I try to embrace the future, I really do. Growing up on the edge of the 'interconnected age', on the cusp of the technological boom years, it behooves me to do such. Around me I see countless examples of those who fail to get in line with the future, who are forced watch as it leaves them behind. All those naysayers who preach the doom of society at the hands of tech have started to ring with me less and less as the years go by. Heck, after all of my research into 'transhumanism' I've even stopped buying, the most common of critiques, that 'phone-culture' is stunting human growth. I think that it subverts that growth into something more akin to a symbiotic relationship, put I suppose that falls down to a matter of opinion.
The reason I bring all this up is because my attempts to come in line with the flow of technology has came in conflict with the abject disgust that I've felt towards Google Stadia since it was first announced and I still can't put my finger on why. A sensible person might share my views because they dislike the idea of Google finding another outlet through which to mine personal data, by hosting your favourite hobbies and tracking your time with them. But I've already concluded that Google own my entire soul, therefore Stadia doesn't seriously concern me from that approach. (Even if it should.) Perhaps this is just the beginning of my age starting to show, before long I'll start falling out of the loop of things and griding my teeth whenever I see change. I'll morph into a middle age man pounding on the table shouting. "Why would they change math? Math is math!" Luckily, It seems that I'm not quite there yet as, if Google has their way with their own service, Stadia will not be 'the future' for very long.
Things have been rough for Google's fledgling cloud service system as of late. They received a decent amount of thrashing for the spreadsheet's worth of missing features at launch, several journalists called them out for inconsistent unplayable slowdown issues and recently it has come out that several Stadia titles don't even output at 4k 60fps, (Which is literally the key selling point of streaming your games through Google's hardware) instead they either settle with 1080 or go 1440 and make up the difference through upscaling. (An inherently flawed process for simulating 4K.) These growing pains were seen by a lot more folk then you'd commonly expect from such a niche product as, according to a 'behind the counter' way of viewing sales figures in light of Google's unwillingness to share data, Stadia's founder edition was picked up by over 100,000 individuals. (I'll be honest, that's a lot more than I was expecting.)
Management, it seems, are determined to ensure that this doesn't spoil Stadia's image and therefore are powering ahead with all of their plans for the platform regardless of the setbacks. This is what led them to airing that eye-bleedingly bad advert for the system which highlighted all the systems selling points, most of which are still not functional yet, most hilarious of all being "Stadia has the games your looking for." Which is true providing that you are only looking for 20-odd old games for which your willing to pay full price. Speaking of pricing, that has been a huge point of contention for Stadia over the past few week, (And, honestly, ever since this idea was first announced.) with customers and the the team both harbouring very different and conflicting ideas on how valuable the Stadia infrastructure actually is.
The very concept of cloud gaming, owning no physical media and streaming all of your data from a host, seems to echo the model of Netflix, and so that is what people inherently expect with a service like this. The ability to pay a monthly subscription in order to get access to a selection of video games to play, perhaps on so sort of bi-monthly rotation, with no worries about system requirements, appealed greatly to this 'subcription age' we find ourselves in. Stadia Chief Phil Harrison, however, didn't opt to go that direction and instead had Stadia charge full price for their games. In an interview with the UK games press, Harrison expressed "I don't know why it would be cheaper, The value you get from the game on Stadia means you can play it on any screen in your life - TV, PC, laptop, tablet, phone. In theory, the Stadia version of a game is going to be at the highest-possible quality of innovation and sophistication on the game engine side."
The one thing that Harrison's comments fail to take into account is, well, everything. Stadia games must all be streamed directly from the servers in order to be played, requiring a stable Internet connection in order to remain firm, such actions do strain bandwidth heavily (Internet providers still haven't stepped in to save the day) and, if you're unlucky, the latency could end up making the experience unplayable. At least with home consoles and PCs our games can be played offline if we really need to. Instead Stadia takes the power of ownership, choice and management away from the player and attempts to argue that is it worth just as much to the player.
I understand this approach, I even sympathize with it, but I can't help but see it as ultimately wrong. In their eyes, Stadia is the birth of a whole new medium of gaming and Google know for a fact that every single choice they make in regards to implementation sets the benchmark for how the tech is seen going forward. There are no full blown direct competitors to Stadia currently (Project X-cloud notwithstanding) and so people have no model to compare with and predetermine the concept's worth, so it is in the hands of Google to establish that worth. If Google were to go ahead and start selling games for a fraction of their price on other platforms then the public would instinctively brand Stadia as a budget alternative to consoles, as would publishers, disincentivising those companies from working exclusively with Google in the future. (Which is undoubtedly what the team is angling for.) So Stadia is making a big play by pricing it's content the same as other consoles, essentially announcing themselves as 'standing shoulder-to-shoudler' with consoles, even if that might hurt the initial adoption rate.
When Stadia launched it offered a certain list of helpful discounts on offer exclusively to 'pro' subscribers that ranged all the way up to 50% off for older titles.That policy does not seem to apply for new releases, however, as 'Darksiders: Genesis' is currently retailing for $39.99 on Stadia's storefront whilst on Steam, GOG and Humble you'll find it for $29.99. This means that somehow, in some world, Stadia has fooled themselves into believing that their platform is more valuable than what current consoles have to offer. THQ themselves have refused to comment on this pricing situation, passing the ball directly into Google's court, and people aren't giving those poor guys a break. If this is the sort of precedent that Stadia wants to set then they'll have to start working on conjuring up those missing features sooner rather than later before they're laughed off the marketplace. (Even more than they already are being.)
There was a time when I feared Google Stadia. Feared what it might mean for the world of gaming and digital ownership rules and modding and all those things that Google try to sweep under the rug and hope us gamers forget about. But it seems that my worries were unfounded as Google are content on murdering Stadia themselves before it has any possible chance of taking off in any significant way. Can Stadia potentially turn all this around and become the powerhouse that they always intended to be? Sure. But it would take considerable sacrifice on their part as the company would have to be prepared to operate at an initial loss. (something that I feel a brand a big as Google could easily get away with.) But until the team wake up and start making the changes that need to be made, they'll continue tripping up on their own aspiration and desperate bids to appear 'valubale'. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this Christmas marks the first and last holiday season that Stadia sees.
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