Google Reportedly Paid Tens of Millions of Dollars for Stadia Ports - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 March 2021 / 1,219 Views
Google attempted to get into the video game market with its streaming service, Stadia, however, it recently closed its first-party studios after the service didn't become as popular as Google was hoping.
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier recently discussed some of the reasons why the service failed. He provided three key reasons. One was missing the sales targets by hundreds of thousands, and another was trying to take on consoles right from the smart instead of starting out small and building its way up.
The third reason is reportedly how much Google spent to get ports of some of the bigger AAA titles on Google Stadia. He said Google spent tens of millions of dollars per port.
"Pay $20 million to Ubisoft to port Assassin's Creed and The Division, or pay $1 million to 20 small developers to each build something cool, betting that at least one of them will be a hit like Stardew Valley or Valheim," said Schreier.
NEW from me on the failure of Google Stadia:
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 26, 2021
- Missed initial sales targets by hundreds of thousands
- Tried to take on consoles rather than starting small
- To bring in games like Red Dead, Google spent astronomical sums (tens of millions *each*)
Story: https://t.co/po1Epj6NMj
Pay $20 million to Ubisoft to port Assassin's Creed and The Division
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 26, 2021
or
Pay $1 million to 20 small developers to each build something cool, betting that at least one of them will be a hit like Stardew Valley or Valheim
¯_(ツ)_/¯
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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What they should have done is bought 2 or 3 established large developers with a range of well known IP , like for example Zenimax , port all those current games to Stadia , but on a regular basis so that content is not dropped in clumps plus continue to make all new games multi platform while their platform matures, so they have an income stream outside of Stadia itself to put toward inhouse development and other uses, but I'm glad they didn't.
20 million each for Assassins Creed and The Division or 20 million for both?
I think 20 for both. It still doesn't make any sense. Ubisoft took google for a ride. It could not have cost even close to that amount of money to port a pc game to stadia.
Good. Let them bleed out. This way they will never return to the industry and won't syphon away any potential talent. I absolutely LOVE how the gaming industry can break the backs of some of the biggest industry leaders. Get in and do something new or GTFO!
Their studios must not have had anything good going on. If they did, they'd have been sold rather than shuttered.
"pay $1 million to 20 small developers to each build something cool, betting that at least one of them will be a hit"
Best business strategy ever.
Their losses must be gigantic. Hundreds of millions for 3rd party ports, huge sums for buying studios and funding/developing exclusives that never saw the light of day and probably a billion or more in R&D (OS, controller and server infrastructure).
