There may be nothing more out of place than telling a big company how to do its job, but I think we’ll never get tired of telling Google the “I told you“. Stadia had the future of the video game in its hands, but decided to remain anchored in the past.
Little more than three years after its launch, now the cloud video game platform says goodbye forever to those who, until yesterday, continued to trust that there were enough reasons to hope.
Stadia and the summer day that changed everything
His illusion with Stadia was not wrong (I’m really sorry, Frankie), he really had potential and a excellent performancebut the only ones who should have faith in the project and bet on it were precisely those who showed the least courage.
They had the technology, the capital, the innovation, and the public’s attention. Watch a trailer on Youtube, press a button and start playing from a browser in a matter of seconds. Consoles are over. A simple command, a good internet connection, and the future predicted by the old freaks of the internet within reach of a click.
Consoles that were in development were cancelled, studios joined the party to be the first to support the project, collectors were considering abandoning their biggest hobby and, more than likely, in microsoft someone put on his tie gonads in front of the competition that could suppose Stadia.
Beyond how well it could work, the only question we all had in mind before jumping to buy your controller was: What will the price of the service be? Remember that at that time Xbox GamePass I was on PC at 5 euros per month. To what extent does infinite money Google was going to change the video game industry with an apparently groundbreaking technology?
The answer to each of these questions was revealed on June 6, 2019 and, with it, all the hopes that we could have in the service fell apart. Not only did you have to invest in the controller and pay a monthly subscription 10 euros to play in 4K, you also had to pay each game that you were going to want to play in the service. Strategy: pay for everything.
Enough doesn’t always live up to its name
In addition to license payments there would also be options “free“For those who had the premium service. The standard-bearer of that hopeful aspect was a Destiny 2 that by then was already more burned than a churrero stick, but it was far from offering an ideal panorama.
With Google’s history, the idea of investing the money in the games of a digital service that could end up disappearing tomorrow was, by all accounts, a risky decision.
Stadia It might have worked in another era, even with the free 1080p model where you only had to pay for the games you bought, but microsoft It had been putting candy in our mouths for years with its dozens of monthly games and major releases from internal studios. Yes Google wanted to enter the market, the only open door was improve the present.
Far from investing money in a similar business model, from throwing all the meat on the grill from the beginning, they wanted to sell a technology of the future with a strategy of the past. And time did not take long to agree with those who raised their eyebrows.
A little over a year later, after several more insects were added to the fly that had already been fluttering behind the ear for some time (free kits, with no intention of exploring other business models), the fly and the insects gave way to an impossible kaiju to ignore: Google it closed all its development studies and the projects that were on the way.
The beginning of the end of Google Stadia
To the money invested in more games and studios during the platform’s first year of life, all subsequent agreements were added to launch third-party games that could help cover that huge gap.
tens of millions of dollars (per game) for bets such as Red Dead Redemption 2, the latest Assassin’s Creed or Resident Evil 7 and 8. 10 million dollars specifically in these last two cases.
Add all that up and add the creation of the platform, its promotion, the giving away of clunkers left and right, the agreements with studios that woke up today with a game that they were developing yesterday and will not have a future tomorrow (there are those who released in a couple of days and they have found out from The Verge), the more than likely salaries of managers who left behind an army of workers with the first closures and intend to do the same now with an even larger battalion…
Let’s add to that already huge amount of money, all the returns that Google Now it has to pay for those who did trust in the service.
Was it so unreasonable Google Stadia explore another business model? Would we be so bad now if we had aimed to be the Game Pass Killer instead of a martian in which to pay for machine, subscription and games? Was it so out of line to tell a multi-billion dollar company that it wasn’t on the right track?
I have been betting on the no to all those answers since that June 6, 2019 changed everything for Stadia. No one has been caught by surprise because, plain and simple, we told you, Google.