San Francisco — Google is getting into gaming in a serious way. The Alphabet unit unveiled on Tuesday a new game streaming service called Stadia at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The announcement marks a major new foray into the $180bn industry for the internet giant. Stadia lets developers build new games on a streaming platform that will allow players to access the action through the web instead of having to buy expensive consoles or personal computers. The company also introduced its own game controller, which creates console-like gaming on a computer or smartphone. Alphabet shares rose less than 1% in New York. Google already has a hefty presence in gaming through its Android app store, one of the most popular mobile game marketplaces. But the search giant and peers like Amazon.com, Facebook and Apple have less of a central role in the lucrative hardcore gaming market, which still runs on hardware such as Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s XBox and has spawned a huge e...

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