With smaller devices like laptops and netbooks (along with smartphones) becoming increasingly popular, Stadia caters to people who don't want to invest in a second device just for gaming. I know several people who only own a laptop and are interested in this service; I'm sure the market is there.
The main challenge, though, is that they are late to the competition -- NVIDIA GeForce NOW seems much more mature (the aforementioned people are already using their beta) and it's not clear what Stadia brings to the table that NVIDIA can't do better (since they make the consumer GPUs).
Also, I think Google messed up by focusing on the Stadia controller and other physical devices; that's exactly what people don't want, to purchase more devices. And I read through their FAQ and don't even understand whether you need the controller to use Stadia. If it's actually required, that's ridiculous.
The biggest advantage that GeForce NOW has is that it just runs regular PC executables. Games for Stadia need to be compiled specifically for Stadia, and I have no idea why developers would spend the time and money building yet another version of their games, unless Stadia turns out to be incredibly popular or Google throws a lot of money at them.
Wow, I didn't know that. I thought it'd be like GeForce NOW, and somehow let you play your Steam games from your computer in Chrome. Starting to agree with the author, I no longer get what the point of Stadia is.
> it's not clear what Stadia brings to the table that NVIDIA can't do better
The price
Sure Nvidia GeForce Now is free right now, but that's because they test the market. They can't afford this forever. There's many service that tried this in the past with Nvidia Grid, for a pretty high price, and they all went away (OnLive, LiquidSky).
Stadia and GFN strike me as two very different products.
GFN works and it's a straightforward product: you play for access on powerful gaming rigs and you can run your games.
Stadia seems more like a platform play where they have their own game dev framework, they plan to integrate with youtube and will probably have exclusives in the future.
The main challenge, though, is that they are late to the competition -- NVIDIA GeForce NOW seems much more mature (the aforementioned people are already using their beta) and it's not clear what Stadia brings to the table that NVIDIA can't do better (since they make the consumer GPUs).
Also, I think Google messed up by focusing on the Stadia controller and other physical devices; that's exactly what people don't want, to purchase more devices. And I read through their FAQ and don't even understand whether you need the controller to use Stadia. If it's actually required, that's ridiculous.