I’m not sure if each tech company has a hidden strategy like “we should be in the gaming”, but it seems this is the case.
Stadia – a Google gaming service is shutting down. Most of the people are hearing about it now for the first time. Why this failed? I have some hints:
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- It was never a focus for Google. Once you have “ads-as-a business”, everything else falls behind. Microsoft has even a dedicated position for this (ie. VP for Games)
- The gaming market is not that big. I showed in a post last week. (ie. 300 – 400m)
- The competitive advantage was that the games were loading in 2-3 seconds. That’s it. Have they started with the tech and later added a business model layer on top? It seems so…
- “We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store.” – this is a nice thing, but what we can deduct is that the cost is not that much, hence implying that not many people adhered to their platform.
