Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

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>But this one is probably the clearest, obvious failure of execution ... There is an absolutely crystal clear playbook of a Tech company forcing its way into the Gaming business.

I'm not sure this was an 'obvious failure of execution'. They wanted to build a gaming cloud-streaming-only service, and they built one. I don't think you can build a better one because the problems with cloud-streamed gaming are with the concept not execution. The streaming service provided by Xbox is on par with Stadia, in that it suffers from the same latency, and graphical downscaling issues as Stadia did. On the Xbox it is part of my subscription (so technically 'free') and I don't want to use it because the experience is bad (although it is nice to quickly sample a game without needing to wait for download and install).

Oh, there definitely were obvious failures of execution. Not on the core streaming tech side, but on the business and product aspects. The product should have been quite compelling: a way of playing current gen console games with basically no up front hardware investment and no ongoing subscription. That's what the "free" version of Stadia was.

But then they muddied things up with Stadia Pro, making people think it was actually supposed to a "Netflix for games" subscription service, and crucially making Stadia Pro the only SKU for a very long time. So rather than the really appealing entry point to console gaming that people could have easily tried, they ended up targeting the exact people for whom Stadia was the worst fit (hardcore gamers with existing console owners and large game libraries).

Absolutely agree. XBox Cloud gaming took the "Netflix for games" strategy and with inferior quality was able to decently establish itself.

How to fund the development of a risky but long-term valuable new platform? Whomever was calling the shots on that question failed spectacularly and in a way that technology companies usually don't. You're already losing hundreds of millions making the tech, why not spend a few more loss-leading the user growth?

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