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It’s been one year since Google released Stadia.
Stadia’s start was rocky, with many (including me!
After a year, has Google made good on these promises?
To be blunt: no.
And the competition is growing in a direction that Google doesn’t seem interested in following.
Despite Google’s initially lofty goals, Stadia seems more of a curiosity than a revolution.
In the 12 months since, Stadia has fleshed out a bit.
Those who have the official Stadia controller can now play it wirelessly from the web client.
It’s nowhere near even the least of these, but most of the essentials are there.
And they haven’t.
Not by a long shot.
Let’s take a look at them.
Where Are the Games?
That last point is a crucial one.
At the time of writing, Stadia had about 90 games in its catalog, not counting special editions.
A pretty big chunk of that comes from Ubisoft, Google’s initial partner for Project Stream.
And a lot of them are several years old.
See the common denominator here?
It could be argued thatneither does the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5, at least not yet.
But those platforms have pedigrees stretching back decades.
Players are invested in them, comfortable with them—they even trust them, to a degree.
Stadia has no such backing, aside from the Google name.
That could have come either with a huge, diverse library or with a few must-have exclusives.
Compared to any other gaming platform, Stadia just doesn’t compete.
A Hard Bargain
But a lack of games is just the start of Stadia’s worries.
Competing with the ever-expanding options of consoles isn’t Google’s only problem.
Stadia announced its intention to finish a internet tool-based iOS versionwithin the next few weeks.
Beware the Google Graveyard
I had hoped that Stadia would utilize its unique features to attract developers.
), that simply hasn’t happened.
What you won’t see is Stadia, because Stadia doesn’t work on the new Chromecast yet.
In short, things don’t look too good for Stadia.
