Someone just shoot the thing, it's already dead
There's no real fun kicking a dead horse, I have to admit. Months and months of ridicule does, in fact, grow stale after a while, which is probably the best that CDPR can hope for in the months to come for their image. It's also the reason why I've stopped talking about Stadia quite so often despite the fact it's supposed to be the 'future of gaming', or whatever. So long did we go without hearing anything either so good or so bad that it warranted discussion, so I just sort of let it lie and do it's own thing. Not in hopes that it miraculously became the market-bending upset that it always wanted to be, mind, I've not had any faith in that or them from the start. It's perhaps hardly the most enlightened position, but I've got to say that Stadia did very much try to bullrush the entire gaming industry so they sort of bought this on themselves. And it's not as though I haven't given them the chance, I even tried the service not so long ago, figuring that the year since it's launch might have been enough for them to make the service more available. Nope, everything was unplayable without 5G at the very least. Meaning that even in the best case scenario there was literally no way this could ever have overturned the market in the way these guys were expecting. I almost feel bad that they've ended up the way they have. But first, how about I tell you the way they've ended up?
Something that I failed to cover, because by this point I was sick to death of even hearing their name, was the fact that Stadia opened up a couple of it's own first party studios over the year and a bit. That's right; these guys had eyes on becoming video game publishers as well as console manufacturers. That's when you know that these guys mean business because ever successful console ever had the back-up plan of putting out games if things didn't work out. Sega, Atari, Ninten- oh, actually I guess they still make consoles. (I say, looking to the dust gathering across atop Switch. One day. One day soon) But things, in the manner that tend to do, didn't seem to work out. I'd imagine over the years to come a certain little snooping chap over from Bloomberg will go sticking his head into this meltdown for another takedown article. (Feels like the only worthwhile journalism in this entire industry is takedown articles, doesn't it.)
These studios, in their capacity, were tasked with creating games specifically for the fourteen active people on the Stadia hardware. As much as it seem ridiculous to waste hours of development time and untold millions in the pursuit of creating complicated games that practically no one will ever play, that is along the same lines as what I do here so I can't really fault the dedication. (Grind away like nobody's watching, cause nobody is, eh?) Of course, it was only a matter of time, given that this was a Google endeavour, before everything fell apart and so it did. Somehow, for reasons we'll read about under Jason Scheier's Byline a year from now, all these studios have been shut down in the most transparent evidence yet that Google are absolutely not committed to their future in the video game market, contrary to the incessant insistences on behalf of the Stadia team. (Poor guys; at this point it feels like everyone knows but them that their days are numbered.)
Of course, only now in retrospect can we look back and really ruminate on that which we lost in such a death. What? No- we did lose something, okay? Just because Stadia is a bigger mess than we could have realised, dragging so many others with it down to the pits of Tartarus, doesn't mean they never had some potentially... interesting ideas. Yeah, I'll stick with 'Interesting'. 'Good' seems like a stretch given how it never panned out. So picture this; game studios that have a literal blank slate on what they can achieve. Wouldn't that be unique? Console game developers have to bare in mind the rapidly ageing hardward and restrictions of the machines (Hear that CDPR? you have to actually think about your customers hardware!) PC developers have to be careful to make games that are optimised for as many systems as possible, keeping the general mid-par of computer capability in mind. (Hear that CDPR!?) Whereas as Stadia had no system requirements so it could have gone anywhere.
Even Mircosoft's blankcheck AAAA 'Initiative' program could only ever go so far, but with all the hardware being provided by Google there was literally no limit on what Stadia exclusive games might have achieved. Of course, I don't know how that might of ended up playing out, might have been a disaster, but now that it's not happening we can all play revisionist history in our alternate timelines and think about what might have been. Maybe there'd have been a true Half Life successor, given that Valve seem deadset on not making another mainline until they can revolutionise tech simultaneously. Maybe we'd get a game of Crackdown 3 that lived up to it's promised full-city destruction generation. And maybe we'd be able to squeeze out just enough processing power to finally make a 3D Sonic game with the Archie timeline. (Hey, I know I'm thinking big here but try and stay with me!)
Now that's all dead in the water and Staida's official word on the matter is; 'Ain't no big thing.' "We're still dedicated" is the constant refrain coming out of this studio, such that I expect it to be their engraved epitaph above the mausoleum a year from now. 'We haven't thrown in the towel yet, guys. Please keep with us and spend that money.' Yes, I suppose it makes sense for Google's Stadia to step away from the development studios, because that means that the second their service goes under so do they. Yep, they're prepping for a clean break away from the game industry, no traces of who they could have been whatsoever. I'd go so far as to call that a crying shame; who knows what a AAA Studio from Google would have looked like free from Stadia. Yeah, no matter how I twist or turn this story it's always shaping up like a tragedy.
Of course, Stadia isn't quite dead yet. They still have one major victory under their belts over the holidays as, without question, the Stadia version of Cyberpunk 2077 was probably the only version which mostly satisfied fans. It wasn't a bug-ridden disaster, at least, like the experience everyone else got. That's pretty cool; nailing the biggest release of the year. I'm sure that will be on the highlight reel during the goodbye party held in the Google parking lot once management abruptly decides to lock them out of the building. But the writing is on the wall and things have reached the point where even a few of the diehards on the Reddit are beginning to see it. (Or at least, the one's who didn't stick their head in the sand. That is.) I've already seen a post demanding what's to be done about their purchases when the service inevitably goes under, and I hate to say I told you so but that's literally the things the rest of us were discussing about during the announcement. (To bring the Stadia heads up to speed: it doesn't look good for your 'purchases') Everything the 'doomsayers' prophesied is coming to pass and I'm afraid it's the ever hopefuls who bought into this cursed venture that'll end up paying the blood price.
Call this a cautionary tale. If something barrels out at you with a promise that's too good to be true, either it is or you're not listening hard enough. Stadia tried to go up against the biggest rising entertainment medium in the world without the support of their company behind them, which seems incredulous seeing as how Google absolutely have the capital to make a dent in the market if they cared to. In another timeline, Stadia might have been an absolutely thriving game publisher that built up the respect to try and subvert the market with the crazy new Stadia service; but, just like Hollywood, they tried to bumrush the big leagues and ended up with a concussion and premature retirement injuries. (Do the sports analogies make sense? I think they do...)
No comments:
Post a Comment