Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: Stadia Will Need More “Good Stuff” Than This
Google knows Stadia is in a bad place, and how they need to turn its fortunes around fast. The much-hyped service promised to deliver seamless video game streaming with no need for beefy consoles and computers in terms of power and size. But not enough people found that pitch endearing enough to jump in. Several players around the world still prefer owning their games physically or digitally, particularly when streaming versions either cost the same price or are bafflingly more expensive. Not to mention the internet connection required to play more demanding games seamlessly, which varies depending on the territory — including in Google’s home country of the United States of America. The skepticism about the service early on has panned out.
Google isn’t ready to add it to the extensive list of services they’ve killed (check out the pop-up message there), so they’ve been informing the gaming audience of the “Good Stuff” on the horizon in the past week. The attempt was admirable, but the “stuff” will need to be more than “good” to meaningfully help as the service nears the end of its first year on the market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exhe6lsfooM
Proof of this was in the titles actually announced. The first day’s biggest announcement was Pac-Man Mega Tunnel, a battle royale take on the very old Pac-Man formula featuring up to 64 players, with a free demo made available. An exclusive sequel to Hello Neighbor called Hello Engineer is also coming to the platform, a multiplayer construction game where players construct machinery to compete with their neighbors. Lastly, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will arrive on November 24th. Companies usually save their best announcements for last, but they also start with a big one to attract attention. They didn’t do that here for good reason.
The key announcement for the second day was for the availability of a beta for strategy game Humankind, which will last until Wednesday at 12PM ET. There’s also a special preorder price for $50.99 instead of the usual $59.99. Additionally, ARK: Survival Evolved is coming in spring 2021, and Orcs Must Die! 3 expansion Drastic Steps is coming on November 6th. This, again, was part of a series of “better than nothing” announcements.
With Thursday being the third and final day, their biggest announcement was a limited demo for Ubisoft’s Immortals Fenyx Rising. Also, story-driven co-op action game Young Souls is coming first on Stadia at some point in the future. The crowdfunded turn-based strategy game Phoenix Point is also coming to the platform, though not exclusively. The Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access version is also available on the platform, one already available on other PC platforms.
None of these initiatives are anywhere near enough to give Stadia the help it will need. To turn this figurative ship around, it will need big exclusives that can’t be purchased anywhere else, or offer existing software at a better price than competitors. For the former, Google needs to build the infrastructure or create partnerships with developers to sell games exclusively. They’ve done this on a limited basis, but not in a way that’s made enough potential players feel they’re missing out by not investing in it. The latter plan is a no-go with publishers who want to sell their games at similar prices across multiple platforms. Stadia in a serious bind, and it’s tough to see the platform crawling out of it if these announcements are all they have.
Don’t interpret this as me underselling how “good” these offers and games will be, however. In fact, some will help more than you might expect upon reading about them. The free demos like that for Immortals Fenyx Rising don’t require signing up for any sort of subscription, but simply signing in with your likely-existing Google account. Anyone already using Chrome won’t need to download anything to start playing, and the game runs fine at 1080p and 30fps with a solid internet connection. This amounted to a subtly good sales pitch, and could keep an audience (no, not just me) coming back to try more demos and even purchase software if the prices are right in the future. The Stadia Pro free trial will help, but potential consumers (again, more than just me) tend to prefer less hoops.
It speaks volumes that during the week in which this “Good Stuff” promotional initiative occurred, Stadia got the most attention when creative director Alex Hutchinson made downright inane tweets about how streamers should be buying licenses to stream games, and implied that they didn’t purchase software at all. Worse, he viciously defended the comments against everyone when justifiably criticized. It got bad enough that Google released a statement distancing themselves from him, saying his comments “do not reflect those of Stadia, YouTube or Google.”
Google needs several good announcements to turn Stadia’s trajectory around quickly, before other services like Xbox’s Cloud Gaming, PlayStation NOW, and the recently-announced Amazon Luna cloud gaming platform gain ground. The more time it takes, the bigger the chance that it will grace that particular dubious list linked above.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
