Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Google's game streaming service Stadia is cutting its game development arm to focus more on growing the service as a publishing platform:

Google is shifting away from making its own games for Stadia. It’s shutting down studios in Montreal and Los Angeles, and industry veteran Jade Raymond, who Google tapped to lead the game development division, is leaving the company. Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison wrote in a blog post that Google will keep investing in the service.

From that official Google blog post:

We launched Stadia with the goal of making your favorite games instantly available wherever you want to play them. With the recent successful launch of Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia, gameplay on all types of devices, including iOS, growing our slate of YouTube integrations, and our global expansions, it’s clear that Stadia’s technology has been proven and works at scale.

"Scale" is a relative term, because while I've seen Stadia touted as a killer app for highly desired but difficult-to-run games like Cyberpunk 2077, actual active usage of Stadia still seems scant: According to Sensor Tower, the Stadia app was downloaded for use on Android devices only 40,000 times last December. (And that's only after exceeding 1 million Google Play total downloads last June.) At that rate, total usage of Stadia across all platforms is likely well under 5 million monthly users; it will take many millions more active users to make Stadia an appealing alternative to Steam with its 120 million monthly active users.

One key problem: Stadia still isn't offering a unique enough offering for people who already have video game consoles and high-end PCs, and so have little incentive to switch, especially when streaming still isn't ideal for twitch action games where even a split second delay in responsiveness can ruin the experience. My proposal to Stadia remains the same as it was a couple years ago — focus on being the best platform for streaming virtual worlds and MMOs:

[Stadia should s]hift their content library entirely to games which don't depend on split second reaction times. Specifically, to MMOs and virtual worlds. Elder Scrolls Online is coming to Stadia next year, and that's a good start, but there's a whole host of virtual worlds/MMOs that aren't typically considered AAA that would be equally at home, on Stadia: Roblox and VRChat are obvious candidates, but even grand old Second Life would be a hit on Stadia. I should know: I helped launched OnLive's Second Life solution, and it was gaining quite a lot of customer traction (despite the subscription fee) before the company's unexpected acquisition.

Sad to say, Stadia is still promoting very few if any non-twitch virtual worlds/MMOs on its service.