Stadia’s Pricing Model Will Ultimately Be Its Downfall

I'm still skeptical about Stadia but even paying 10 USD per month for Stadia Pro makes sense for a lot of people if it means not having to spend hundreds of dollars upfront on a high end gaming rig. Being able to switch between the free and pro account from month to month due to changing life circumstances will probably be valuable to lots of people.

If Stadia REALLY wants to be competitive and attract wary gamers - who already are tired of yet another gaming platform after all the controversy surrounding Epic Games Store - they should:

* Throw serious money at game devs/publishers so they actually lower their prices with 10-15%. It might cost Stadia millions of dollars to subsidize games like this but growing their network of gamers will be one of their main challenges and what better way to attract gamers than with lower prices.

* Work fast to replicate Steam's feature set, especially when it comes to cloud saving/social features. People just don't want to wait years to get features that Steam has been offering for years.

* Avoid exclusives like the plague. Epic is being absolutely trashed for having exclusives and even though I don't think the criticism is always justified, showing that you respect PC gaming culture can win lots of people over.

* Ship the Pro account with hundreds of free games. There are already lots of cheap games that are REALLY good and Stadia should make deals with publishers to buy them for even less money. Again, it will cost them millions but offering superior value to customers at an early stage tends to really pay off and also works as great PR.

* Make sure they support Twitch in some fashion as streamers are incredibly influential and can make or break games. They might even fund the development of Twitch focused games that really involve chat in the gameplay.