Google’s gaming platform Stadia celebrated its second birthday just a few months ago, but now it looks as if its third birthday could be a little different: A good source report says that “Stadia” is no longer a high priority internally, but the further development focuses primarily on the new project “Google Stream“.
I’ve spoken here on the blog several times over the last few weeks about the Stadia relaunch as a white-label platform and now this observation is confirmed by a good source: Business Insider claims to have learned that the new platform will be called Google Stream and will be a cloud offer is launched. One could say that Google rents out the infrastructure built for Stadia, while the game developers are responsible for maintaining the titles.
You can see what such a white label platform looks like in this example. That alone is a good thing and an extension of Google’s cloud offering for business customers. But that’s not the end of the report: according to former employees, “Stadia is no longer a priority”, which should have been the case for a long time. The talk is that last year 20% of the development went into the consumer product, and the lion’s share was spent on expanding the infrastructure and looking for partners.
The report isn’t really surprising given a longer behind-the-scenes look but doesn’t bode well for Stadia. While it looked like it was going to be a big hit, the latest report contradicts it. By the end of 2020, the platform is said to have had less than a million players. We remember: The goal back then was “one billion players”. While Stadia is likely to last longer as an end product, this could be the beginning of the end – for a very, very long ending.