Over the last few years, a few tech giants such as Amazon, Google, and Apple have tried to enter the gaming business with different propositions for the market. It seems that neither of these companies has been able to find success in a market dominated by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. The two most notable failures have been Amazon’s multimillion dollar free to play game “Crucible” and Google’s Stadia Game streaming service.
Crucible a free to play shooter, lasted about a month on Steam before Amazon had to pull it out into “close beta status”. Usually games placed under that ‘status’ are unfinished, and that is something that is surprising given the fact that Crucible had been in development for 5 years under Amazon’s near infinite budget.
Sometimes a bad game, is just a bad game. The numbers for Crucible (despite being free and on steam) have been abysmal. On May 21, “Crucible” had about 25,000 concurrent players. Meaning that the game peaked the very next day after it launched, which is not uncommon. A bad game could get thousands of downloads early because gamers will give it a try (being that it is free). By May 22, two days after launch, it had already disappeared from Steam’s top 100.
Leaving Steam’s top 100 list likely meant that the game had dropped to 5000 (or less) concurrent players. Which was a sharp drop. A massive failure even, when contrasted to the most played game on the platform which averaged about 1 million concurrent players. There are certain things money can buy, apparently a good game isn’t necessarily one of them.
Still, amazon does have an infinite amount of resources so if the company really wants to get into gaming I supposed it is only a matter of time before they can deliver a competent product.
Google’s Stadia however is a much more complicated beast, on that could in theory provide incredible rewards down the line, but also one that seems to be stuck in the mud. Google for all of that it has done right in other areas of its business, just doesn’t seem to understand how the video gaming industry work.
It has failed in what perhaps is the most basic area in terms of attracting customers to a particular console or eco system. Google hasn’t been able to secure any exclusive blockbusters and according to reports they have approached developers in all of the wrong ways.
“We were approached by the Stadia team. Usually with that kind of thing, they lead with some kind of offer that would give you an incentive to go with them. [But the incentive] was kind of non-existent. That’s the short of it.”- Unnamed Indie Developer.
Apart from that the company has other issues to overcome in order for the Stadia to find success. The main one being that internet connections across the US (Let alone the world) vary in speed and very few people can afford (or live in an area where the service is available) the kind of speeds that would be needed to access 4K gaming with HDR. You can easily get 4k Gaming now quite affordably on an Xbox One X, without the need of an “ultra-fast” internet connection.
The other issues are simply google’s lack, or the appearance of a lack of commitment to the platform, and the fact that you had to pay $129.99 for a starter kit, that includes their $69.99 controller. Though the price now is $99.99, you are literally forced to subscribe to their $9.99 monthly plan in order to stream the games. In a year you would end up paying about $220 for a system with a limited library and unreliability for playing especially in areas with slower internet speeds.
PS Now, and Xbox Game Pass offer a better service with a much larger library of the 3rd party games and their own popular exclusive titles such as the Last of Us, Uncharted, and Halo. Technology just isn’t there right now for console-less AAA game streaming…it will be some day, but it isn’t there now. And thus, Google’s Stadia is likely to remain dead on the water for the foreseeable future.