You forgot about PC gaming. Kid growing up with Windows is a huge advantage. I think it cannot be overstated and Mircosoft played this game well.

I know stadia is so poorly managed that it is not even a worthy competitor but the concept is sound and nVidia’s GeForce Now and Microsoft’s x cloud will eventually work well enough on Google Chrome that between that and Proton, Windows’ gaming advantage should become a little diminished over time?

I haven’t used android games on chrome os but things like candy crush should work just fine in chrome os by now?

The problem is the massive gulf between "works well enough" and "pleasant experience". Console users would still balk at the terrible performance of Stadia... let alone PC users that are used to being first class citizens in terms of experience and responsiveness.

Assuming you have a really low latency to a Google datacentre, the Stadia experience is not particularly compelling enough to ditch running the game on bare metal.

All of the above is moot though if you are not within a few ms latency of a Google datacentre though... which for most of the world is absolutely the case.

Interesting thought. Is it really stadias management to blame or are there other limits hard to overcome?

I would say that happened unintentionally, given how hard they tried for years to undermine the PC gaming market in favour of Xbox.

MS put a lot of effort in DirectX, did not loose focus with the rise of mobiles and still is ahead of all other graphics apis.

They still have good APIs, but everyone use D3D because it's has larger market share and not because it's superior. Decade ago many developers still used whole DirectX package: input handling, sound, network. Now it's mostly just D3D. It's was possible for Microsoft to grow DirectX mindshare by adding more components: physics engine, particles and effects, advanced networking or server management pathfindding and AI, VoIP, matchmaking, etc...

Instead they were focusing on Xbox and let their PC ecosystem rot. Now Nvidia, Valve, Epic and other middleware vendors consumed this market. They tried with GFWL, but it was a dumpster fire.

They now try again with Game Pass for PC, but again they just want to push Xbox ecosystem instead of Windows gaming as whole.

I doubt anyone in finance will be moving off excel anytime soon. Yeah it's on Mac, but why pay more for that.