Google Stadia is the info-tech ultra-company's latest endeavour, and it is their take on the game streaming services of old, such as OnLive. Google, however, seems to have a much more serious contender to old-school gaming, and analysts have started discussing what this means for the future of the industry.
Google Stadia diversity loss has been discussed by Thomas Bidaux of ICO Partners, a market intelligence and consultation company, and he is not very keen on what this might mean for games in the long run.
According to Bidaux, the main problem with Google Stadia will not be its pricing model (which most suspect will fall back on some sort of subscription-based economy) but rather the outcome beyond that. More decisively, Bidaux is talking about how this will affect game development and games themselves.
"In the past, this type of model, with a revenue share based on time played, has driven very specific games to be profitable, pushing away game experiences that are not driving long hours of gameplay," he said, adding that while he does believe Stadia will be successful, it might also "drive to a loss of diversity on the game experiences we have currently available."
Similarly, Joost van Dreunen of SuperData has said that Google's interests "do not historically align with those of game makers," adding another layer of suspicion to the whole endeavour. While Dreunen does hold an optimistic view of Stadia's development, he is also careful not to disregard the more careful outlook.
"I suspect that there'll be an abundance of mediocrity as small- and medium-sized game companies flood the new platforms in the hope of capturing market share. The big guys will likely wait and watch how this plays out before they expose their carefully crafted IP to the whims of a new breed of platform holders that has no obvious interest in their success," he said.
