> Microsoft, like Google, is creating a cloud streaming service; Microsoft, though, is not only offering a business model that is uniquely enabled by the cloud, but is spending billions of dollars directly and indirectly (through foregone sales) to get that business model off of the ground (when-and-if Game Pass has a huge subscriber base, then signing up 3rd-parties will be easy — the challenge is getting to scale in the first place). This is the work that Google was never willing to do, and why Stadia was doomed to fail.
> This also explains why I worry the eagerness of regulators to act before markets exist in any meaningful way is a bad idea. One of the acquisitions Microsoft has made in pursuit of this subscription strategy is Activision Blizzard, and I do, for the record, think it is important to scrutinize this deal, and perhaps extract guarantees from Microsoft that some of the titles involved (particularly Call of Duty) remain cross-platform (which as I noted, makes economic sense anyways)...
> This framing suggests that Microsoft is going to unfairly win a cloud gaming market that is inevitable, much like Google once won the inevitable Internet search opportunity. The lesson of the Google cemetery, though, is that inevitable opportunities are the exceptions, not the rule; to that end, I would argue that Stadia’s failure is evidence that absent a Microsoft-level investment the cloud gaming market will never come into being in the first place.
https://stratechery.com/2022/google-kills-stadia-why-stadia-...