that can't play high-end PC games?
Google One subscribers will get three free months of Stadia Pro
Though the promotion doesn't seem to be live just yet
According to a support document that was recently published (h/t @OriginalPenguin), Google is planning to offer One subscribers an extended three-month trial for Stadia Pro, matching offers that come with some Chromebooks and the new Pixel phones. This even applies to folks that took advantage of previous trials or who canceled a Stadia Pro membership, according to the published terms, though the promotion doesn't seem to be live just yet.
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UK network BT has just launched a Stadia broadband bundle, and now Verizon is following suit with a similar deal. It has announced that new Fios Gigabit customers will receive Stadia's Premiere Edition for free. This promo stacks on top of the network's existing free one-year Disney Plus offer.
Stadia's free tier will be available to Pro subscribers when their trials end
General public will have to hang in there a bit longer
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In a recent interview between Protocol and Google executive Phil Harrison, it was revealed that Stadia's free tier will launch "over the next few months," which certainly sounds like acknowledgement it will come well after the late-February timeline many people had anticipated. While this is a letdown for anybody looking to test the waters without forking over for an early access kit, it also brought up bigger concerns for many current members that didn't intend to maintain Pro subscriptions after the 3-month trial ended. Fortunately, we now know a bit more about what will happen for those players that already made game purchases, and they basically have nothing to worry about.