There's a lot of misconceptions about their business model which quite frankly is an echo chamber of those people that want a Netflix for gaming model. Why would you think the games can leave the catalogue?
Because the rights to those games belong to their publishers. The same way films leave Netflix, songs leave Apple music, games leave Gamepass. Games will leave the stadia catalogue. Admittedly Google has committed to allowing existing purchasers to maintain access to them after they go.
We don't say that about other digital games we purchase and if we do we don't put out under a microscope like the community does with Stadia. Of course you have to pay full price - why wouldn't you? Don't you pay for full price digital games that you but on Xbox or Playstation?
For most of us on this forum the games on Stadia are available to purchase on consoles we already own for less money. Additionally growing numbers of us are subscribing to services that allow us to access a larger (and arguably better) catalogue than Stadia has for a nominal monthly fee,
I fully expect MS to be in a better position for gaming as a whole since they are one of the market leaders. But let's not pretend that their service is equal to Stadia's, because it's not on a technical level, yet.
I will never suggest Microsoft's unreleased service is on a par with Stadia because its unreleased. It's why I underlined 'p'otentially' in my last message, MS hasn't stuck the landing yet, they're just in a better position to do it compared to Google so far.
Many of the features are "coming" soon or at a later date, and that what Google is telling us. If these features which are not there yet is what you consider rushed, consider that Xbox just got folders for games. The point is that games are working, party system is there, and it has achievements whole they work on providing other features. Tequila Works president just said that Stadia is readying some really cool features that people will be amazed about. My guess is that these are the features that will be launched around the time that X1X and PS5 release and tie down their respective systems. But that is just speculation. I bring this up because we are all speculating on the future of these two platforms without much information other than empirical evidence and from what what insiders know about both. You know what hasn't been talked about on MS' end? xCloud at 4K. But again, all speculation.
I get it, Stadia works. I'm not trying to downplay what Google have done because they've released something that works and does what it says.
It's just that Google could've figured out a couple of mistakes they've made here. They didn't need to release when they did.
I think Google thought they had to be first to this market before MS and Sony get involved. In reality streaming in the long-term is inevitable, Google should've worked to get this initial release right. Although a lot of outlets called it rushed, the biggest 'rush' in my eyes was the business model.
They should've looked at Gamepass/Netflix and tried to figure out a way to pay publishers whilst giving their audience access to a catalogue for a subscription for a monthly fee. An example being something like having access to credits for games each month (just throwing an idea out, you get the picture). Because inevitably people were irked by the idea that they could spend $50 for something that lives in Google's cloud on a service that may not exist in two years from now, yes this could be hyperbole, but it could be true too.
I imagine Google will eventually introduce a subscription because recurring revenue in technology products is the trend at the moment but it would've been in their interests to build that model from the outset for at least some of their games.