For a brief period, circa 2019, it looked as though Google might upend the world of videogames, just as Netflix had done for TV. So much so that it featured on the cover of E338, where we asked of Stadia’s server banks: “Is this your next console?” It didn’t seem too outrageous – Stadia’s promise, after all, was that it would negate the need for any expensive hardware, opening up a huge market of people who might not be willing to pay the upfront cost to play high-end console games. As we now know, it didn’t work out like that.
The first crack to appear was Stadia’s pricing structure, asking customers to pay full whack for individual games or else stump up for Stadia Pro, which with its monthly price and selection of free games was more like PS Plus Essential than a Netflix-style ‘all you can eat’ model. Technical problems and the delay of promised features marred Stadia’s launch, while exclusive titles were thin on the ground. In a seeming admission of failure, Google closed its internal game studios just over a year after the service launched. The announcement of Stadia’s termination in September was thus met with resigned cries of “I told you so”, mixed with some yelps of alarm on the part of developers and publishers
