News Google Stadia was never going to work

[admin]

Without exclusive first-party Google Stadia was never going to works, Google Stadia's future prospects look uncertain.

Google Stadia was never going to work : Read more

 

[DarkSaintOfGin]

While I agree with a lot of this article, it feels like the author somewhat misses the point of cloud gaming and makes a pretty big assumption about the average gamer.

Not all gamers, even the serious ones, have top end hardware all the time. It's a bit arrogant to even imply that. It's expensive and a hassle to even buy top end gaming hardware and while I recognize that's an indication of popularity, it's also heavily influenced by timing. Cloud gaming is very new while traditional hardware is established. No one, myself included, is prepared to skip this gen for cloud gaming but next gen? Maybe, that's a long time for people to accept it. Digital only games were "doomed" in the beginning too but things changed.

In theory, cloud gaming gives any gamer access to the best possible experience. That's it's main benefit. Not playing Assassin's Creed on your phone or similar. Being able to play Assassin's Creed Valhalla seemlessly at 4k with ultra quality graphics on a $50 Chromecast or the Nvidia Shield I already use as my entertainment hub.

The audience you can't identity is PC gamers who don't want to maintain gaming rigs anymore and console gamers who want better quality. The fact that we JUST had a hardware refresh obfuscates things a bit because they're the most powerful they'll ever be right now. But let's talk in 2-3 years and see how they handle modern 4k gaming.

I think cloud gaming is the future. In the end, it's better for everyone involved. Stadia Pro provides a great experience but Google will probably screw it up and the first party thing sucks. Still, the Xbox Game Pass model isn't bad and easily adopted. Stadia Pro BADLY needs to expand their free offering but I definitely see it as a viable model.

 

[henriquecarioca]

The game market is huge, and the minority has what you think is the majority!
Stadia will stand out after it is installed from the factory on smarTvs, and google has AndroidTV and just made a deal with LG to also come pre-installed!
Not to mention other services that have integrated into Stadia such as Youtube, Android and Playstore!

 

[altrae]

I'm a gamer and I have a decent pc, but the reason I love Stadia is because it offers a lot of flexibility I didn't previously have. I can play on my phone, my tv, my pc, my mac laptop, or pretty much any device that can run chrome and and has a decent internet connection. That's huge because I don't always have access to my pc if I'm traveling or sometimes I just wanna chill in a different room.

 

[subvert]

The game market is huge, and the minority has what you think is the majority!
Stadia will stand out after it is installed from the factory on smarTvs, and google has AndroidTV and just made a deal with LG to also come pre-installed!
Not to mention other services that have integrated into Stadia such as Youtube, Android and Playstore!

I can see cable companies bundling this as a part of their service. There's an entire market of gamers out there that can be tapped here. I can't help but feel the author is short sighted.

Google's on to something. I don't blame them for getting out of the game development. Game development and production is a risky and very difficult endeavor. Just creating the platform is risk enough. I don't know if they'll succeed but the payoff is huge if they do.

 

[leMARoNa]

As pointed out by the previous comments I think there is a huge untapped market, before game streaming services there simply has not been a way for the casual gamer to play AAA games.

To answer the author's question from their original review:
"But is there really a huge audience that's been waiting breathlessly all these years to play Destiny, or Tomb Raider, or Just Dance, but is also unwilling to buy a gaming platform?"

Yes, yes there is. But these "aspiring gamers" don't know that it's now possible to play these games without investing in gaming hardware. When Stadia has Android TV integration I think that's the point when we will start seeing a marketing push. Because they will then have the opportunity to grab those people who would normally sit down for the evening to stream a movie and say "hey, want to play Cyberpunk?"

Personally I think I'm in a subset of those "aspiring gamers" group, I now have limited time to play games and my latest consoles are a PS3 and Xbox 360. I really want to dive into the latest AAA triple games but it's very hard to justify paying for a console when I know I might only be able to play one or two of these games a year. It's an even harder sell now that consoles don't offer any added benefit like they used to because smart TV's have filled that gap, they are simply a gaming device. Game streaming services remove that decision entirely because I'm simply buying the game with the added benefit of not having to wait for OS and game updates to download and install. In my case I would have never considered buying Cyberpunk knowing that I would have to get either a new PC capable of playing it or a new console.

 

[Jabobo]

This article is quite the self centred opinion piece on part of the author. Of course Stadia is pointless for people who own high end hardware, that's been obvious from the outset. Stadia is for people who don't own consoles or high end PCs, but still want to give current gen gaming a go. I know plenty of people in thier 30s/40s who havent bought a console since the PS3 era due to natural life progression like careers and families...myself included. When you can skip the $1,000+ PC or $600+ console and jump right into a modern game, Stadia is absolutely perfect. No upgrades, no installs, no system crashing or overheating. I didn't even know google had an in house game development studio, and quite frankly I'm surprised they did given that Stadia is a bit of a niche. But that doesn't mean there's no market at all or that the service is doomed. I'm perfectly content playing content from popular developers.