I’m sure that most people with even the slightest interested in technology have at least heard of Google’s ambitious cloud gaming project, Stadia. And as most of them know, Stadia really didn’t do anything it was supposed to at launch, and as such it is widely regarded as yet another bad attempt at breaking the video gaming market with cloud gaming. Let’s be honest, most of us were expecting this to happen; while Stadia was offering some promising improvements and advantages over standard consoles and computers, the lack of explanations of public concerns over the viability of Stadia led to most almost wanting Stadia to fail. But why is this? Why did people (rightfully) doubt Stadia’s capability to become a competitor in the console scene? Why did they want it to fail?
Imagine a perfect world, where Stadia functioned just as intended and succeded as a console. Suddenly, the cheaper and convenient option becomes a lot more attractive to new gamers, and companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have to begin focusing on cloud gaming as the new main form of video gaming entertainment. This radical shift in how videogames are enjoyed might cause problems in the form of the long development of consoles and the need to speed them up to compete with Stadia, which could end up in several rushed consoles that fail to compete with it, allowing Google to take control of yet another industry.
It’s also important to address the issues consumers will inevitably have with cloud gaming as a mainstream. For one, it is strictly online only, so those less fortunate that can’t afford a fast enough internet service to stream the games simply cannot play modern video games anymore. As such, they will have to rely on playing outdated games on outdated consoles instead of playing what they want whenever they want on their home consoles. This also eliminates the ability for consoles to be novelty pieces. Similar to how many enthusiasts today seek older consoles like the Nintendo 64 or Gamecube, in the future Stadia will likely not be supported anymore, and the worth of having them in your collection long after its prime is next to zero.
Another issue which is funnily enough one of the reasons Stadia failed is latency. Stadia works by streaming the game and taking your inputs but basically playing the game on a seperate computer. All of this takes time, and such creates a much noticeable input delay. This is especially terrible for fighting games, where frame perfect moves become absolutely impossible to execute. First person shooters also are affected, since the delay can put off aim significantly. Infact, basically any game, whether be fighting, shooter, or even just a platformer are all affected extremely by the introduction of input latency. A world where this is isn’t eliminated sufficiently is one that will see the overall degradation of the experience of playing games.
Simply put, the failure of Stadia was to be expected and the fact that it’s ambition never amounted to anything is just a sigh of relief to the industry. Had Stadia gone out differently, the world of video games could become something much different and something much worse.
The Daily Technocrat 