Inside Google's Plan To Salvage Its Stadia Gaming Service

Google is trying to salvage its failing Stadia game service with a new focus on striking deals with Peloton, Bungie, and others under the brand "Google Stream." Business Insider reports: When Google announced last year that it was shutting down its internal gaming studios, it was seen as a blow to the company's big bet on video games. Google, whose Stadia cloud service was barely more than a year old, said it would instead focus on publishing games from existing developers on the platform and explore other ways to bring Stadia's technology to partners. Since then, the company has shifted the focus of its Stadia division largely to securing white-label deals with partners that include Peloton, Capcom, and Bungie, according to people familiar with the plans.

Google is trying to salvage the underlying technology, which is capable of broadcasting high-definition games over the cloud with low latency, shopping the technology to partners under a new name: Google Stream. (Stadia was known in development as "Project Stream.") The Stadia consumer platform, meanwhile, has been deprioritized within Google, insiders said, with a reduced interest in negotiating blockbuster third-party titles. The focus of leadership is now on securing business deals for Stream, people involved in those conversations said. The changes demonstrate a strategic shift in how Google, which has invested heavily in cloud services, sees its gaming ambitions.

Google has continued to prop up the Stadia consumer platform with a steady stream of titles. After Google closed Stadia's internal game studios, known as Stadia Games & Entertainment, insiders said the directive was to build out what was internally dubbed a "content flywheel" -- a steady flow of independent titles and content from existing publishing deals that would be much more affordable than securing AAA blockbusters, two former employees familiar with the conversations said. "The key thing was that they would not be spending the millions on the big titles," one said. "And exclusives would be out of the question." Executives and employees for the Stadia product have also shifted roles. Phil Harrison, the former PlayStation executive Google tapped to run its gaming operations, now reports to the company's head of subscriptions. Patrick Seybold, a Google spokesperson, told Insider in a statement: "We announced our intentions of helping publishers and partners deliver games directly to gamers last year, and have been working toward that. The first manifestation has been our partnership with AT&T who is offering Batman: Arkham Knight available to their customers for free. While we won't be commenting on any rumors or speculation regarding other industry partners, we are still focused on bringing great games to Stadia in 2022. With 200+ titles currently available, we expect to have another 100+ games added to the platform this year, and currently have 50 games available to claim in Stadia Pro."

let it die

[Papaspud]

renting games at full price is not a good deal for the customer.

and you can lose it all when an game rolls off

[Joe_Dragon]

and you can lose it all when an game rolls off / get's to old / the dev pulls it / google shuts it down / it moves to an YOU MUST PAY service.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

And not beeing able to use your existing steam/ epic/ whatever library is allso a thing that probably mafe stadia doa

Still a Google product

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is trying to salvage the underlying technology, which is capable of broadcasting high-definition games over the cloud with low latency, shopping the technology to partners under a new name: Google Stream.

Since it's still a Google product, they must not be trying very hard to salvage it.

How long will it last?

[khchung]

That would be the question one asks whenever seeing anything coming out from Google.

For all the mistakes MS made with Xbox, they at least had one thing done right -- MS persisted. The same with Sony and the Playstation.

For all (or any) the greatness Google's product has, it lacked one thing -- the reputation of staying around. Google abandon products whenever they feel like it, what kind of gamer would spend the money on a platform from a company like that? Probably only those who had already bought all other consoles and still have money to spend?

Re:

[Presence Eternal]

I see this as a good litmus test of the companies they are courting. I don't think it's a coincidence that the names given to us in the article are a laundry list of incompetence.

Re:

[cascadingstylesheet]

That would be the question one asks whenever seeing anything coming out from Google.

Really?

Gmail has lasted linger and been more stable than any web based service I have ever used, since the dawn of the web.

I love Stadia

[ironicsky]

I'm a stadia early adopter.
I love the platform. The quality of the game streams is amazing, and the latency is non existent. Even the controller feels natural and a lot like a Microsoft controller.

Though, if Google bails I hope they push Android TV to the Stadia Chromecast to at least salvage the tech. It's the only Chromecast I've seen with a hardwired ethernet port.

I also own an xBox One, Switch and other consoles. The convenience of Stadia is unmatched. Buy a game ? Zero wait time to play. No need to wor

Re: I love Stadia

[madbrain]

You can add Ethernet to any Chromecast using either a USB OTG interface or USB-C hub. I have got 15 Chromecast audio , 2 CC with Google TV, and one CC 3rd gen, all wired to 1gig ethernet. The throughput is limited to USB 2.0 speeds, though, unfortunately, so 480 Mbps max theoretical. In practice, no more than about 300 Mbps.

Re:

[Junta]

I tried it out last year and while better than I guessed it would be, it was still a pretty bad experience with compression artifacts and sometimes outright glitching in the way a digital broadcast would do in the face of interference.

This is the fundamental problem for game streaming, there's plenty of opportunity for things beyond the provider's control to mess it up. Maybe Google had a datacenter pretty close, but ultimately they don't have datacenters in every neighborhood and can't make the network bet

Solution looking for a problem

[indytx]

I just went to the Stadia website to see how much it costs, and it's just not cost competitive. A controller, Chromecast and remote are $99 ON SALE. An extra controller is $69. A Chromecast alone is $49. Who was buying these? Why didn't Google subsidize the hardware as a loss leader?

Even if you just want to use a tablet or computer, who has fast enough internet that cloud gaming isn't terrible and wants to get locked into that puny list of free games for $9.99/month? There are lots of other games which pre

Sounds about as good as Google+

[Gavino]

These clowns need to just stick to what they have now. Search, phones, email, G suite, and maps. That's more than enough already. We already bow down to these tech giant overlords. They should kill off what's failing, and the U.S. Government should scrutinise everything they do from here on in as they are just too darn powerful, and are a danger to democracy already.

Re:

[escobarrr]

There is nothing to save for Stadia. https://shareit.onl/ [shareit.onl] https://mxplayer.pro/ [mxplayer.pro]