Stadia reportedly "deprioritised" as Google focuses on selling streaming tech to third-parties

eurogamer.net:

Google has reportedly «deprioritised» its consumer-facing game streaming platform Stadia and now has a «reduced interest» in negotiating blockbuster titles for the service, having largely shifted its focus to selling the services' underlying technology to third-parties.

Stadia's misfortunes are well-documented; despite initial praise for the service's streaming capabilities at launch in 2019, a slow, problematic roll-out meant Google failed to capitalise on initial consumer interest. The extent of Stadia's failings started to became clear when the company announced it was closing its first-party game development studios less that 14 months after launch, with subsequent reports claiming the streaming platform was missing its targets for monthly active users by hundreds of thousands.

A new report by Business Insider has shed a little more light on Google's early struggles with Stadia, citing sources claiming user retention was a «real problem», while Google found it difficult to lure big-name developers to the platform — both due to it offering rates «so low that it wasn't even part of the conversation» and as a result of increasing industry consolidation, with Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda said to have «scared the crap out of Google executives».

Although Google continued to insist Stadia was «alive and well» as 2021 continued — and launched a variety of initiatives to bolster support for the service, including time-limited demos and revenue schemes for developers — a new report by Business Insider claims the company has now «deprioritised» the service internally and has diminishing interest in securing blockbuster third-party titles to boost its library. Less than 20% of the Stadia team is now said to be working on