When Google Stadia launched last November, early adopters hoped to be at the forefront of the future of gaming. Stadia promised to be a new kind of platform, one that did not require consumers to spend hundreds of dollars on a physical console in order to access new games but instead allowed players to stream games wherever they chose. Unfortunately, the service's rollout was notoriously messy with problems ranging from missing access codes to complaints regarding the internet speed requirements resulting in online negativity and mixed critical reception.
While remaining quiet on Stadia's issues and missing features, Google has made some additions and announcements regarding their gaming endeavors including acquiring a developer to make exclusive first party games, adding Google Assistance functionality, and announcing plans to release 120 games for Stadia by the end of the year with at least ten exclusives among them. This has not been enough for many of the service's earliest proponents, some of whom have already abandoned Stadia.
Google has not released its own numbers in regards to its playerbase, but the metrics we do have indicate that Stadia may have lost about half of its players in the past two months. According to Paul Tassi of Forbes, player populations for Destiny 2 have plummeted from 19,400 the week after Stadia's launch to 8,020 this month. While it's certainly impossible to fully judge a platform based on numbers from a single game, Tassi points out that Destiny 2 was both offered free with a Pro subscription and allows players to use save data from other platforms. This makes its player numbers the best metric we have to determine how Stadia is currently faring.
A player decrease of nearly 60% combined with reports that Stadia's mobile app growth has slowed significantly since launch suggests that the platform has not only been unable to grow but has also lost a sizable portion of its existing base. Considering that the three-month trials of Stadia Pro offered with Founders and Premiere Editions purchased at launch are not even over yet and Google has yet to launch the free basic tier promised last year, those numbers could plummet even further once users are asked to spend additional money on what many see as an incomplete service.
Stadia's greatest issue currently is its lack of content. The games list on Google Stadia's website boasts over 40 games with some big titles among them like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Mortal Komat 11. Major upcoming games such as DOOM Eternal and Cyberpunk 2077 have already been announced for day-and-date releases with the other consoles. Still, for a service whose technical demands and library seems to target hardcore gamers, Stadia has very little to offer anyone who already has a way to play these games. Currently, Stadia has only two exclusive games, Coatsink: Get Packed and Gylt, both of which released at launch. Despite Google's announcement that more games and exclusives are on their way, no specifics have been revealed.
Combining a lack of content and promised features with Google's lack of transparency since launch results in many unsatisfied users. A post on r/Stadia from user Gizoogle laying out their concerns regarding the service is full of responses from other early adopters who feel that they were duped into spending $130 on an incomplete service and have very little faith that the situation will improve any time soon.
By its very nature, Stadia's model of game streaming was always going to be difficult to successfully pull off. Many people, especially those living in rural areas, simply do not have internet speeds that can handle Stadia's demands. Even with that in mind, Google's missteps both during Stadia's launch and in the months since have damaged the service's reputation in a way that will be hard to recover from.
Our current internet infrastructure may mean that game streaming as the norm is far off, but that does not mean that setting up these kinds of services now is impossible to pull off. Take xCloud, Microsoft's upcoming cloud gaming service, for example. xCloud is still in an invite-only beta, but early reviews have been largely positive. The service already has 50 games available, easily exceeding Stadia's current library. For Stadia users, it is a cruel irony that an incomplete service currently being offered as a free beta (though for a limited number of participants) has more to offer than an officially released paid one.
Stadia's issues have not permanently, or even temporarily, doomed game streaming as a concept. xCloud and other announced services, such as Electronic Arts' Project Atlas, indicate that streaming will be a factor in the industry going forward whether Stadia has a future within it or not.