In a new interview, a Google spokesperson revealed that Stadia wasn’t the original game streaming product. Instead, the story is told differently now. So far we have assumed that Stadia came first before Google wanted to sell a powerful streaming technology based on it to other companies. However, the story is not supposed to be like that.
Dov Zimring is Head of Product for Immersive Stream for Games at Google and shared some very interesting details with us in a Forbes interview. He says that streaming technology came first for business customers. The idea for Stadia, i.e. offering game streaming for end customers, came later. So the focus behind the streaming technology has never been to become a streaming provider yourself.
Stadia was there later
Google tried anyway and made Stadia a big thing for a short time. There were even game studios, just not for very long. Since then, Stadia has been a marginal phenomenon that has been pushed further and further into the background. And it was only after that that Google made the actually older basic product Immersive Stream for Games official in the first place.
I find it interesting that such a different perspective is emerging. Stadia is not the basis and therefore not dependent on your own success. Instead, Stadia is simply a product built on top of some pretty ingenious technology. On the other hand, Google can just throw away the whole Stadia product and only offer its technology to other companies. Still a dilemma.
Stadia tools are offered to other companies
Basically, Zimring confirms that Stadia today is primarily a project to develop experiences and tools for other customers.
“Tools originally developed for Stadia partners are now also helping customers like AT&T who use Immersive Stream for Games to get the game up and running quickly, create remote demos that can be accessed by multiple organizations, and testing to be performed on AT&T’s new smartphone and tablet endpoints.”