There’s many potential threats to Stadia taking off in the long-term, like cross-play availability, the competition, and even Google themselves.
During yesterday’s Stadia Connect, Google gave us all the details on the best parts of Stadia, namely the games available, the pricing, and the variety of platforms you can play on. What they, of course, didn’t talk about are all the potential threats to Stadia taking off in the long-term, like cross-play availability, the competition, and even Google themselves.
Without a doubt, the biggest threat to Stadia right now is Google’s reputation. Over the years, Google has become known for mercilessly killing services, sometimes without warning. While their PR teams have consistently been out in force to shut down the “killer” narrative, people in the loop enough to be early adopters are likely to see through the spin.
A quick look through social media and even our own comments section shows that people have no faith in Google keeping a service running for more than a few years.
Let’s see… Google Allo: 2 yearsGoogle Inbox: 4 yearsGoogle Hangouts: ~6 yearsGoogle+: 7 yearsGoogle Music: ~7 years
Going to have to go with the average of 5 years.
Ron Amadeo (@RonAmadeo) June 6,2019
This image is hurt further by Stadia’s pricing model. If Stadia Pro were the only offering, with games made available to subscribers based only on their monthly fees, we could somewhat more easily accept Stadia one day shutting down.
Instead, Google Stadia has an “ownership” model, where customers can purchase a game and have permanent access to it on Stadia’s free tier. Under this model, gamers would (perhaps wisely) assume that if Stadia ever shut down permanently, their purchases would disappear with it.
