On Stadia, your phone now works as a controller

Google announces that you can now use your smartphone to play Stadia. It is therefore no longer required to use a controller. The new feature will go live on Android TVs and Google TVs soon.

Previously, to be able to play games via cloud platform Stadia, you needed a Stadia controller or a copy of Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo. That is a thing of the past, because if you want to start with Stadia now, all you have to do is grab your smartphone. The feature is called Phone Link and you enable it via the controller menu in the Stadia app on your phone. As soon as you choose a phone as a controller, you can play with it on your TV or PC, but you can also use your phone as a screen at once.

Digital thumb buttons

However, there is also a drawback to digital thumb buttons and shoulder buttons. The advantage of a controller is that it is equipped with physical buttons, which makes it better suited for intense games in which you have to take a lot of actions. You can feel free to press a button hard, while that is a less good idea with the screen of your smartphone. Not to mention throwing your phone across the room when a game isn’t quite going your way.

Not all games will bring out that in you. There are also many games that are much quieter and expect less frenetic “button banging” from you, such as Farming Simulator for example. Ideal for playing on a smartphone and very handy too. Your smartphone is probably never far away and you will not soon forget to charge it. That is sometimes different with controllers.

Using other controllers

Stadia’s new feature offers even more for those who specifically want to game with their phone’s screen. If you prefer to use a different controller than the official Google Stadia variant, you can do that from now on. Previously, controllers such as those from Xbox or PlayStation only worked for those who game on their TV or PC. You can now connect the controllers via bluetooth, or you can connect them wired via usb-c.

Google is making Stadia more and more widely available. For example, a few months ago, it announced that Google Stadia was coming to Android TV and Chromecasts with Google TV. Read here how to use it. In addition, Google seems to have plans to bring Android games to Windows and Mac, but that has not yet been confirmed.