Google Stadia offers three days of demos and a Premiere Edition sale

Google is going all-out in its bid to make Stadia game streaming more appealing. To start, it’s holding a three-day event (via Android Police) where it’s offering free demos of games coming to Stadia in the days and weeks ahead.

The first demo, Pac-Man Mega Tunnel Battle, has up to 64 players hunting pellets and ghosts in huge mazes. The demo is available until 12PM Eastern on October 27, while the full game will be available first on Stadia on November 17. The next demos are for the Humankind beta (unveiled October 21) and the Ubisoft action-adventure Immortals Fenyx Rising (October 22).

The event is also good news for sci-fi fans. After some teasing, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is slated to reach the service on November 24. This clearly isn’t one of the free Google Stadia games, but it could be appealing if you’ve wanted to survive the Empire’s crackdown but didn’t have a console or gaming PC that could handle Respawn’s title.

Read more: The Google Stadia games list

It might be a good time to jump in even if you don’t care for these particular games. Google is running a sale on the Stadia Premiere Edition controller and Chromecast Ultra bundle that drops the price to $80, or $20 below the usual. The Stadia Controller by itself is also down to $55. Given the usual pricing, this is an easy choice if you were considering Google’s service but were hesitant to pay full price for the (not always necessary) hardware.

It’s no secret why the company would want to run a sale like this. In addition to boosting adoption of a relatively modest service, Google’s offer of free Stadia games could help it draw players who’d otherwise be attracted to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or Amazon Luna. Whether or not the strategy pays off, it’s good news if you embrace the very concept of game streaming.