Color me not surprised. Felt like I called this from day one of them revealing their business. The fact that they didn’t go gamepass style route was just incomprehensible and doomed to fail. Not even talking about their lack of empathy for the idea of data caps in the US and probably other places. Hubris all of it.

@pezen: Its quite understandable why Google didn't go down the game pass subscription route, every game on the Stadia platform Google paid for, to build a substantial library would have been really expensive especially not knowing how big your potential audience is.

@thepanzini: They still ended up paying 10s of millions of dollars for ports and didn't come close to recouping that investment, and this model failed (at least in part because people didn't want to buy games they weren't going to be able to use if the service went down) so some kind of subscription would have made more sense. Amazon is doing it with Luna, though I have no idea how well it's going.

@bigsocrates: I mean the cost would have been astronomically higher, by all accounts game pass took a while to get going and subs have slowed around the mid 20's and thats with an existing audience and library to pull from.

With the extra cost associated with steaming its easy to see why Google went with build it and see who comes model.

Isn't it more an issue that people didn't know Stadia existed, how many gamers are out there who want to play AAA titles but don't have time/money for hardware.

For these poeple a Stadia Pro sub would have likely been enough but how would you even reach them.

@thepanzini: The cost might have been astronomically higher if they had gone after the same library but they didn't have to. They could have started with a more constrained library of older games or a smaller number of games or whatever.

I find your claim that Google, which is literally one of the largest advertising companies on Earth, had no way to reach people to be...puzzling. Like the company that owns the biggest search engine and Youtube and all those integrated ads on basically every website just wasn't able to get the word out. That's...not credible.

I know that as a Youtube Premium subscriber I got a free offer of a Stadia and I wasn't interested. I also got offered a buddy pass by an ex-friend. The service got major coverage in the gaming press and at E3 etc...

People who want to spend money on games already have ways to play them (PC, consoles) and early adopters didn't trust Google not to abandon Stadia in a few years (which they did.) It wasn't a compelling product as offered. Now maybe a subscription service wouldn't have worked either, that's a counterfactual so impossible to prove one way or another, but I do not think it was a publicity issue. It was the business model. "We charge the same money but you don't actually own the games, even as local downloads" just wasn't a compelling offer, in addition to tech that didn't work well for every Internet connection and a lackluster lineup of games.

@bigsocrates: My point isn't that they wouldn't be able to reach people, but to reach the 2b gamers or everyone as Google said they would need a premium tv show or movie size ad campaign.

Just plastering Youtube gaming related content wouldn't make a difference as you said the core already have the means to play and wouldn't care.

Google built the platform in basically the cheapest way possible, even during Stadia's launch did you ever see an ad in the real world, like you would with a big game release.

@thepanzini: I don't remember if I ever saw ads years ago, but by talking about the 2 billion casual gamers you're already showing why the model itself was flawed. Those people don't want to spend $60 on a video game. They don't even want to spend $5, which is why FTP rules mobile.

A subscription service, however, is something that they may go for. Witness Apple Arcade.

It doesn't matter if you don't get the word out if you don't have a product anyone wants.

@bigsocrates: Were getting a bit chicken and egg here, but it's kinda shocking how little Google pushed Stadia on its own service.

If you type GeForce Now into Youtube and sort by views you'll find a ton of sponsored vids demonstrating the tech, now do the same with Stadia and you'll see nothing outside unboxing vids from release. Stadia has zero presence on Youtube after launch.

I totally agree the library and message was poor but Stadia Pro had some pretty good months back in August you could claim 30+ games and it was regularly handing out 6-7 games per month and some pretty big titles like Madden 22.

Plenty of people buy a console just for Madden, FIFA & COD etc streaming one of these games should be reason enough for Stadia to exist.

I do think Stadia concept was deeply flawed. however with better messaging or a message it could have carved out a niche, but that games on its platform were only for the core who inherently would not be interested.

Stadia should have focused on smaller simpler and cheaper games, setting aside price no Candy Crush player is gonna drive into Destiny 2 the complexity and time commitment is way too much.

Needing a $60 controller is a big ask Google should have worked more on titles you could play with a tv remote or turning your phone into a virtual controller.

Stadia would have been better streaming phone titles and courting games like Falls Guys.

@thepanzini: There are a lot of baffling things about Stadia. Like the fact that they had all those compatibility issue with Chromecast (Google's own product) or yes making you buy a special controller instead of using whatever you wanted (though Google did give a lot of those away for free too.)

Stadia Pro was undone partially by its name. "Pro" sounds like something you get if you like Stadia and want to spend even more money on it, not an alternative to buying games.

I agree that focusing on more mobile priced games would have been an alternative to just a subscription. The point is that the barrier to entry should have been as low as possible to get people into the service. Instead they came out calling it a console, pricing it cheaply but still too expensive for anyone who didn't already have a console or PC to play games with, and charging full price for games you didn't own and couldn't play with bad Internet. The underlying streaming tech was good but everything else about it was mishandled.

@bigsocrates: @thepanzini:

Stadia: the videogame service for people who don't play a lot of video games.

@mach_go_go_go: That's video games most people don't buy a lot of titles, the average PS4 owner only has 10 games and that's high, PS2 (6) and Switch (7) are much lower.

If your cloud service or any service is aimed at the casual audience they spend much less, Stadia wouldn't necessarily need a lot of content just the right content.

@thepanzini: There are a couple things that cut against that argument. The first is that it shows that attracting casual players isn't actually the business model because in some ways console gaming is like mobile gaming in that the real money is in whales. The hardcore who spend a lot buying multiple games every month. You need to attract them and they all have consoles and PCs already. The second is that some of those people who don't buy a lot of games buy into certain series and make their console choices based on their favorite series (Mario, Halo, Uncharted, whatever.) Stadia had no attractive exclusives so while it did have some of the big multi-plat games the only reason to pick Stadia over another choice was price. But most of the people who are buying only a few games like Madden or COD or whatever are playing them multiplayer, and already have their crew on a given platform.

Additionally, people who don't buy a lot of games may play more than they buy, because they borrow or rent additional titles. Stadia, of course, didn't let you borrow physical from your friends (though there were ways to share access I think) nor rent physical, nor sell games back to buy the new version.

So it had a lot of downsides for casuals too, and casuals aren't where the profit is anyway.

@bigsocrates: Apple Arcade doesn't rely on whales, we have no idea how well its doing but its still going.

Doesn't the Wii also disprove that, Nintendo convinced a vast causal audience to buy in and the console had very low attach rates.

The casual Wii owner didn't buy into a tradition series they actually ignored core titles like Zelda.

Nintendo had people who never played games before drop $60 on a few games and $150 on hardware, exclusives didn't necessarily make a difference either as Just Dance sold like crazy despite being everywhere even mobile, even after Nintendo stop supporting the Wii.

And look how Nintendo sold the Wii by blasting the air waves with basically how to ads, the core was apathetic to the Wii.

If your selling to an audience that doesn't normally game I don't think exclusives matter that much, the hook for Stadia or any streaming service is the low buy in and potential scale.

@thepanzini: Apple Arcade not relying on whales is my whole point of a subscription service being better. You hook people at a low monthly cost and over time you make a lot of money off of it.

As for the Wii, its low attach rate was actually a problem for Nintendo and made that console not as successful as it looked at first (though it was quite successful compared to Gamecube or Wii U.)

But your claim that the Wii shows that you don't need exclusives is very strange because that system's killer app was...Wii Sports. That's literally how Nintendo sold the system. An exclusive killer app bundled in. The other top selling games for that system were like Mario Kart, Wii Sports Resort, and other exclusives until you finally get to Just Dance 3 at number 10 at which point it's all exclusives again until you get to Lego Star Wars at number 19.

The Wii proves you don't need exclusives is kind of a scorching take.

I understand the 'hook' for Stadia but it didn't work and no streaming service has been anything more than niche. It's just not a hook that appeals to people. Hardcore gamers want local hardware and casual gamers don't want to play games for the hardcore.

@bigsocrates: Did the non-gamers buying Wii Sports no or care is was exclusive, they saw the ad a bought it.

And we saw basically the same concept at work with Kinetic Sports.

With the right software even non-gamers will spend.

Cloud maybe niche atm but it could potentially be a massive new market.

Are we can see the potential in Korea atm, from much smaller players than Google.

@thepanzini: The non-gamers buying Wii sports knew that the Wii was the way to get it so they bought it. That's how exclusives work. Kinect Sports was not nearly as appealing or successful so isn't relevant here. Wii Sports was a phenomenon.

And yes with the right software anyone will spend. Google did not have the right software.

It is certainly true that the cloud may one day be the future of games. But it isn't there yet. And certainly not in the way that Google offered it with Stadia.

@bigsocrates: if only Stadia was approached by someone like Kojima Productions to make an exclusive, cloud based game that took advantage of all that wacky cloud stuff Google spoke about during the initial reveal event. Kojima's involvement would solve the word-of-mouth problem (my personal thoughts aside, people pay attention to what he does), and there's no console so there's no barrier to entry for trying out buying the game. Then people are in the ecosystem, and it becomes a matter of keeping them there.

(And yeah, it should have solely been a subscription service. Allowing people to buy Red Dead for $60 and play 3000 hours of it isn't a great way to make a return on your investment.)

@mach_go_go_go: A new IP can take 4-6 years to come out plus using new tech can easily complicate things it would be way too late now.

Kojima's games have never been major sellers, and Google doing gaming its own way could easily be a LucasArts meddling situation.

If Stadia was being sold to the core it would need multiple exclusives games with constant stream of third party content, you do this years before releasing the platform after release you'll start burning money.

Any exclusive wouldn't solve Stadia's price issue the extra manpower cost in porting to Linux yelds higher game prices, the only real fix would be if Google had multiple in-house porting studios to bring games to its platform.

The die was cast on Stadia even before it released.

Someone knows how to read a room...