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The next multibillion dollar corporation to throw their hat into the ring would be Google and their platform the Google Stadia. Google (and their parent company Alphabet Inc.) is a massive corporation; they are certainly one of the largest technology giants in the world, closely rivaling Microsoft as a multitrillion dollar corporation. Obviously, it makes sense for Google to try their hands at game streaming, especially since Google’s infrastructure is incredibly reliable. The servers they have in order to operate platforms such as YouTube, Gmail, Google Docs, etc. is massive. However, Google has also had a large history of abandonware platforms, a list of which is too large to include here. Either way, they certainly have the money and servers to make Google Stadia a hit and boy, did they fall flat on their face. Google may be a software company that occasionally dabbles in hardware, but they have no history with making video games or really understanding that market. They did hire people with experience in the gaming industry and nothing spells confidence in your platform more than hiring Phil Harrison, the man most commonly said to be responsible for the PS3’s bad rep when that system was fully revealed and released in 2006. Stadia was off to a great start. Then you have the head of Google coming on stage during Stadia’s formal unveiling to the public in 2019, talking about how he isn’t much of a gamer. I respect honesty, but it makes me wonder why he was even there in the first place if he had nothing of value to bring to the presentation. It’s like if Microsoft’s first unveil of the original Xbox had Bill Gates come on stage and stated he doesn’t like video games and is unsure of the potential of this platform. That was the vibe I got from Stadia’s formal unveiling, just a total uncertainty in the platform. It also didn’t help things when Google made large purchases for various game studios and just about a year or so after being acquired, they were all closed down as Google was focusing their attention elsewhere. None of those studios had released a single game for Stadia before being gutted and leaving many without work. Not to mention Stadia was built as its own gaming platform with its own architecture that developers needed to build games for instead of the simple scaling and porting process if it had utilized something similar to the X86 architecture on the PS4 and Xbox One. Google’s entire presence in the gaming market is a joke and the amount of money they can burn is inexcusable when it affects the lives of hundreds! It is fairly clear they rushed out a product to get their foot in the door first and the sad thing is, it wasn’t terrible. By the time Stadia launched in late 2019, the internet infrastructure was there and we were seeing more cellular towers being built for 5G. Stadia, when connected, worked and worked remarkably well. It wasn’t perfect but the input lag and delay were minimal to the point they felt non-existent and while there were some compression artifacts from streaming the game, it felt like playing on any other console. It was that good! Unfortunately, Stadia’s ship is slowly sinking and the truth is that Google could’ve done a better job with marketing the product and continued game development internally if they just stuck with it. Instead, we got a half-baked product that sooner rather than later will be another abandonware project from Google. Gone before it could make any form of an impact.
