Why Did Stadia Fail?

Google Stadia was a cloud streaming gaming platform that existed for some time. Not a long time, but some.

Its failure doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot, except raising the possibility that big tech may be incapable of breaking into the traditional gaming industry.

There’s a lot of reasons many people assumed this was Stadia’s fate, and I kinda just wanted to talk about that this week.

Maybe they should’ve bought GTA.

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[bunkerman_who_digs]

For a company that is supposed to know everything about you, its rather ironic that Stadia failed because they didn't understand consumers

[steelstrider]

I keep forgetting matpat is like, a technology and business consultant, so seeing him in corporate settings is like a mental flashbang

[scarpusgaming]

This was like the most predictable cancellation of all time. Not sure how they thought it would be possible to achieve success in such a short timespan. Hell, even Microsoft struggled to make a profit for the first few years on the original Xbox, and that had some compelling games and features. Stadia had literally nothing going for it.

[NamelessGamer]

I always knew Stadia was going to fail fast but Google blew my expectations away with that speed run.

[thebush]

I was in the stadia beta and it was okay but nothing amazing, too much latency. Later got a Shadow cloud PC and the latency and quality with Parsec made me immediately realize Stadia was going to fail hard.

[mutilatoralex]

stadia was literally an engineer from Google's way of getting a promotion cause the only way to get promoted at Google is starting a project, doesn't matter if it's successful

[TextbookBoxingGB]

Am I the only one that feels like this is a rare feel good win for old/traditional tech.

I mean, I’m all for new technology, but it’s nice to think that sometimes we don’t live in a world where owning nothing and having no product rights is just inevitable.

[Gubbins_McBumbersnoot]

I remember the commercials for Stadia, they literally did nothing to explain what stadia even was or how it worked. The commercials consisted of people dancing around, and the name “Stadia” being shouted over and over. That’s it. I remember having to look it up just find out what it even was. I honestly feel that Google killed Stadia with their TERRIBLE attempt at advertising it.

[thanatoskw]

I genuinely had no idea it was still around. I wasn’t even totally sure it had gotten off the ground to begin with, sometimes I thought maybe it died the way Google Glass did, and sometimes I thought it was just a rumored project that was coming out “soon.” So, you know, not the strongest start.

[mynameisntpatrick]

There are some questions in life that will go unanswered. And then there are questions like "Why did Stadia fail?"

[gomichow]

Stadia didn't need a box. What Stadia could have done was be the next Steam, but separate itself as a hybrid-service.

Gives users the option to download games & their save data to any PC or possibly any supported platform, with the option to pickup progress via cloud at any time when they're on the go.

Cross-save functionality and a mindset of on-the-go playstyle would have been a great incentive for users to try the platform.

[HenningGu]

For me it was that games needed to be bought extra.

Heck, I use Nvidias cloud gaming thing because it has a free tier. Sure, I need to wait a few minutes before I get to access it and I can only play for an hour but during the active university period, that was often enough.

[ReformedSooner]

Couldn’t have happened to a better company. What a shame. 😊

[axelprino]

The most baffling thing about Stadia is that everyone told them that their business strategy was trash and they chose to go ahead with it anyway, even tho it clearly wasn't working from the very start.

[cadekachelmeier]

I remember them advertising being able to do some stuff like join YouTube streamers live. I think that was the potential way to really differentiate themselves. Posting save states as part of YouTube let's plays or seamlessly joining online matches together might have worked and been good marketing. Releasing it with at least 1 free exclusive online title with large matches and paying streamers to play it could have worked.

[Blarg]

Loved how when you watch a YouTube live you clicked on the "Play on Stadia" button and then you joined the streamers lobby and all that in 2 seconds. No install instant access. RIP Google Stadia. Maybe one day we will have this level of comfort again. Also loved the 500 vs 500 matches on Fortnite Stadia.

[haruhirogrimgar]

With recent reports of how wildly successful Xbox Gamepass has seemingly been monetarily, Google really missed out.

[goldencyclone]

Still in absolute awe that the head of Stadia just thought ISPs would give Stadia users more bandwidth out of the goodness of their fucking hearts.

[neptronix]

The company that writes browsers and even programing languages was not smart enough to figure out that latency would kill the idea since day 1. I always wondered what the hell they were thinking.

[gabe]

The weird part is that Google already has a gaming platform: Android. Android handhelds by third parties are already selling well without any help from google. Just look at Razer and GPD. The Nintendo Switch proved that an arm device without a crazy amount of computing power can be industry leading if it just has games. They should have created a version of the play store that requires controller focused development, then sold a higher end android console. They could have called it the Pixel Play or something. It could be a portable platform or it could be as large and powerful as a traditional console. Android can already do it all. Then they could have bought some publisher support and exclusives. It even provides a good selling point: An android device is an android device. Maybe you can play that smaller indie game you bought for your pixel console on your phone or on a portable android console when you're away. Throw in cloud saves and that's real value to the consumer.

If they had just put that Stadia money and effort into Android, they could have had a competitive gaming platform by now.