Google Stadia Is All But Burried

I could lie to you and say I am sad and that I would hate to say it, but it wouldn’t be true at all. So, I told you so! Google’s graveyard of failed ideas that they didn’t give enough focus behind is expanding, as Stadia has all but been put in the ground at this point. While the company creates the headstone, I think it is only right that I widdle all over it.

According to Reports, the failed experiment of Google Stadia has been deprioritized for the sake of selling off (white label) the cloud streaming services to third parties. An inevitable point, which I’ve been talking about since the idea was announced and landed with an onomatopoeic thud on the pavement of its release. It was last year in the Epic Games Vs Apple fight, where Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney stated that he believed Stadia was scaled back significantly, prompting a statement that it was indeed “alive and well.” This came after the internal studios were shut down, and new studios by former employees, like Jade Raymond, were formed with names like Haven.

Then last July, it was announced the company would only take a 15% cut of a game’s revenue on the platform (up to $3-million), all with the attempt to entice developers onto the platform. That didn’t really help all that much, as the platform still holds some of the lowest numbers of games available, with 271 titles at the time of writing. Even things like the Analogue Pocket, a Game Boy-thing for the nostalgia-heavy among you, has all the Game Boy games, totaling around 1000. Only the Playdate will have fewer games.

As I stated before, the “console” or the possible better phrase of “the platform” didn’t get enough backing. Not from fans of the idea, but from the company behind it in the first place, as the tech for streaming is basically there and has been for years. The trouble with an idea like Stadia, Luna, or other platforms similar to this with streaming games to your browser is the infrastructure that is too old to support such an idea on a mass population scale. I will happily put my hands up and say that the idea of streaming games to your phone, tablet, TV, or PC is a good one for many people, yet there are a few tech hitches to overcome.

However, the idea for streaming games rolls back down the hillside before ever hitting the metaphorical peak for one reason, connectivity. You can tell me a million times that the service works wonderfully for you in your house, but the point of Stadia as a platform and other streaming services (in general) is to be the future mass appeal product. You can’t be mass appeal when someone living where internet service providers (ISPs) won’t hook up a high-speed internet connection can’t use your service. Improve the infrastructure, and create a balanced field for everyone either out in the sticks or a major city.

When you create a product, you need a target demographic, a person that you are aiming at with pinpoint accuracy. The trouble with Stadia is that it is in a field of mass appeal while aiming exclusively at people with high-speed internet. Looking at the brief on Stadia, it was for someone who wants to play a game instantly, doesn’t have a lot of space, and wants to play anywhere they currently are. By all accounts, this is someone in a studio apartment that has access to the internet that is both reliable and capable of hitting high speeds.

Sticking with Google’s home territory: California has an estimated 39.5-million people, while the top four cities (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco) account for a little over 7-million of those residents. The wide scope of the phrase rural and varying understandings of what accounts for rural is inconsistent, though the estimated population in California alone that lives in rural areas accounts for 31.1%. Meanwhile, in a report back in 2020, the FCC found that 21.3-million US citizens are without broadband, and that seems rather low until you find the Broadband Now researchers looked at the numbers and found percentages being overstated. The actual number, according to Broadband Now, is closer to 42-million (160-Million according to Microsoft).

My point? Places like Montana, with low fiber-optic connectivity and (as the FCC defines it) only 72.4% broadband coverage that hits 25mbps or greater, may have blind spots that make Stadia or games streaming near impossible. For high-quality streaming, you will need 35mbps according to Google’s help center. Reliable and strong internet connections are what would have put Stadia in the hands of many people, despite the artifacting (abnormalities with the video) and delay based on varying ping rates, and would win over far more customers. It is a system dependent on external factors, something traditional console gaming struggles with far less often.

Stadia and other systems like it are targeted not at “hardcore gamers,” nor is it tech entirely aimed at “casuals” either. These systems are aimed at niches. Much like VR gaming, unless you have the hardware to support the system and the room size for it, it probably isn’t for you yet. That right there is my ultimate point: I could see the future of gaming being based around streaming or a mix of traditional downloading on consoles and streaming. However, as I keep reiterating with great force, the infrastructure to support the large-scale adoption of systems like Stadia, Luna, or others is not entirely within reach of a mass population.

I’ve focused on the US for its large population, large landmass with extensive rural areas, and varying internet quality for a reason, but you don’t have to look far for other issues. Canada is also quite large, with considerable rural areas that, at a simple guess, would have quality and reliability issues similar to those that make Stadia not the most optimal platform of choice. However, I have focused on one thing without taking into consideration another matter that makes Stadia a platform on some shaky ground: Price. Availability and reliability from ISPs is fine, depending on your capability to pay the average of $61.07 a month or more.

However, as has been made apparent in conversations with others, you can be paying upward of $30 more and receive less than the national average speeds (or even broadband). This makes Stadia not only a system dependent on external factors such as internet connectivity, but also geographical location, wealth, and population, all factoring into someone’s ability to use the system properly. Large population centers are going to see ISPs run to them in droves, but with the size of the continental US and apathy to connect everyone, there are plenty of people who are overlooked.

I’ve reiterated and will continue to do so, that someone or something with a vested interest in modernizing the continental US needs to put forth a plan to make something like this possible. It is difficult to look into the future of any period of time and picture something, aside from a dystopian hellscape where NFTs are normalized, that doesn’t feature internet connectivity for basic actions in our lives. Some genuinely think smart homes are a great idea, we have speaking pods connected to wifi, watches, mobile computers in our pockets, and even cat feeders. With more and more devices both in and outside of the home, this becomes even more taxing on an aging system not built for this amount of traffic.

As I said, I am not sad Stadia is on its deathbed, clutching for a few last gasps before it passes like the Sega Channel, the console that let you download console games in 1994. What saddens me the most is the idea we’re going to let ideas such as game-streaming come along without supporting the idea from the infrastructure level. Not only would this improve systems like Stadia, but the overall experience of the internet user in general. Faster speeds for the Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo, buffering with low speeds and low-quality video could be gone. It could get rid of data caps, and a whole lot more.

I’d have desired to have witnessed Stadia building that foundation for either its successor from Google (unlikely) or the next platform to use that groundwork to its advantage. I’ve made the Sega Channel connection before, and it was no mistake mentioning it a minute ago. It helped clear up problems in the wider industry of cable television so it could use those frequencies for its own system. However, either unwilling or unknowing, the gaming industry at large isn’t willing to fall on the sword of Damocles for fear their system/platform will not be the only one to reap the benefits.