This is just a little bit of real talk about my feeling about the latest update from the Stadia team. So in my last article I commented how Google have been slipping with how they have been communicating with the community. They went from weekly updates to updates eventually. But then decided to drop some “great news”. What’s the great news?
The great news they dropped was that they will be “gifting” the community with more buddy passes. Yay…..(sarcasm) .
So this is why I am not excited about the latest news. And I think a commenter put it best by stating why he would not recommend the service to anyone because of the lack of reliability.
Now though I may not have had a lot of gameplay issues, I do see that the service is still lacking in what it needs to go truly primetime, which is why Google is holding back on making this thing ready for the masses. But instead of addressing real concerns and issues the community has, Google “gifts” us with more buddy passes.
Look Google, I am not your ad service or your tool to be used to spread the word of “your great and awesome gaming service”. Just throwing me a few buddy passes is not in itself a gift unless it is something people want to try. But right now Stadia still lacks the games, still lacks Crowd Play, and still lacks features that will get anyone really excited. Though I felt Stadia has performed better than I expected, if I am to be frank, I played hours and hours of games on my Nvidia Shield TV and had no issues. Though I’ll admit the resolution was much better on Stadia, the game selection is lacking what the Shield TV offered in their $9 GeForce Now service, and I have repeatedly criticized the Shield TV for their lack of games.
The Stadia has a lot of potential but right now there are a lot of criticism of the service. Some of the criticism unjustified and made from people just repeating what they read. But other critics are right in criticizing the overall service as still feeling like an experiment that is not well fleshed out. And with Google having the reputation of half stepping and pulling the plug early, people are going to continue to take the wait and see approach until they see signs that Google is truly serious with making Stadia more than a project. All the hoopla and and rah-rah is not going to make up for seeing real progress on the front of titles, promised features, and real life consistent game play performance. And until people are confident there will be people who will continue to sit on the fence. Throwing out buddy passes is not how to solve this issue, but by being open about where Stadia is at with regard to these concerns. And giving regular updates and tangible progress to give subscribers confidence that Google actually has a game plan on the road to success.
