Stadia is now officially available on iOS devices, including the iPhone and iPad, through a progressive web app.
Google announced plans to finally bring its game streaming service to Apple’s mobile devices a few weeks ago. Apple’s restrictive and archaic App Store policy requiring each individual game on a platform to be listed on the digital storefront effectively blocks several game streaming services from releasing on iOS, including Microsoft’s xCloud, Nvidia’s GeForce Now and Luna (which isn’t available in Canada).
Until now, the only way to get Stadia running on an iOS device was through Stadium, a third-party browser that allowed users to play Stadia on iOS with a few limitations.
Google says that after installing iOS 14.3, you can navigate to stadia.google.com and play the cloud game streaming service directly within Safari. Due to Apple’s restrictions surrounding progressive web apps on iOS, Stadia isn’t available within Chrome or other Chromium-based browsers.
Other streaming services like Microsoft’s xCloud will likely follow suit with their own iOS and iPadOS progressive web apps in the coming weeks.
Stadia has experienced a bit of a resurgence over the last week with the launch of CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077.
Given that the game doesn’t run great on the Xbox One/PlayStation 4, the next-gen update for the Xbox Series X/PlayStation 5 isn’t yet available and playing the PC version of Cyberpunk requires a rather high-end rig, some people have turned to Google’s game streaming platform to play the game.
In fact, there are reports that Stadia’s user base has increased so much that Google is limiting at least some users to 1080p instead of 4K when playing Cyberpunk 2077. Google also halted a promotion that gave anyone who purchased Cyberpunk 2077 a free Stadia controller and Chromecast Ultra.
MobileSyrup will have more on Stadia’s iOS progressive web app in the coming weeks.
Update 16/12/2020 1:49pm ET: If you follow this link to the Stadia Store and log into your account, it will launch the progress web app version of the game streaming platform.
The regular stadia.google.com link seems to now be working as well. The story has been updated with this information.
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