According to Google, Stadia’s failure was caused by a lack of games

According to Dov Zimring, the Director of Product Management at Google, there are several reasons for Stadia’s failure. One of the significant reasons is the lack of AAA games. During the Microsoft vs. FTC case, the executive stated that due to the non-availability of AAA games, a self-sustaining cycle was generated. It stopped users from subscribing to Stadia Pro.

Due to fewer user numbers, Stadia received less attention from developers and publishers, and thus the loop keeps going around. It was eventually bad for game sales. Compared to other cloud gaming services, Stadia was a unique platform on its own since users would buy games for Stadia for a monthly fee instead of accessing them from tons of game titles.

The price of acquiring material to provide to subscribers, as Zimring points out in his email, was a big factor in Google’s decision to shut down Stadia. He added that it was challenging to upload this content to the service.

Google failed to provide AAA games on Stadia

The availability of AAA games on Stadia was a challenge for Google; however, the company didn’t handle it well. It was quite expensive for external developers to port gaming titles. Given the low user number, the plan was not worth it. Furthermore, Google even considered utilizing the Windows platform for running its cloud servers, but the long-term costs made it drop the idea. Zimring referred to this idea with the words “cost prohibitive.” Finally, there were several aspects that contributed to the downfall of Stadia. It is unfortunate given how advanced the technology became in terms of streaming reliability and quality during the service’s final year.