It’s the first step to cancelling it in an year or so.

Yet. If they don't believe in their own product, how many other companies will, and how many of them will jump into a service which has a roadmap they don't control versus setting up their own service?

Running a cloud infrastructure is something Google is good at. Making AAA games is not. It is entirely consistent with a deep belief in the product for them to reallocate resources toward partnerships rather than trying to spin up a AAA game studio internally.

That's not wrong but I think they've put themselves in a tricky position here: this requires companies to make a non-trivial commitment to their platform. There haven't been any new deals or increased partnerships announced to make this look less like they're just giving up on the idea, and anyone thinking about partnering with them has to be wondering about the odds of getting much return on their investment relative to the risk of Google changing direction again.

Google is good at infrastructure but they're not uniquely so and all of their competitors are better at building platforms. They have competitors from both of the dominant console vendors, dominant cloud service, and nVidia. Whatever technological edge they believe they have is going to be a tough sell, especially since both AWS and Microsoft can match or exceed their cloud infrastructure and all three services are available to any publisher who wants to roll their own.

This understates the impact of the move. Everyone already was aware that Google was better at running cloud infrastructure than at making AAA games when they started their internal studios. This looks considerably worse than having never tried to make games in internal studios.

Something like Stadia requires customers to believe that it won't go away. Google, given their long history of mediocre commitment to projects, already had considerable skepticism for Stadia from Day 1. Shuttering their internal studios is just one more signal to skeptical customers that Google really doesn't know what they are doing and doesn't care.

Totally agree this is what is happening and Google may be dense enough to believe this is a winning strategy (or a way to salvage their investment). But this is not how you create a competing gaming console, or gaming platform, or whatever Stadia is. Worse, this is a pivot, which also signals Google is ready write-off the entire exercise. That doesn't give consumer and publishers a lot confidence in viability of Stadia.

So as a third-party developer, apart from getting big subsidies, why should I publish on Stadia? Especially after Google has signaled they have no faith in their platform.

Same as for any other platform: because it's one place more you can sell your games.

But that's not what happens. That's why publishers are not porting games to Linux. That's why many console games aren't released on PC. That's why most publishers didn't bother with Stadia to begin with.

There are real costs to supporting yet another platform and if you don't believe the platform will generate sales for you, you're not going to expand the effort.

But in the context of this discussion, I'm fairly sure "Google has a game studio and is making games for Stadia" was never an important part in the decision of game makers to port to Stadia or not, because zero customers got Stadia because of some hypothetical Google games that might come out for it at some point in the future. (Certainly wasn't for any of the Stadia users I know)

>I'm fairly sure "Google has a game studio and is making games for Stadia" was never an important part in the decision of game makers to port to Stadia or not

... and most publishers didn't even bother with Stadia, so what does that tell you about how publishers view Stadia?

>because zero customers got Stadia because of some hypothetical Google games that might come out for it at some point in the future.

And how many customers does Stadia actually have? It seems like Stadia was ignored by customers as well.

Third-party publishers don't care about sales of First-party games. They care about sales of their titles. This means they care about the viability of the platform. So First-party games are ultimately there to drive platform adoption. They do so, by 1) demonstrating the strengths of the platform to consumers and publishers (think WiiSport showing off how Wii controllers can be used), and 2) Providing a reason for consumers to actually adopt the platform. The audience for Stadia are gamers who probably have a console or are into PC gaming. If you're only offering a (tiny) library of games that are already out on other platforms, there isn't really an incentive to get Stadia and play the games you already own or can get ... but this time from the cloud! On the other hand, if I like Mario or Zelda, I have to get the Switch.

And by the way, for all the talk about all those partnerships Stadia will form - how is it that Microsoft was able to secure rights to hundreds of titles for their subscription-based Netflix-type gaming service (GamePass), and Stadia couldn't even muster more than a handful of games you have to buy individually? And speaking of Netflix, it's not surprise they have pivoted to creating original content to supplement their licensed library - care to guess why?

Stadia is a full fail.

> The audience for Stadia are gamers who probably have a console or are into PC gaming.

FWIW, most people I know using Stadia are not the core gamers, but people who do not want to invest in a gaming PC or console (or worse, a gaming PC/console for each of the kids!). And they seem really happy with it, specifically because its a streaming thing, so I'm not as negative about it. (For myself, yeah, Gamepass would win if I'd get any of these things)

Let's take a step back. Stadia, as a product and service, has been out for over a year. It has tepid publisher support, and tepid consumer support, without any inkling that it's growing and now we have an announcement that Google isn't going to bother releasing games for the platform (even though they went to the effort of buying and setting up full fledged gaming studios to do just that - which isn't cheap).

So I'm not sure what we're arguing about here. That publishers are clueless and don't realize that Stadia is a goldmine waiting to be tapped? That consumer don't know what they are missing by not buying into the platform? The platform is clearly failing.

> It has tepid publisher support, and tepid consumer support, without any inkling that it's growing

Recently Ubisoft came on board and all of their recent titles are available on Stadia. Cyberpunk 2077 was reportedly great to play on Stadia, and i've read about a lot of people that got Stadia for it ( there was a promo, pre-order Cyberpunk and get a free Stadia controller and Chromecast Ultra). Those are not pretty significant growth points.

I guess I was wrong. Stadia is clearly a success.

How did they signal they have no faith in the platform? This move was to consolidate to just focusing on developing the platform.

So they are going to compete with Valve?

Good luck with that.