Report: Stadia Undershot to the Tune of “Hundreds of Thousands” of Users
Freeman writes:
In the wake of Google shutting down its Stadia Games & Entertainment (SG&E) group, leaks about the underwhelming game-streaming service have started to emerge. A Friday Bloomberg report, citing unnamed Stadia sources, attaches a new number to the failures: "hundreds of thousands" fewer controllers sold and "monthly active users" (MAU) logging in than Google had anticipated.
[...] As part of his Stadia-launch mission, Harrison approved deals costing "tens of millions of dollars" to woo publishers like Take-Two and Ubisoft to launch their games on Stadia, Schreier reports. Exactly how many millions of dollars Stadia spent on these deals is unknown, but Schreier claims that "the amount of money Google was willing to spend came as a shock to veteran game developers," which implies a figure larger than $10 million.
[...] Also on Friday, Wired's Cecilia D'Anastasio published a report citing additional, unnamed sources on the woes of Stadia development. According to that report, Google forbade game developers in the SG&E group from "using certain game development software," which D'Anastasio likened to "roadblocks on the very fundamentals of game-making." Additionally, she reports that Stadia's ambitious goals for internal game studios were hamstrung by serious issues with Google infrastructure:
[...] Stadia continues to operate as a home for third-party games streamed from Google's servers to players' homes. Paid $10/mo Stadia Pro subscriptions include access to a library of over two dozen games, while "free" accounts can either buy Stadia game licenses a la carte or access free-to-play software like Destiny 2.
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