Google announced it will shut Stadia, its cloud gaming unit. Even Sony will be using its gaming rival’s cloud service Microsoft Azure for its PlayStation.
Cloud gaming makes sense for Google since Google Cloud has become the third largest cloud provider in the world and that Android has always been hosting a plethora of games.
Cloud gaming is still nascent and the market share is up for grabs. It is surprising that Google has given up early in a race that has just begun (we gave an introduction to cloud gaming here.)
But it has come to a time where the macro environment has called for prudent spending and it might not be a bad idea to cut loss early – Google’s success rate in gaming may be lower. It does not have the game development capability which Tencent, Sony and Microsoft possess, due to the numerous studios they own.
Stadia will join Google’s long list of failures. Here are some of them.
Google+ – A social network to rival Facebook.
Google Pixel Slate – a tablet to rival Apple iPad.
Google Video – ended up buying over competitor YouTube.
Google Lively – a virtual world when metaverse was not in vogue, to rival Second Life.
Google Answers – get expert answers for a fee. Users preferred free and then came Quora.
Google Ride Finder – a ride-hailing service before Uber.
Google Daydream – a VR headset that was too early.
Despite many failures, Google continues to innovate.
Otherwise we wouldn’t have…
Gmail
Google Chrome
Android
Google Drive
Google Cloud
Google Docs / Sheets / Slides / Forms
Google Maps
Google Translate
Google Photos
Failures are part and parcel of innovation.
In fact, one successful product or service would make many failures worthwhile.
Will Google continue to fail? Definitely!
It is ok to innovate and fail. Fail forward they say.
But don’t fail to innovate.
