Google Stadia is dead
Today the new has been disclosed : Google is killing Stadia, its cloud gaming platform launched about only 3 years ago.
A fantasy from a bunch of overconnected people
It was obvious that a cloud gaming only platform had strictly zero chance to thrive. It was merely a fantasy designed by people who live in large cities with a very good network. People so centered in their own lifestyle that they don't even understand things are not the same everywhere. Reality doesn’t meet the expectations of a bunch of overconnected and profit hungry peoples. Most countries doesn't have a consistent enough network except in some large cities. And it won't change soon.
Google being Google, they let only about 2 years to the project to succeed ... Which is very short. And it failed. It even failed miserably if you consider the COVID lockdown didn't really help the sales. Actually Google abandonned Stadia 1 year ago. At this time, by september 2021, many games ceased to be updated and some were not even playable anymore.
An incredible waste of ressources
Google has promised to refund customers.
- But what about game devs who invested a lot of time and money in Stadia ?
- And what about the environmental cost of all these stadia gamepad which will end up soon in a trash bin ? These devices were built using resources which are not infinite and the manufacturing processes had an environmental cost too. Stadia was all a waste of resources for a project destined to fail. EDIT (JAN 14 22) : GOOGLE ANNOUNCED THEY WILL RELEASE AN UPDATE TO UNLOCK BLUETOOT ON THE GAMEPAD, ALLOWING IT TO BE USED AS A REGULAR BLUETOOTH GAMEPAD.
Desperately looking for the next eldorado
This is now usual from Google to launch a new project, fail it completely and then kill it after 2 to 3 years. It happened more than once.
It seems many big IT companies are desperately looking for a new eldorado, a new revolution which will open a whole new market. They are trying new concepts which often fail ... In fact, they are just so blinded by their hunger for profit that they don't want to see the ugly truth.
The ugly truth
We are quite fine now with what we have in this department.
- We don't need more powerfull smartphones. Middle range smartphones are more than powerfull enough for 99% of people.
- We don't need new (and worse) social networks. What we have is already bad enough and rotten to the core with the help of influencers.
- We don't need energy consuming NFT bullshit which will cease to work as soon as servers will be dead.
- We don't need much more powerfull game consoles, we need better games, we need games without these money wasting shitty DLC.
- We don't need power hungry cloud gaming platforms that are completely dependant on other services to work and don't let us lend or sell our games second hand.
... But of course they don't want to hear it.