1733

Even better, if publishers have game demos for free on Stadia then you’ll get people like me that do the demos to try them out (no download/install/instant demos from YT, sure sign me up) but will buy the actual game on steam or Epic.

1734

As far as I’m concerned, there were three options Stadia had to try and be successful:

  1. Go the Shadow route of essentially being a subscription service that gives you streaming access to your existing PC games collection. Make deals with launchers like Steam and Origin to take part. Maybe even launch a competing “Stadia” launcher/store that is also hooked in.

  2. Go the “super casual” route. Get rid of the paid monthly tier altogether. Line Wal-Mart shelves with Stadia boxes that consist of a simple controller and a barebones, plug-and-play TV dongle for like $70 (preferably less). Offer a cheap monthly Game Pass-a-like that gives owners access to a churning collection of 100+ games, along with an option to buy specific games if you want - but make it clear that your “Game Pass” service is the main option.

  3. Do roughly what they seemed to intend, and go all-in on competing with consoles. Start acquiring a few major studios in at least 2018, and have at least one “AAA” exclusive ready to go for launch. Have the paid and free tiers available off the hop. Commit resources to any partner studios, to make sure their games look and run best on Stadia. Aggressively seek out cross-play support pre-launch, to ensure a large online ecosystem for people to play with. Maybe even make a deal with Valve, to give people access to Steam (or import their existing entitlements as a “one time” thing). Make sure you’ve got a collection of at least 100 games at launch, considering you’re selling previously released games anyway.

All three options have long since ceased to be possible. They basically opted for like a half-assed version of 3). Maybe even quarter-assed.

1735

Google is still giving away Home Minis for free every which way they can

1736

So is Amazon. Hockey puck smart devices might as well just be free at this point, and often are attached to something. They just want everyone on their stuff so they can sell more stuff to them.

1737

They have a ton of home minis lying around, when the nest mini is out replacing it, that’s all.

I have a nest mini mounted in my pooper, it does sound much better.

1738

Why do you have a smart speaker strapped to your anus?

1739

In it… not on it, so it’s… a very muffled sounding speaker.

1740

I suggest making an appointment with your doctor.

1741

You’re not the boss of me!

1742

Server went belly up for a few minutes with a cloudflare error which made me think he’d taken the next step of ramming the web server in there too.

1743

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1744

Yeah, as I said above, but I’m getting a Nest Mini for free, too, for being a Fi customer. I can totally see them giving away stadia starter kits before next holiday season. Or hell, right when the new consoles arrive- if they can get some of the next-gen new titles on it, they have a ‘why spend $500 on a new console’ message primed and ready.

1745

Oh man so delicious. A new version of show rooming for a new decade.

1746

Muddled and mixed messaging is their problem but they’re not going out of their way to correct the misconception (in non-gaming media) that it’s “like Netflix for games” (GameTap remember that?) which leads to user disappointment if they aren’t frantically building up this in the shadows.

1747

This almost certainly takes the same form as their Assassin’s Creed trial in 2018. They’ll pay a publisher to give their game for free to anyone who signs up for the free tier.

1748

Why would Google offer a game on their competitor’s platform for free?

1749

That’s not what I’m talking about though. Google’s original pitch was that game developers could have demos on Stadia that are advertised on youtube. So for instance if you see a streamer playing the MK11 Youtube will surface the Stadia demo to you right there in your web browser, so one click and you can try out MK11 for yourself (in whatever format the demo takes place).

The idea is it provides zero friction to show players your game, which can translate to higher sales of the game. The intention is to generate a sale, not for Google or anyone to give you a full game for free.

This is not just a demo for the game but a theoretical way to bring virality to Stadia and have your content producers do the advertising for you, since Google is hoping you not only buy the game on Stadia but may also subscribe for 4k.

However, when you distribute a demo right now on steam the publisher and developer have zero variable cost of this and Steam has practically zero cost (the bandwidth that’ll be used won’t even be a rounding error).

With Stadia this is not necessarily is the case since it has physical hardware requirements (Google cloud charges between $0.60 to $1.6 per hour just for the GPU in their cloud). That’s combined with the fact that the no-friction abilities might end up increasing bandwidth usage (smaller games may end up using more streaming bandwidth, and people will try out more demos than they otherwise might if they can just one click insta play). While google is massive and these costs will also (potentially) be rounding errors they will not be rounding errors in the Stadia department budget, and that’s a department that has to continue to justify its existence, even with the massive amount of other costs it is incurring.

So who pays for the Stadia demos? Will Google eat the cost and add that into their already significant variable cost to run the Stadia division? If so what happens if a siginificant number of players use them for demos only but buys the game on Steam (I see comments in the Xbox app of people using Game Pass in that way)? If publishers/game devs incur the cost (treating it as advertisement) that requires an increase in marketing budget and will that provide enough sales to justify it?

1750

On top of making Stadia specific versions devs will now have to revisit the lost art of making the demos.

1751

For now, the answer is that Google is paying for everything third-party developers are doing for Stadia. They’re fronting the money for the ports and if this demo thing becomes real any time soon they’d pay for development of that, too.

This is, I’m sure, not their long term plan, but they have no leverage right now, and won’t until they have 1 million+ users. Maybe more like 5 million.

1752

Took quite a long time for Sony to reach their 1M subs milestone. Estimates for Google now are at 50K.