> Stadia failed as a business because it failed to get adoption by developers and gamers / users.
Nonsense. It failed to attract developers because it was an unsure new platform so of course most of them wouldn't spend hours to develop for it. They were always going to need convincing (with money of course), which took Google too long, but around a year or so in there were multiple heavy hitters in the form of Red Dead Redemption 2, Hitman, Ubisoft's entire catalogue (and an Ubisoft+ integration), EA Games' most new games, Destiny 2, alongside a ton of indie games. By the time Stadia shut down, it didn't really have a catalogue problem. Problem is, Google bungled the rollout and took too long to start doing this - they banked on the initial release being highly successful, but didn't start massively investing in games until later on.
For gamers, fear of Google shutting it down played a part, of course. But so did all the extremely negative coverage, from everywhere, that Stadia is dead on arrival which only reinforced that fear. Had Google actually told everyone their shutdown plan (reimburse everyone for all games), a lot of gamers would have overcome those fears (what was there to lose, really?).
Technically, the platform was amazing. To this day the best UX by far of out cloud gaming platforms. Quality upgrades were lacking though.
To sum up, Google failed in their strategy and marketing. Had they 1) promised to reimburse everyone in case the platform was shut down before X years 2) given away Stadia Premiere packs to anyone they can (like YouTube Premium subscribers, etc.) 3) enticed big studios to port games, all things they eventually ended up doing, Stadia would have been a roaring success and would be undergoing a hardware refresh at the moment. Instead, it just reinforces that Google sucks at b2c and shouldn't be trusted.
>> For gamers, fear of Google shutting it down played a part, of course. But so did all the extremely negative coverage, from everywhere, that Stadia is dead on arrival which only reinforced that fear. Had Google actually told everyone their shutdown plan (reimburse everyone for all games), a lot of gamers would have overcome those fears.
It is a self-reinforcing vicious cycle. Stadia was yet another demonstration of how Google has developed its current reputation.
>> Technically, the platform was amazing. To this day the best UX by far of out cloud gaming platforms.
That's what is so sad. Google's tech is amazingly good, but their user support and reputation are terribly bad. Bad enough that, in many cases, it breaks the business.
Nonsense. It failed to attract developers because it was an unsure new platform so of course most of them wouldn't spend hours to develop for it. They were always going to need convincing (with money of course), which took Google too long, but around a year or so in there were multiple heavy hitters in the form of Red Dead Redemption 2, Hitman, Ubisoft's entire catalogue (and an Ubisoft+ integration), EA Games' most new games, Destiny 2, alongside a ton of indie games. By the time Stadia shut down, it didn't really have a catalogue problem. Problem is, Google bungled the rollout and took too long to start doing this - they banked on the initial release being highly successful, but didn't start massively investing in games until later on.
For gamers, fear of Google shutting it down played a part, of course. But so did all the extremely negative coverage, from everywhere, that Stadia is dead on arrival which only reinforced that fear. Had Google actually told everyone their shutdown plan (reimburse everyone for all games), a lot of gamers would have overcome those fears (what was there to lose, really?).
Technically, the platform was amazing. To this day the best UX by far of out cloud gaming platforms. Quality upgrades were lacking though.
To sum up, Google failed in their strategy and marketing. Had they 1) promised to reimburse everyone in case the platform was shut down before X years 2) given away Stadia Premiere packs to anyone they can (like YouTube Premium subscribers, etc.) 3) enticed big studios to port games, all things they eventually ended up doing, Stadia would have been a roaring success and would be undergoing a hardware refresh at the moment. Instead, it just reinforces that Google sucks at b2c and shouldn't be trusted.