Short time and short goodwill are what Google has with Stadia.
There is a lot of goodwill that normally would be afforded for many companies entering a new area. Google and gaming are not one of those companies and areas. Google just announced at the Gaming Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 a brand new gaming platform for developers and gamers called Stadia. Stadia is a continuation of the Project Stream video gaming streaming concept they implemented earlier in 2018. The concept of Stadia is to allow people to be able to game without needing physical hardware in the form of consoles or gaming PCs. The internet will instead stream the gaming content to you, and with their controller, you can pick up and game anywhere.
Of course, there are great features such as integration with Google Assistant and YouTube, as well as allowing hardware which many people may already own (i.e. Chromecasts and laptops) act as a gaming console. The problem is that Google is facing a massive uphill tied against the goodwill that has burnt over the past half a decade plus. This particular issue can be summarized into concepts: Google’s perform or kill standards and its moderation issue.
One of the biggest problems that have been in the room has to be moderation. It is clear that Google does not have a good handling of moderation at all. Just give a look towards YouTube, which they will be trying to integrate Stadia into. It is known that YouTube’s moderation tools are a joke. They don’t really work, and YouTube themselves can’t even do proper curation in moderation for their platform. This leads towards baffling and embarrassing incidents piling up from one another to the point where the question is how salvageable is the platform and their policies (if at all). Some of the current competition for game platform moderation has also shown a lot of issues which Google would end up dealing with. Google will have to prove that they actually do take moderation seriously. They need to earnestly take a lot of the advice given to them by experts and even industry insiders and thoroughly curate Stadia and especially YouTube as that is going to be a pipeline into Stadia.
Another major issue is just longevity. To be blunt Google has shown very little tolerance towards long-term plans within its last 5-10 years of product offerings:
Google was for phone hardware before abandoning phone hardware, then went back to phone hardware.
Google ambitious acquisition of Nest only for them to let it wither, except for the Dropcam acquisition and accidentally not letting people know about a mic.
Google showed that they were willing to think outside of the box with Inbox only for them to recently just shut down because of reasons.
Google plus, YouTube gaming, Emmy Award-winning VR studio Spotlight Studios, all shutdown.
Google’s multiple messaging apps.
Console and gaming platform development is not a short term plan to which you can ditch. A good example is Microsoft. It took Microsoft nearly a decade and a half for them to get enough goodwill for them to be standing as a giant. This effort took 3 console generations, losing Japan, and multiple mishaps on the way. Microsoft had to do whatever it took in order for them to be confident and to work their butts off to make it work.
Another example is Ouya, the short-lived Kickstarter Android console. Through this whole entire lifetime, they tried to disrupt the market. They made it affordable, had Yves Béhar design the console, and pushed for exclusives. At the end of the day just could not work out well for them. Google could easily find themselves in that same scenario. Google has not really shown if they are willing to even entertain that particular aspect. While it seems that Google is willing to be long-term with aids strategic talent acquisition, a lot rides on time as all those talented people would tell you.
At the end of the day, it is clear that Google wants to beat the competition in streaming, gaming development, and console development. The problem is that it’s going to take a lot for people to trust them and for them to actually produce enough trust to happen. To be blunt, with the specter of Google looking too big, diverse video game platform companies coming out, and even archiving concerns. it is likely to see a lot of pushback.
Google to start gaining goodwill not just from developers but from players and the audience abroad. That will take a certain amount of time in order to do that. Google does not have that time. Google needs to be pushing toward all aspects of goodwill from moderation to a long-term commitment in order to make it happen. Else this is going to be just another footnote in the long history of good toy ideas that the eventually jettisoned out for something different.