Stadia reportedly deprioritized as Google shifts focus to selling streaming tech

Despite hardcore Stadia fans’ sometimes naive best efforts, a new report indicates that Google is deprioritizing the game streaming service to focus on selling the underlying tech that powers it as a white-label platform.

According to Business Insider, Google was in talks with Bungie to use its white-label streaming technology, ‘Google Stream,’ with Destiny 2. However, Sony’s acquisition of the developer likely killed those talks. The Destiny developer would have owned the “content and control the front-end experience,” with Google Stream being the underlying architecture that powers it.

Google is also reportedly in talks with Capcom regarding utilizing Google Stream technology. Outside of the gaming space, the report mentions that Peloton could take advantage of Google Stream to bring gaming-related content to its fitness equipment.

According to the report, “about 20 percent” of the Stadia team’s efforts are currently focused on the consumer side of the business, with the rest of the division working on Google Stream. Lastly, Business Insider says that Google failed to reach its one million monthly active users goal for Stadia by “about 25 percent,” with retention being a critical issue.

In a statement to Business Insider, Google says that it’s “still focused on bringing great games to Stadia in 2022.” If you’ve been following the news surrounding Stadia for the best few years, this report isn’t the least bit surprising. Google’s lack of interest in making Stadia a real contender in the video game industry became apparent when the tech giant closed its internal studios early last year.

Of all the major streaming video game platforms, I did find that Stadia performed the best on a technical level. That said, Stadia Pro is a tough sell in the face of Microsoft’s excellent all-in-one Game Pass Ultimate platform that also includes Xbox Game Streaming (formerly called xCloud).

Source: Business Insider