Google’s Stadia gaming platform is now in its third year, as the offer will be three years old in November 2022. A dangerous time for semi-successful Google products, but despite all prophecies of doom, Stadia will survive 2022 and many more years to come. This is indicated by the extensive renovation measures and the increasingly broader support in the industry.
If Google doesn’t have one thing, it’s patience. New products do not necessarily have to make it to the top of the world, but if internally specified goals are not even rudimentarily achieved, then you pull the plug very quickly and often try again with a similar product. Hardly any internal information is known, but given the success of the gaming platform and the measures to be observed so far, one cannot help but believe that Stadia has missed its goals by a long way.
Indications of missed goals
Last year, the closure of Stadia Games Studios was announced after just a few months before they could even bring a single game onto the market. This not only surprised users and partners, but also the employees in this department. Around the same time, it became known that Google had assumed practically the entire developer costs for porting some titles from external publishers to Stadia. There is talk of over ten million dollars for individual titles.
In addition, the number of users has never been published, the starter package has been sold much cheaper than planned and even the long list of free titles was actually not planned in this form. These are all just individual pieces of the puzzle, but all in all, in combination with many other pebbles, they give the picture that Stadia is not running as it was hoped for by mid-2019. But that’s not that bad at all.
Google is ready for adaptations
We have known since the beginning of 2021 at the latest that Stadia is undergoing major renovations behind the scenes. For a long time, one has often spoken of “partners” instead of “players” and shows the direction in which things are going. In the past few months, we have reported to you about the launch as a white-label platform and Google’s big plans. Stadia will then just be an end product based on a much larger platform that one wants to open up to all publishers.
You open up the infrastructure to other participants and thus enter the familiar territory. Google has quite a definite weakness when it comes to content delivery. But the hosting of “foreign” content and the offering of platforms are mastered like no other company. But the fact that people are thinking of adapting Stadia at all and not bringing the whole thing onto the market as a new product shows that Stadia has a strong internal shield and actually – as was often promised back then – a very long-term project.
A very central product
Stadia in itself is only one very small product among many and initially plays no role in Google’s core business – neither strategically nor financially. But the infrastructure that has been built up in the background over the years is of great importance. It is a strong offering from Google Cloud, which is known to be a key product with great importance. For YouTube, the Stadia connection is one of the strongest weapons against the ever-growing Twitch and a potential mainstay in the gaming market for platforms such as Android, Android TV, Google TV and Chrome OS.
Spreading is increasing – partners are likely to have promises
The latest signal for a long Stadia future came from Samsung a few days ago: Stadia will be part of the Samsung Gaming Hub, which will be found on many Smart TVs from this year. Just a few weeks earlier, LG announced similar plans. This not only increases Stadia’s reach and presence, but the manufacturers are also basing their new ambitions on Google’s gaming platform, among other things.
Although televisions are no longer made to last, at least from a software point of view, the Korean manufacturers (and other partners) are likely to have obtained long-term commitments from Google. They won’t want to ship their expensive smart TVs with a product that will no longer be available anytime soon. I would see these new partnerships as a semi-official promise that Stadia will be offered for at least three to five years – in the future, of course, a lot longer.
Stadia Forever?
Google’s patience and will pay off. Stadia is still a young product and, despite all its success, cloud gaming is in its infancy. The market is still small but will grow. Microsoft and Sony, as the biggest competitors, are also working on such products, but are still focusing on their consoles and Microsoft is also focusing on Windows. That can change with the next generation of consoles if they still exist in physical form. Only then will the market grow vigorously.
Only then will such a platform be worthwhile for the provider. Only then do the game developers come on their own and don’t have to be lured in with millions. Only then will players perceive it as a matter of course and not as an experiment. Only then will you be ready to invest a lot of money in building your game portfolio. And only then does Google’s strong position come into play in many other areas that can lead Stadia to success.
I’m not a gamer myself, and I haven’t always been convinced by Stadia. But Google is currently proving – for me – that you want to keep the promises made back then and are willing to have staying power. Stadia as an end product will probably still be in the niche in 2022 and 2023. However, the cloud product can soon grow strongly. After that, things get interesting, and Stadia could be very prominent by the middle of the decade.