When you look at all of the tech trend stories of the past decade, one important saga that’s likely to be overlooked is the platformization of gaming. In the 2010s, the value of video games was realized in a way that completely transformed how the majority of users experienced sitting down with their favorite FPS or RPG.
The gaming industry questioned everything about the gaming experience in the past decade, but only in the past year have there been earnest efforts from major players to rethink where the game was actually rendered. Google Stadia isn’t the first cloud gaming effort by any means, but the platform, where games are rendered on remote servers and streamed to users’ screens over the web, was one of the most-talked about gaming announcements of the year.
The platform has already launched and everything is smooth enough, but the platform won’t fail because of quirks, it’s the fundamentals that lead me to believe it’s something Google won’t continue to support. Google doesn’t have an awesome track record in boldly committing to gaming efforts that don’t show good traction within a year or two of launch. For almost all products, that’s a completely reasonable time frame to give an effort, but when Google sells a vision of the near-term future that isn’t quite ready, the company seems to be susceptible to throwing in the towel entirely if the timing isn’t right at launch.
The company’s Daydream VR gaming platform was unveiled three years ago only to be seemingly abandoned less than 18 months later. This year, Google announced it wouldn’t be certifying any new devices for the platform and discontinuing sales of its own headset. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the fate Stadia shares. Cloud gaming is obviously far less niche than mobile VR, especially in the near term, but they both share the distinction of being platforms that don’t really enable experiences that users feel they need.
Cloud gaming brings a lot of technology into the fold, but the fundamental advance is that it can reduce friction in the user experience.
The interpretation of where that friction is best reduced seems to be what separates the current players, including most notably Google, Microsoft and Sony. Facebook also bought a cloud-gaming startup this month, so expect some developments from them in the future.
While Sony and Microsoft both operate established platforms, Google (and perhaps down the road, Facebook) wants to use cloud gaming tech as a way to leverage an adjacent technology (in Google’s case, Google Cloud tech; in Facebook’s case, it would likely be their social graph) in order to realize their long-held desires to build a consumer gaming platform.
Stadia is in the unfortunate position of having to hold all of these ambitions at launch which means that the cloud has to be the solution to more user experience problems than currently exist. Stadia banks hard on the idea that allowing gamers to play games across devices will bring them in droves but playing console quality titles on mobile devices really isn’t something gamers have indicated that they’ve wanted. Dealing with the ISP quirks that come from streaming 4K footage over long sessions arguably adds that friction back into the gameplay experience.
Microsoft and Sony have well-established platforms that can lean on cloud gaming to solve different, more-focused, problems for them, namely getting users to play more titles with less friction from downloads. For existing platforms, it’s a way to reshape purchasing habits and when combined with subscription platforms it’s something that could be a major boon to indies that might not have gotten the time of day beforehand. Stadia has a limited bit of this benefit as well inside YouTube Gaming, but its new-mover advantage isn’t bringing a lot to the table to coax new users into buying games on the platform in the first place.
As is so often the case with “the next big tech advance,” cloud streaming tech is much more likely to become the next big feature of a more traditional platform rather than the entire platform itself. Existing platforms don’t have to worry as much about user complications with internet speeds and data caps because ultimately it’s an auxiliary service that doesn’t have to work for every user. Google doesn’t have that luxury.
Whenever a developing technology crosses that threshold for usability, it’s natural that a tech giant with deep pockets is going to try to swing in and steal incumbents’ lunches. I really don’t think Google’s going to pull this off though. Google has enough existing infrastructure with Google Cloud that this won’t be a terrible expenditure if things go south but they might end up owning a few game studios they don’t know what to do with when the dust settles, as is already the case with VR.