Do you think Google Stadia is doomed to fail?

[Alby_da_Wolf]

RolStoppable said:

thismeintiel said:

Well, I'll keep this post in mind if that pricing structure changes.

Where's the maths?

And no, I don't agree. There are certain circumstances where companies will stay in a business, but Stadia isn't one of those circumstances. Google doesn't feel threatened by consoles or gaming, like MS did. This is just another way they think they can get a profit by piggybacking off of YouTube. If it fails to bring in that profit, they have no reason to continue. And no data collection is a poor reason, since the vast majority of users will already be using YouTube and Google, anyway. What little extra data they collect will not be worth selling.

Also, you are obviously wrong about them being fine with losing money on YouTube. They have been taking steps to actually start turning some profit, or at least break even. They added unskippable ads a few years ago. They made it harder to become a paid creator. And now they are adding two ads in front of vids. Again, they obviously aren't fine with YouTube continuing to lose money.

Nintendo's online infrastructure costs them $7.8m per year. They sell more than 100m units of software per year. For the sake of argument, I'll pretend that Nintendo only makes $1 per game, so that's more than $100m per year. Google will get more than enough money from game sales to cover their server costs, so they can keep offering a free streaming option without any problems.

You are going in a weird direction with your Youtube argument. It was about companies keeping to invest in ventures that lose money because they had a greater goal in mind that would justify periods of losses. Of course the greater goal is never to keep losing money. But you have this idea in your mind that Google will pull out of game streaming as soon as it doesn't bring in money which is a bit crazy, because Google is investing in a lot of server farms to get the upper hand against Sony and Microsoft. They won't let a big investment like that go to waste so easily. Just like Google didn't drop Youtube which is the entire point.

But even with all its flaws from the investor point of view, YouTube remained the most popular video sharing platform by a margin so large that it makes sense to keep it and just try to tweak some business parts, while keep on reaping all the indirect benefits, while if Stadia doesn't take off, users still have countless alternatives. As @thismeintiel points out, unless Stadia become really huge even compared to huge platforms like YouTube and Google, it wouldn't bring Google notable indirect benefits, large enough to make losses acceptable. I can see Google keeping it alive even in such scenario only if they'll be reasonably sure to eventually make it profitable or to be able to make it grow enough to become a very big player, large enough to bring indirect benefits and occupy a large market share that otherwise would go to competitors potentially or actually dangerous for Google. If Stadia will remain a money losing dwarf, though, none of the important requisites for Google would subsist, so it could become a more viable option to totally dump it and, if they really want a gaming platform anyway, create a new platform from scratch to replace it.