There are likely more than a few reasons Stadia was unsuccessful but hanging out towards the top of that list was a lack of AAA games. That’s according to Google Director of Product Management Dov Zimring. Who said in a statement as part of the Microsoft vs. FTC case that “Stadia’s lack of important AAA content created a self-sustaining cycle.” That cycle Zimring is referring to is the one where players stopped subscribing to or wouldn’t subscribe to Stadia Pro because of a lack of AAA game titles.
Publishers and developers then wouldn’t show interest because there were low user numbers. And thus the cycle repeats itself. Which obviously wouldn’t bode well for sales of games. Unlike other cloud gaming services, Stadia acted more like its own platform. Wherein you were required to buy your games for Stadia. As opposed to getting access to tons of games for a single monthly fee.
As Zimring notes in his email, a significant reason Google decided to shut down Stadia was the cost of securing content to offer to subscribers. He also stated that getting this content onto the service was difficult to do.
Google knew Stadia would be unsuccessful if it couldn’t secure more AAA games
This revelation shouldn’t come as a shock. As great as some indie games and other non-AAA games are, you also need a healthy selection of AAA titles. Otherwise gamers won’t be interested.
This was a challenge that Google tried to tackle but ultimately wasn’t able to. Porting games to Stadia was expensive for external developers. And because of the lower user numbers, the cost wasn’t worth it. Zimring also touches on Google’s early consideration of using Microsoft’s Windows platform for running its cloud severs. But this had long term costs that ultimately weren’t viable. With Zimring calling them “cost prohibitive.” In the end, there were a lot of moving parts and decisions that led to Stadia’s downfall.
Which is a shame considering how good the technology ended up being in regards to the streaming quality and reliability in the service’s final year.