Stadia emerged in 2019 as the result of many miraculous and ambitious ideas. Since then, instead of delivering the long-aexisted definitive gaming streaming platform, Google has broken almost every promise made at the time, such as native 4K support, low latency, multi-GPU machines and presence in “over 200 countries.” The situation is not easy for little Stadia.
Google will never admit that Stadia was a mistake, even though it knows that the platform will never be a success. As the service is, there’s no chance of the company competing with Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia’s GeForce Now, or even Sony’s PS Now —and it doesn’t even exist in Brazil yet.
In stadia’s original presentation during the 2019 Game Developers Conference (GDC), Google made sure to highlight the company’s experience with cloud services. For CEO Sundar Pichai, knowing how to handle servers aimed at people and companies would be more than enough to enter the video game market. Today, we see that it’s not like that.
Stadia only outperforms PS Now and Luna in availability
Right away, Pichai promised that Stadia would be available in “more than 200 countries”, thanks to Google’s existing server structure. So far, only 22 countries can use the service —just over 10% of the promised amount.
In comparison, GeForce Now is in 82 countries, Xbox Cloud Gaming can be accessed from 26 countries, and PS Now works in 19 countries —a number that could increase with the launch of Spartacus, the xbox game pass’s competing service. Stadia can only go head-to-head with Amazon’s Luna, which is still in an early access period only in the U.S.
This geographical limitation of Stadia is because the development of the platform is done by Google’s hardware division. Company devices, such as Chromecast and Nest speakers, are only available in the same 20 places. There’s nowhere else to grow, unless there’s a change in the team responsible for Stadia.
