Knowing how many messaging apps Google has is about as difficult as knowing how many children Boris Johnson has, and like the PM, Google may be about to add another.

9to5google have torn down the Google Stadia app and found numerous references to a native text chat feature being built into the app, both private and group. These include:

Message History panel title

Text chat

batchGetChatMessages

ChatMessages

ChatMessagesModel

ConversationViewModel

createChatMessage

DirectChatMessageList

DirectMessageLastReadTimestamps

enableTextChatFlag

Privacy setting defining who can message you.

Send you chat messages

The feature would supplement the in-game voice chat feature and Google Stadia’s own voice chat feature already in the app.

Google recently released the free version of Google Stadia to everyone, with two months of free Stadia Pro to try out the service.

With the service still only available to use on a limited selection of devices, Google brought in a customer base of over 225,000 potential players. While not a staggering number, it is larger than the service’s 150,000 install base during the service’s launch window.

via Winfuture