Stadia's biggest problem? Google

Google's much-hyped game streaming platform Stadia is now out in the wild. Like any new digital service, it's having some teething troubles, from a functional inability to truly play anywhere, as is its core promise, to delayed orders for early backers, reports of it not truly rendering at 4K and criticisms of its slender software selection. While frustrating, these are all fixable issues – but Stadia's biggest challenge may be Google itself.

To understand why, look no further than Google Wave. In September 2009, Google started inviting users to sign up for Wave, a real-time online collaboration tool that it billed as email, if it were invented from scratch for modern users. In May 2010, access was opened to the general public. In August 2010 it announced development was suspended, in November 2011 Waves become read-only, and by April 2012 the service was killed. Or look at Google+. Launched in June 2011 to much fanfare, the beleaguered Facebook rival was dead in a ditch by April 2019.

These are just two reasonably high profile services that Google bumped off, but they're far from the only ones. There's even a site dedicated to projects killed by Google called, fittingly, Killed by Google that tracks all the apps, services, and hardware that have been cut short by the tech giant.

In fairness, Google isn't unique in this – Microsoft, IBM, and any other operator in the sector will have a similarly lengthy kill-list of once-promising projects. But Google is getting something of a reputation for it. For Stadia, this is especially problematic. Those most aware of Google’s tendency to ditch much-hyped projects are, in the gaming industry, those most likely to want to take a gamble on an ambitious game streaming service. And this is where things get really tricky. Consumer confidence is Stadia's biggest problem, not the technological hurdles it's facing at launch, and Google's own history, almost paradoxically, may disincline people from investing early.

Unfortunately for Google, its reputation isn't the only challenge it faces in making Stadia the future of gaming. It's facing a one-two punch on the consumer front, as many also seem to be largely confused over what Stadia even is. To the average punter, any mention of a “streaming” platform is also synonymous with a voluminous library of content, be it Spotify, Netflix, or even niche platforms such as anime streaming network Crunchyroll. You pay your monthly subscription, you get access to everything on the service. It's a transactional model consumers are now comfortable and familiar with.

That is not Stadia's model.

Stadia, at launch, requires early adopters to buy a Stadia Premiere hardware bundle containing the official Stadia Controller and a Chromecast Ultra (even earlier adopters could opt for the Founder's Edition, with a variant controller) for £119. After enjoying three months of included Pro account access – unlocking 4K HDR and surround sound streaming quality of games – Stadia owners are then be asked to pay an £8.99 monthly Pro subscription. All that is on top of having to buy games individually, mostly at industry standard prices.

Given rates of 4K adoption are still low – In Europe, it’s expected that by 2023 still only 46 per cent of homes will have a 4K screen – the idea of paying a subscription for a quality filter you may not even benefit from is a hard sell. Thankfully, Stadia Base is launching next year, with max 1080p quality for free – but you'll still need to buy those games on top.

The problem for Google is this: it just took two paragraphs to explain what you even get from Stadia, its pricing models, and its service variants, some of which aren't even available yet. It's confusing even to whittle it down, let alone for someone who may have just heard about this cool new way of streaming games wherever you are to comprehend without extensive research.

There are also questions over whether the market is ready for streaming games. While people may, by and large, be happy with abandoning Blu-rays for streaming, gamers are often also collectors – there's even a burgeoning market for releasing digital-only indie titles in limited run physical releases, such is the demand for collectability.

There's a good practical reason for this too – while films and television series are passive media that can be watched on any platform so long as original materials survive, games are mostly locked to their platform of release. The psychology of having to hold on to not only your old games but also your old platforms to play them on is one that the games industry has, by necessity, fostered over the past four decades – shaking that is going to be hard.

Even in PC gaming, where boxed releases are a rarity now, the ability to download and have your games installed locally is cherished, and still gives a sense of ownership. Streaming games that you never actually possess, even in digitally downloaded form, is a massive shake-up to how players perceive and consume their collections. If games are removed from digital storefronts such as Steam or GOG, they're usually still downloadable for those who've bought them, and if not, can be backed up locally. If Google switches off Stadia in five years time, what happens to all the games people have bought at £50?

Ironically, if Stadia were an all-you-can-eat streaming service, it could be well placed to become an infinite library of games from years past, but that isn't the direction Google seems to want to go at present.

In the longer term, there's even the possibility Stadia may not remain its own bespoke platform if Google can't monetise it to levels it deems successful. Just as earlier game streaming efforts OnLive and Gaikai were gobbled up by Sony, their technology filtered into the inner workings of PlayStation Now, Stadia could become the backbone of streaming efforts on other platforms. Already, the voice-activated Google Assistant is now integrating into Xbox One, and Google has embedded Assistant into the official Stadia controller – it's not hard to see the two entwining even tighter, or Stadia being fed into Microsoft or Sony's offerings in future. There's some precedent too – Google Wave was passed on to the Apache Software Foundation and maintained there until 2018, after Google was done with it.

There's no denying Google's ambitions for Stadia are big. There's an energy and almost an earnestness to its plans, a clear passion for games that shines through in the way it talks about the medium and its potential. It's observable in its appointment of Jade Raymond – founder of Ubisoft Toronto and EA's Motive Studios – as head of Stadia's studios to develop first-party exclusives. It's present in how Google wants to leverage the scalable power of cloud computing to out-muscle home consoles and PCs, which could be transformative for how games look, work, and play.

Those are all future plans though. Anyone getting involved with Stadia now, right at the start, is going to have to wonder when or if Google may pull the plug on the whole endeavour – and Google has a lot of work to do to convince people that it won't.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK