Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it, but because it could
1–10 of 24 posts
Re: Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it, but because it could
#2Wow, this is good analysis and very prescient. I don't necessarily condemn this as a strategy, if you can afford it - there's always a chance of an interesting pivot. The problem is when people know your company doesn't commit to products long-term and don't care if people love them (cough Reader cough), it starts to affect their interest in engaging and committing their time.
/xoogler
Re: Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it, but because it could
#3No post body was provided.
Re: Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it, but because it could
#4He's also saying that XBox Cloud and Luna have no future; not sure this will age well.
Re: Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it, but because it could
#5Xbox Game Pass/Cloud Gaming seems reasonably popular on mobile, and it has a nice collection of Xbox games like Halo, Forza and Sea of Thieves. And Minecraft. ;-)
Stadia is weak on platform exclusives, but I wouldn't mind if every PC game announced at E3 (for example) had a demo you could stream via Stadia or some other cloud gaming service.
Edit: I didn't realize Google was shutting down Stadia. Unsurprising but also sad because it was cool and a lot of people put a lot of work into it. It clearly died before finding its feet, although it's not clear that it would.
Re: Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it, but because it could
#6> They didn't think "what do people want?", or even go Apple and think "what COULD people want, if we showed them why they wanted it?".
Precisely - as Steve Jobs observed, sometimes people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
Stadia does seem like a solution in search of a problem. For Microsoft a relevant problem is "How can we enable smartphone (or other non-console, non-PC computing device) gamers to play (and rent/pay for) Xbox games without porting them to/shrinking them onto Android or iOS and without cannibalizing the sales of Xbox consoles or Windows PCs?" But Google doesn't exactly have that problem.
Stadia does solve the problem of "how can I play (some) PC games on my phone/smart TV/PC without a great graphics card." So it does provide some clear user benefit, but it doesn't have compelling advantages over other cloud gaming services, and it doesn't seem to align directly with Google's business interests.
Re: Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it, but because it could
#7> They didn't think "what do people want?", or even go Apple and think "what COULD people want, if we showed them why they wanted it?". Precisely - as Steve Jobs observed, sometimes people don't know what they want until you show it to them. Stadia does seem like a solution in search of a problem. For Microsoft a relevant problem is "How can we enable smartphone (or other non-console, non-PC computing device) gamers…
> without a great graphics card
You can buy a pretty great console for $500, and it'll last 5+ years. Well under $10/month, even if you buy a little late in the cycle.
I just don't see where any cloud gaming service has room to compete with that and actually turn a profit.
Re: Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it, but because it could
#8The baffling thing about Stadia is that the business model never made sense for the product and that was apparent the minute they announced it. Why would anyone buy a game for a specific cloud service? Why wouldn’t you do what Microsoft had already telegraphed they were doing with GamePass?
If Google had spent one more year thinking through how the business was going to work they may have had something, but instead they made some tech no one asked for but worked well and and just shipped it.
Re: Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it, but because it could
#9The baffling thing about Stadia is that the business model never made sense for the product and that was apparent the minute they announced it. Why would anyone buy a game for a specific cloud service? Why wouldn’t you do what Microsoft had already telegraphed they were doing with GamePass? If Google had spent one more year thinking through how the business was going to work they may have had something, but instead t…
> Why would anyone buy a game for a specific cloud service?
Isn't that what people do when they buy games on Steam?
Re: Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it, but because it could
#10The baffling thing about Stadia is that the business model never made sense for the product and that was apparent the minute they announced it. Why would anyone buy a game for a specific cloud service? Why wouldn’t you do what Microsoft had already telegraphed they were doing with GamePass? If Google had spent one more year thinking through how the business was going to work they may have had something, but instead t…
> Why would anyone buy a game for a specific cloud service? Isn't that what people do when they buy games on Steam?
Not really, you're buying access to a game which you can download an unlimited amount of times and play on your own hardware, often even offline. They're not entirely dissimilar, but they're definitely different models.