With the Founder’s Edition (supposedly) selling out, Google Stadia must be a success, right? Not quite. Kotaku’s Jason Schreier is reporting that preorders for the streaming service’s standard bundle have been “below expectations.” There are plenty of reasons for Stadia being a “monumental flop,” such as its lackluster subscription model and bevy of technical issues, such as stuttering and severe latency. Many early adopters can’t even play because Google never sent them their invite codes.
Google Stadia is out today, and it already looks like a monumental flop. (I heard from one person involved that preorders were below expectations.) Question is, will they eventually stop trying to sell games and switch to an all-you-can-eat subscription model? Or just let it die?
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) November 19, 2019
Launch day Stadia reviews praised the tech, but maligned almost everything around it. From the heap of missing features, limited UI to lack of enough original content, many critics simply couldn’t make a compelling case for its existence at this time. Reviews have also since revealed that some of the games aren’t running at 4K, or 60fps in other cases, such as those of Destiny 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2.