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Take-Two was one of the first major publishers to support Google's Stadia streaming service, bringing titles like NBA 2K20, Borderlands 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 to the platform. Now roughly a year on from Stadia's initial unveiling, Take-Two CEO, Stauss Zelnick, believes Google over-promised.
As reported by Gamespot, Zelnick had a few things to say about Stadia during the Bernstein Annual Strategic Decisions Conference. The CEO acknowledges that while streaming technology is upon us, Stadia has been slow to roll out and deliver.
“The launch of Stadia has been slow. I think there was some overpromising on what the technology could deliver and some consumer disappointment as a result.”
One of the big selling points about streaming for games publishers is the idea that the market will ‘broaden', meaning more people will be willing to buy games despite not owning a dedicated system for them:
“Anytime you broaden distribution you potentially broaden your audience, which is why we supported the release of Stadia with three titles initially and will continue to support high-quality streaming services as long as the business model makes sense. Over time I believe streaming will work… The belief that streaming was going to be transformative was based on a view that there were loads of people who really had an interest in interactive entertainment, really wanted to pay for it, but just didn't want to have a console. I'm not sure that turned out to be the case.”
At the moment, Stadia is continuing to expand and will add another 100+ games to its library this year. A version of the Stadia APK for Android may soon enable streaming on devices that Google is not officially supporting yet.
KitGuru Says: Streaming needs time to prove itself to the wider gaming market. Eventually, smartphone owners may be willing to buy full-priced, high-end titles, but that is going to take quite some time, longer than Google apparently anticipated, judging by Zelnick's comments.
