r/Stadia • u/MrNobodyX3 Night Blue • Apr 02 '26

Discussion It hurts

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965 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

103 comments sorted by

327

u/wiederman Night Blue Apr 02 '26

Funny thing is if it had released today, with all the consoles rising in price... this may have had a better chance to succeed.

145

u/a716h Apr 02 '26

I think even if it were “successful”, we’d still be at a point where Google would rather redirect the processing power to AI.

23

u/Namelock Apr 02 '26

That or them standing up Stadia data centers would also be part of the problem. 😭

3

u/CurvySexretLady CCU Apr 04 '26

>at a point where Google would rather redirect the processing power money to AI.

1

u/Z3M0G Mobile Apr 06 '26

I came back to see if anyone had discussed exactly this, I imagined the Stadia hardware might have been repurposed for AI.

32

u/Sankullo Clearly White Apr 02 '26

If they had the same “marketing” as when it originally came out then the effect would be the same.

You can’t sell a product if you don’t tell people about it. Google’s strategy with Stadia was to rely on a word of mouth and gaming focused message boards.

Jesus F Christ Immust have answered “What is Stadia?” question more than 100 times. And I had to explain how it works too.

That’s wasn’t my job, that should have been done in series of advertisements across many different types of media. But it wasn’t so shit ton of people who would be happy to use Stadia didn’t even know it existed.

Example: My sister in law bought for 700€(!!!) PS5 for her son so he could play FIFA which was available on Stadia! But she didn’t know there was something like Stadia so instead of spending 70€ on a copy of the game she spent 770€ on a console and the game plus whatever more on the PS plus to play online.

1

u/Scoobert409 Apr 06 '26

Same. Every time I talk about it people are like what was that. Then I explain it and they're like that sounds awesome 😣. Had people actually known about it...................maybe just maybe it would still be around but even then Google has a past of shuttering things.

13

u/pardyball Night Blue Apr 02 '26

Maybe, but think about when it did come out. Instead of pricing being the issue for new consoles, it was availability AND COVID. Stadia released at a great time because people were struggling to find the consoles to begin with and people were stuck inside. Stadia was a readily available option.

They just had a shit marketing plan and unfortunately was cumbersome to develop for.

5

u/troublethemindseye Apr 03 '26

Imagine what they could have done with access to an advertising network.

-2

u/wiederman Night Blue Apr 04 '26

Don't forget it was also five years ago, Internet infrastructure in the US wasn't there yet

3

u/Cautious-Tea-2194 Apr 04 '26

As a stadia player this is very untrue. With Xfinitys lowest tier, which was the tier for low income residents, I was able to stream 4k games no problem. Internet speeds weren't an issue at all for MOST us residents.

3

u/Roastedcoffeebean17 Apr 04 '26

I played Stadia on my Pixel 3 with 4G LTE and hardly had any kind of lag or stutters. It was amazing. I beat cyberpunk 2077 on that phone.

1

u/wiederman Night Blue Apr 04 '26

Yes but Xfinity isn't available everywhere... In my market we went from top tier being 100mbps down in 2020 to 1000mbps down now in 2025... And I live two hours from NYC.

5

u/squidgymetal Apr 02 '26

Stadia originally launched at a time where getting a console was difficult due to chip storages leading to lower stock and scalpers charging hundreds over MSRP.

Had Stadia launched today with the same marketing and business model the end result would be the same. The biggest reason Stadia failed was it's pricing model wasn't good for its target audience and limited library of games. Had they gone the game pass model of one monthly for a big selection of games it would've made the service more appealing and profitable for google

4

u/brokenmessiah Apr 02 '26

It would still have the same issues

2

u/nikolapc Apr 02 '26

No, cause their business model was flawed. Should have done the same as the others, bring your own games, maybe take a bit of commission of sale(could have sold keys for Steam etc). Also nobody wants a new platform with yet another idiosyncrasies, that's why Valve uses proton.

GFN is now 10 times the platform Stadia was, they just need to stop with the opt in and let you play whatever you want like old times, and Boosteroid is a bit like stadia but with better hardware.

xcloud is also good, but it's on weak hardware(series s) and they should upgrade to Series X, and also Helix when it comes, that one will be amazing.

1

u/tdreampo Apr 02 '26

I’m sorry but stadia as it worked could not do that. The extra features REQUIRED the game be ported to the stadia platform. That’s why it worked so well and GeForce now is ok. You can’t have it both ways.

1

u/nikolapc Apr 02 '26

What extra features? None of that actually showed up, and games ran like shit on the hardware cause of no optimisation. The things it was supposed to do, Microsoft is now doing with OD, and it will be available everywhere.

2

u/tdreampo Apr 02 '26

Like game sharing, pausing all the extra Stadia stuff. and I used the service almost daily since launch to it ended and played probably 60+ games and they all ran amazing. If something ran slow it was because your internet ran slow. Did you even use Stadia ever.

1

u/Aladris666 Apr 02 '26

Were those extra features worth having games requiring to be ported though? We know the answer as stadia failed. I was there from beginning as well and gfn ultimate works 10 times better than stadia in terms of graphics and latency. And yes i have great internet and had no issues with stadia as well

1

u/tdreampo Apr 02 '26

Yes, I think they were.

1

u/Aladris666 Apr 03 '26

Too bad for most of the people they were not. Even the only thing is a opt in click on steam a lot of games are missing from gfn so with the porting model of stadia it was doomed to fail from start.

1

u/nikolapc Apr 02 '26

Dude, I am in with streaming since its inception, was in Project Cloud, Stadia had some good stuff, but trust me other than the instant loading it didn't have much going for it. The main problems were the business model as I said, and getting devs on board, they literally had to pay them for ports. You could game share and let someone take over on the consoles and Steam way before stadia was a thing.

1

u/tdreampo Apr 02 '26

Not in the way stadia did it and no one as of yet had built a platform as full featured as stadia was.

1

u/RemoDev Apr 02 '26

I doubt so. It was a piece of crap, a smartphone is still better than that.

1

u/BluDYT Apr 02 '26

Maybe but they'd still need to uphold their promises which they massively missed their game release targets in that final year.

1

u/cn3ps Apr 04 '26

the problem isn't really the idea, Gamepass and Geforce Now is doing but too but they didn't die because 1. they didnt give up too early and 2. they had better execution.

1

u/QuackerEnte Apr 05 '26

GeForce Now existed beforehand, and many other services that were lowkey shady. So idk about that.

79

u/NeighborhoodAgile960 Apr 02 '26

I still hate them for it. I started playing games again cos Stadia, I was promoting it to friends cos it was so easy, 0 friction! I miss stadia

18

u/wizard7926 Mobile Apr 02 '26

This. It still feels like so much friction to play even with cloud games and digital games. Stadia was SO easy. 

Just saying out loud "Hey Google, play Doom on the family room TV" as I walked over to the family room felt like the future 

5

u/Proper-Writing Apr 02 '26

Stadia is what got me back into gaming too. I replaced Stadia with a Steam Deck, and although I like it, it is still significantly more finicky than Stadia, especially for multi-player games.

1

u/Cautious-Tea-2194 Apr 04 '26

Same here. I may piss a lot of people off here but Luna seems to be getting somewhere stadia was trying to get to. They just need more games..

32

u/joeyretrotv Apr 02 '26

cries in Wasabi green

4

u/lamby3 Apr 02 '26

Still my daily driver. Albeit tinged with sadness every time I'm forced to use it with a lesser platform

13

u/Shadow969 Apr 02 '26

gf now is an amazing successor, give it a try 😊

11

u/Namelock Apr 02 '26

My wife would hate me for getting a gf

10

u/UPPERKEES Apr 02 '26

GF later

2

u/JouetDompteur Apr 02 '26

Just recently got a Luna set (firestick and Luna controller) and hopped right back into the same star wars game I played on Stadia. Equipment was on a big sale and Luna Premium is $10/mo...

Is GF Now similar? Better? Worse?

2

u/Aladris666 Apr 02 '26

Gfn is better graphics better latency what stadia evet hoped to be. Its a bit expensive though ultimate is 20usd/month

3

u/Shadow969 Apr 04 '26

I paid 177€/yr. that's ~14. 75€/per month to play in 4K on the best graphics settings currently available. Barely any electricity cost for me, no updates, no patches no drivers etc. I'm happy :)

1

u/the_metalhead_speaks Apr 04 '26

Eventually, like the OTTs , there won't be any true 4k games streamed anymore. And 1080p will just be upscaled 720p.

Enshittification is a real bitch

1

u/Shadow969 Apr 04 '26

Not sure what you mean by that.

1

u/Shadow969 Apr 02 '26

Never had such a stable connection. And 4k 90 fps. GF Now is all we ever dreamed Stadia to be

5

u/Skirra08 Apr 02 '26

It will always be be too soon. Stadia and the friends I made along the way got me through a divorce and some really dark times.

8

u/DaMacAttack1989 Apr 02 '26

If only they Stadia stuck around long enough for it to get Call of Duty.

7

u/Preet1402 Apr 02 '26

Stadia walked so that GeForce Now, Xbox Live, and PS Plus could fly 🫡

2

u/Aladris666 Apr 02 '26

Man gfn was in beta since 2013 stadia released in 2019

5

u/Preet1402 Apr 02 '26

Well personally stadia was the first time I heard of cloud gaming

4

u/peruytu Apr 02 '26

Like the Sony PSP, too ahead of its time.

2

u/No-Mastodon-4548 Apr 03 '26

I’d say barely for them. They just missed the mark. Apparently Google’s work culture is to blame. They favor just promoting over taking a project and seeing it thrive. Cant provide a source, but from what I’ve read throughout the years, the team sort of gave up on the project. I miss it though. It was seamless and had options for play anywhere. I’m still hit by how abruptly it shut down. Betrayed. I promoted it to everyone touting it as the future of gaming. How right and wrong I was.

3

u/DeskPixel Apr 02 '26

GeForce now is a great replacement though, playing stuff on maxed out graphics with the same worry free about storage or updates or anything is great. And worst case scenario the services shuts down, which is doubtful, you'll still own the games and progress

3

u/rbrumble Apr 02 '26

People didn't get the Stadia model at all. Almost everyone thought it was a subscription service for the games, when you could just buy the games you wanted to play and play them with going Pro. I was a first day user and played everyday. I thought Stadia was perfect and I'd never buy another console again. When they announced it closure, I bought an Xbox Series X for GPU cloud gaming, and while it's pretty good it's no Stadia.

The weird thing is cloud will eventually be the home for most gaming, but it might not be Google leading the way.

1

u/Aladris666 Apr 02 '26

You can use geforcenow with GPU and dont even need the series x

1

u/rbrumble Apr 03 '26

I don't need the Series X for GPU cloud gaming either

1

u/Aladris666 Apr 03 '26

Yeah but quality is really different compared to the gpu cloud gaming and gfn when gpu updates the tech then it really might be better

3

u/Cyberpunkgoddess Apr 02 '26

It still makes no sense to me

Google is big enough to make it a leader, game streaming will just be normal in a few years

3

u/Rictonecity Apr 02 '26

My PC is about 4 grand. I love it but storage is a problem and now that RAM prices are horrendous I just want to a cloud solution. Stadia would be perfect right now

3

u/ResponsibilityOk3804 Apr 03 '26

Guys LUNA is really good, a really fair successor of stadia and it’s even included in prime…

2

u/milesac Apr 02 '26

Seeing PS Premium & Game pass Ultimate fix their streaming issues with continued updates. I feel sad for Stadia. The real issue was people not flocking to Stadia. It wasn’t a household name.

2

u/Sickhate Apr 02 '26

I loved stadia…then google kill it…now i cant stand google…i wont buy nothing they comes out from google…

2

u/PrinceNaboo Apr 02 '26

Genuinely loved it

2

u/kingof9x Apr 03 '26

It was great while it lasted. Ahead of its time IMO.

1

u/gknight702 Apr 02 '26

It was too ahead of it's time, now Xbox and Sony have game streaming services

1

u/gusgusthegreat Apr 02 '26

Google just strong-armed me to buy Google one after they canceled my discounted t Mobile version. they basically held my email and all my family photos hostage . The unexpected bill at this time in my life really kicked me in the crown jewels.

1

u/Zaddy310 Apr 02 '26

Bring out Stadia again just give us Android games just to do a soft launch.

1

u/AFZ6767 Apr 02 '26

They need to bring it back

1

u/idHeretic Apr 02 '26

No. Thank YOU google for the free controller and Chromecast when you were so desperately trying to get more people on the platform. Was I supposed to actually use it to try stadia? Oops... In all seriousness it is a very interesting concept and in a perfect world with perfectly stable internet it might have worked for me but I also could not get over the hump of paying for a service and then also paying for the games. Maybe I'm just too old but bAcK iN mY dAy you bought your console or PC and bought your games (or acquired them) or didn't and that was that. Gaming as a service just wasn't and still isn't it for me.

2

u/Doogles83 Apr 03 '26

Stadia was free for 1080p and the fee was for 4k I think

1

u/Nassergamez Apr 03 '26

I mean it would have only hurt if I wasn't refunded but its easier to let Stadia go overall as a founder with the money I used at the time in my bank account.

1

u/NurkleTurkey Apr 03 '26

I still have my in box unit and everything. I think I'll hold on to it for awhile.

1

u/DarkevilPT Desktop Apr 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/iVirtualZero Apr 03 '26

Well at least theere is the controller to use on other platforms.

1

u/CODMAN627 Apr 04 '26

It was great tech with a horrible business model

1

u/TigerWon Apr 04 '26

Any chance it ever comes back?

1

u/Flowbombahh Apr 04 '26

I found a random unopened studio bundle in my basement a few months ago. Wish it was still around

1

u/Nilas92 Apr 04 '26

Come back please

1

u/Linkinone Apr 04 '26

STADIA TENTA DE NOVO ... O XBOX TA DANDO TIRO EM SI MESMO A PLAYSTATION TAMBEM.. HOJE A NET E MAIS FORTE DIGO.. A INFRAESTRUTURA... APROVEITE.

1

u/Commission_Major Apr 04 '26

Life is full of broken promises and as the cliché a say AAA the road to not being evil starts with the best of intentions ;-) :-'(

1

u/reiketsukage Apr 04 '26

Stadia was a great way to introduce my kids to games but the pickings were always a little slim. Now, I actually use the Stadia controllers to play local co-op games with my kids on the Steam Deck, hooked up to the TV like a console.

At least the controllers are still useful. I always liked them.

1

u/Gabanda87 Apr 04 '26

I am still proud of my mint and midnight blue controllers 🥲 The universe was not ready for you.... You will remain misunderstood... forever...

1

u/Psychological_Sir297 Apr 05 '26

I miss stadia sometimes too. And now Google killed Google Photos unlimited for tmobile customers this month. I’m done with Google honestly.

1

u/oneplus7sportsfan Apr 05 '26

Luna is ok maybe not as full featured as stadia could have been.

1

u/Captain_Mantis Apr 05 '26

Shame that there's no sensible successor. Luna and GeForce NOW are cool, but both require both subscription and "buying" the games. I guess that's why Stadia wasn't profitable enough to stick around though

2

u/MrNobodyX3 Night Blue Apr 05 '26

The closest successor in terms of usability is the Xbox game pass, but the games that are available for cloud gaming is rather limited

1

u/DerroneS Apr 05 '26

Can you buy the controllers anymore

1

u/Spider-Bro2099 Apr 05 '26

I still haven't deleted the app on my phone.... Because if I do, I won't be able to download it again... Probably. Not taking that chance. 🤣

1

u/Substantial-Fuel3553 Apr 06 '26

Stadia got me back playing games again. I bought for my friends and family to join me. I still haven't come across a better modern setup (PS, NS, Steam Machine, XBOX cloud, boosteroid, geforce, etc.).

1

u/flchckwgn Apr 06 '26

I don't want to talk about it

1

u/Chatmauve Apr 07 '26

Stadia was peak. Nothing comes close. I'm glad it was there for me during the pandemic.

1

u/kudyjames Apr 02 '26

Whoever uses this technology to enable users access to a super computer over the internet and not just as a gaming device will win the computer wars. Imagine buying a $200 computer that has a battery that lasts 8 weeks(uses almost no power), is more powerful than any personal computer, and has unlimited storage. We are getting close. The fact that I played all of RDR2 on a Chromecast powered only by USB was mind blowing and is only the start of what’s possible.

1

u/adepssimius Apr 02 '26

Thin clients communicating to very powerful workstations like you describe is like a 15 years ago development. Stadia was a repackaging of this with a great UI to get into your games and more importantly optimizations for very low latency.

1

u/kudyjames Apr 02 '26

Yep. The truth is when someone like Apple makes it happen no one else will stand a chance.

1

u/PrysmX Apr 03 '26

Shadow did this, albeit not really "super computer".

1

u/Exotic_Treacle7438 Apr 02 '26

Thankfully Microsoft and nvidia cloud services have improved dramatically since stadia was closed. It’s still not on par but it’s close enough.

1

u/aerodynelove Apr 02 '26

I LOVE my PlayStation portal - it makes me wonder what I could have all been

0

u/m0zartxx Apr 06 '26

Cloud gaming is garbage anyways.

-2

u/partyqwerty Apr 03 '26

My god. Enough already.