I bought into the Founder Edition when Stadia first launched. I entered into it with low expectations as my experience with Google has generally been that products launch rough and grow steadily better over time. This was the case with Stadia.
The selection of games never grew to compete - particularly with the latest 'hot' titles - with consoles, but a year in the performance was exceptional, if one has a fast low-latency connection and opted to use the Stadia controller connected directly to WiFi. If you're ultra-competitive for FPS style games, yes, you'd be at a tiny disadvantage, but my skill level isn't so elite that it translated that into a meaningful difference.
The fall of Stadia can be attributed to a few things, in my opinion:
- Lack of marketing. Google never really invested substantially into getting Stadia out there. I get it, as it's really hard to get people to buy into something that is, by its nature, nearly entirely intangible, especially in a world where they can go to nearly any Best Buy, GameStop, etc and trial console gaming. And the nature of Stadia, where there really isn't any (substantial) hardware to sell, essentially keeps them out of those brick-and-mortar locations.
- Nay-sayers. Yep, Stadia largely failed because everyone said it was going to, which kept many who might have been on the fence from making that jump. It was also inevitable that when it did fail, virtually every article would talk about how 'of course it would' even though it lasted years beyond when they initially insisted it would die.
- It should not have been launched as a Google product; rather, Google should have sought a partner established in the gaming industry. It seems likely they will white-label it in one form or another to keep it going; they should've done so at the start.
It's a sad demise, as the product (after a brief period to mature) worked tremendously well. It did operate as a vanguard into cloud gaming, bringing other parties in years before they would otherwise have invested the effort.
Make no bones about it - cloud gaming is the future, and will leave console and PC gaming relegated to a very small minority. One only has to look at what happened with home video to see the writing on the wall - look at Netflix, which started with mail-delivery of DVD movies for rental... Today, while the best video experience one can normally enjoy from home is via a 4k blu-ray, the qualitative difference it holds over properly streamed 4k content is negligible to the point that very, very few people would take it over the convenience and cost-effectiveness of streaming.
As to how Google handled it, I don't see how they could be reasonably asked to have been more considerate of the customers. Those who were strictly using the free service lost nothing. Those who had bought in, and even bought games, are getting a 100% refund of every cent those customers paid to Google for Stadia hardware and games (and it should be noted that Google is taking a direct loss on those game sales, as they are not only refunding their revenue, but the portion they had to pay to the development studios). The only thing we're not getting is a refund of our monthly service fees paid, but those months were fully delivered (and for those who had an active subscription at the announcement of the end, we'll get a few final months at no charge). That said, while we don't know the details of how they are managing the transition or termination of the relationship with the game development studios, it is hard for me to imagine that they aren't getting a pretty raw deal.
Honestly, I was surprised at the scope of the refund. In the end I'm left with having enjoyed a few years of gaming across close to 150 game (of which while most were, to me, hot garbage, many were tremendously entertaining) and a free Chromecast Ultra.
The only thing I do hope Google does now is to unlock the bluetooth on the Stadia controllers to make them remain functional rather than e-waste (and they would appear to have the ability to do that easily, per their original description of the nature of the controller).
Farewell, Stadia... You were the Betamax of cloud gaming.