Not having Windows as a dependency was almost like optimizing for future proofing and longevity, ironically. If Stadia were to last longer, so could the games that were made available on it. The game launcher experience was fully in their control to innovate on.

GeForce Now has Windows and various game stores as hard dependencies, which feels like in theory optimizing for the short term and limits how smooth the user experience can be made. But in practice it works fine, and the reduced overhead for individual games maybe is better at least for medium term too.