As a thirty-something male in the US who hasn’t dabbled in video games since Halo tournaments in college a decade ago, I’d bet I’m pretty close to the ideal target market for Google’s Stadia. Despite letting the consoles go by the wayside in exchange for spending my time adulting and pursing more “responsible” matters, I’ve never quite lost the video game bug and every so often have to suppress the desire to ambush some foes with an energy sword. I’m clearly not a hard core gamer and would be reluctant to shell out a couple hundred bucks to stay pace with the latest gaming tech but for the right price, I’d be on it!
Enter Cloud Gaming.
With the onset of cloud gaming, people like me find it a lot harder to resist that gaming bug. And no we’re not talking about candy crush and the like on your phone. We’re talking about real games with stunning graphics delivered at the highest quality on any device. So when Google announced Stadia, promising just that for a low hardware buy-in and monthly subscription, I was excited!
But after some experience with Stadia, my expectations were only met part way…
First, after setting it all up and following a rather lengthy series of prompts bouncing between my TV, my phone, and the controller, it was finally ready to go! I dove immediately into the world of Destiny 2 and to my delight, the game was developed by Bungie, the creators of Halo. It did’t take long for those Halo melee reflexes to return and very quickly I was in it! The game lagged maybe just two or three times over the course of an hour. I’m not sure if that was from the wifi on my end or something in the Google serves not keeping up but it didn’t bother me all that much and just served as a small reminder that all the graphics crunching was happening somewhere hundreds of miles away.
Next, after happily completing a level and being dropped into some sort of Destiny 2 marketplace where I could MOD my avatar and shop around for weapons, I felt my commitment to the game being greatly overestimated and had enough of that.
What else can I play?
Then I realized a very startling fact about Google Stadia that had me suddenly researching the Google store return policy and wondering if I’d get more use out of some Airpods instead. This is a big one and had me immediately feeling a little duped by Google.
As anyone who’s quite accustomed to how digital subscription plans work when it comes to entertainment, Google pulled a fast one. You pay a monthly fee and you get access to some enormous library of movies, TV shows, etc. From Netflix, Disney+, HBO, Amazon and so on— a small monthly fees gains you access to a plethora of titles. This of course was the expectation with Stadia and nothing on their website suggested otherwise. But low and behold, my “Stadia Pro” subscription gained me access to a whopping seven titles. Yup, just seven games and only one of them had I heard of before.
I thought I had to be missing something when I searched for some more popular titles and they all had a price tag, many in the $49 to $59 range. I understand that to many out there, that is money well spent but as a “casual-gamer” no way am I spending that much on a game that I may not even like and if I do, only get around to playing once a month, if that. But more than that what really bothered me is that this was not more apparent up front on their website. On their “games” page there under the bold heading: “Play your favorite games without a console” there is a list of 50 games, many of which are very popular AAA titles.
One would assume these all come with the subscription and there’s nothing to indicate otherwise. It’s only if you examine the faded gray text half-way down the “About Stadia” page are you introduced to the idea that there may be games available for purchase. Ultimately it seems there’s some complicated business model worked out with the developers but to make the sale and get people in the door, Google chose to let us assume we’d have access to all these games with just a subscription. It seems Google plans to release a couple new titles to Stadia Pro subscribers each month, of which you need to “claim” in order to keep from month to month.
Ultimately, Google delivered only part way on what they promised. They promised us Netflix for video games but delivered Netflix lite… very lite! Especially for a company trying to carve out a space for itself in a very developed industry, taking cheap shots like this in the long run hurts its branding and undermines the trust of its nascent customer base. Regardless, for me it did successfully confirm the potential of cloud gaming for pulling in the low-hanging fruit, such as myself, back into the gaming world. I’m very excited about the future of gaming and what other companies are able to offer. One in particular that has caught my eye on actually delivering the “Netflix for video games” business model is called Abya. It’ll be interesting to see how Abya and other cloud gaming services stack up. Time will tell who really comes out on top in the cloud gaming space but for now, Google Stadia is still finding its way.
Michael Fernandez
Tech Disrupt
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