Google has a lot going on: an interview with Rebecca Heineman about the Stadia shutdown and the launching of Luxor Evolved
Rebecca Heineman learned about the Stadia shutdown the same way everyone else did: a blog post, penned by Google vice president and Stadia general manager Phil Harrison. The sunset of the cloud gaming service was no longer a joke and she was horrified. It was as official as you could get. Heineman’s company, Olde Sküül, was set to launch a new title, Luxor Evolved, on the platform in mere weeks. She immediately sent an email with the link to her point person’s post on the Stadia website. What’s this?
While Google wasn’t the first to put AAA games in your browser, it was the first to really make it work well — and at a scale we haven’t seen before. Google’s technology has helped prove that cloud gaming is viable, and it has pushed rivals like Microsoft and Amazon to quickly compete with their Xbox Cloud Gaming and Luna services.
He said that he was absolutely certain that Google was going to be in it for a long time and that it was looking very much into the future. I would recommend taking a few minutes to read the entire interview. It is interesting, but sad at the same time.
At its Google for Games Developer Summit, the company announced several new features for Stadia and thanked partners and players for their “ongoing support.” The features include click to play trials, which were basically instant demos. The company said it was coming to all Stadia titles in the years to come.
I’ve mainly used Stadia to play Destiny 2. Stadia felt like a different place when it was at its peak. In recent months, I have been able to play the looter shooter on my steam deck. Destiny 2 doesn’t run on the Steam Deck at all, so I’ve used the free version of Stadia to fill that gap.
Just a few weeks ago, Google publicly retreated from cloud gaming with the surprise announcement that it would be shutting down Stadia. By throwing in the towel, it seemed like Microsoft, which has made cloud gaming a perk but not its primary focus for Xbox, has the best chance at popular adoption, as it’s probably the closest thing to a “Netflix for video games” that we have so far. There isn’t a huge hit with Amazon’s Luna and most people aren’t aware of Nvidia’s GeForce Now.
Employees on the Stadia side were just as confused. “I’m so sorry I was unable to reach out to directly share the news,” the Google employee replied to Heineman. “We found out at the same time the blog was released.”
After launch, game subscription services typically offer a single lump sum to developers. Stadia, however, offered developers a 70 percent revenue share from its Pro subscription service; it also offered a 15 percent commission on the first $3 million in digital store sales (though this was a reduction from a previous price point). One creator said that the chance to make a low six figures within their first month was given by that. Stadia sales did not seem to overlap with other platforms. A developer earned via Stadia without being reductive to profit.
Stadia was a service that offered both full-price games and a subscription that only allowed you to play select titles. Rebecca Ann Heineman believes that the model was to blame for the failure of the platform. She said that everyone she knows thought for one monthly price that you could play all the games you wanted for free. Stadia was hurt due to reality not meeting the perceived expectations, and this was not the case. The company could get it right if they kept cloud games as a part of the pricing.
As of September, 2022, Amazon Luna had between zero and 5 percent of the cloud gaming market. The service has tried to attract new users through free trials, but they are currently only available to US customers. If Stadia’s closure is anything to go by, Amazon may have its work cut out for it to avoid Luna from sharing a similar fate.
Netflix appears to be committed to getting game development right. It has established an internal studio in Helsinki, acquired developers, and just announced a California studio headed up by a former executive producer of the game. And Verdu seems to be willing to give its studios room to grow. “With internal games, we want to build institutional competence. We want teams to go through multiple cycles together and essentially get really good at working together and delivering great products,” he said. “Sometimes, the only way you can do that is to give them the space inside an organization.”
The study was done as a part of the investigation into Microsoft. Throughout its provisional findings report, the CMA claims that the merger could prevent other platforms from offering a competitive game library should Microsoft make franchises exclusive to its Xbox Cloud Gaming service and suggests that Stadia’s lack of content contributed to its demise. The report says that content is important to the success of a cloud gaming service. “Particularly considering Google’s failure with Stadia, which our evidence suggests was caused at least in part by a lack of gaming content, which was connected to its use of a Linux OS.”
Some people who had used its game streaming and were members of PS Plus could have over inflatedSony’s market share in 2021, according to the regulators. It’s also difficult to accurately compare the figures, as the data was collected at different times — Xbox Cloud Gaming figures being taken between January and September of 2022 while GeForce Now only provides data for January, for example.