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This, although it has failed harder than was ideal for the long haul, and Stadia users are losing patience with Google's sluggishness. They still haven't added chat capability, for example. They've botched the launch so badly that it's damaging enough they might not be able to salvage the brand. That can't have been their aim, and their reputation for dabbling is becoming problematic as others have observed:I don't think google expected it to be a hit, the technology isn't quite ready yet.
It was just a market test to see what they need to do differently for version 2. The scary thing about this technology is that once it works, consoles will be obsolete overnight.
Their greatest obstacle has been building a user base from almost nothing as they attempt to build enough revenue inertia to bridge in other Android/Chromecast devices. Meanwhile, Sony and Microsoft are developing competing services that carry the bonus of allowing you to download the files locally, and they already have user bases that are over 45 million deep a piece. Ultimately, they're headed in the same direction, and are trying to figure out how to shrink the consoles so they don't have to bother selling them every several years, and can also encourage millions more to buy their device for a lower upfront cost. Future revenue is all about "services", and not just for phone companies.The biggest deal breaker though is that this is Google we are talking about. You would have to be a fool to have confidence they will continue to support this product, given their track history. If they pull the plug on this the money you spent will have been wasted.
So make no mistake. This is the future of gaming, and in fact is already becoming the present. We're all just waiting to see who delivers it first, and if that contest produces the incredibly rare emergence of a new power player in gaming. Discounting smartphones, the last time that happened was when Microsoft usurped Sega.
So the cards are all stacked against Google becoming a player in gaming, they always were, but the tension is in the fact that services are growing and fracturing similar to TV services (cable, satellite, HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple+, CBS All Access, etc.) when in that world device exclusivity is effectively nonexistent. For example, if a Fire TV stick only supported one or two of those services it would be worthless, and nobody would buy it. Gaming is chasing that market only because the demands on gaming are greater, so they lag, but it's the same course.
Presumably, for the consoles to survive, they will have to accommodate all the different services on their platform that are bound to rise in the gaming world; however, that's mutually exclusive to the original concept of the consoles which were designed to control content delivery wholly. EA's Game Pass is an early success, and this is probably the most important reason that despite getting clobbered this generation, Microsoft is well-poised with their marriage of the Xbox to the open-source PC landscape to do better in the coming generation. Microsoft is open for business. This new technological landscape we're entering seems less friendly than ever before to those who resist open markets.
Because people aren't going to "buy" games, anymore. They aren't going to buy powerful local hardware, either. Not even a decade of that left. Those ways of doing things in entertainment is over. People will buy subscriptions, they'll buy Smart TVs. Netflix changed the world.
Great potential, but the problem for Google is that Stadia appears stillborn.