Phil Spencer on Stadia: Google Went Big Today, at E3, We will go Big
Yesterday at the Game Developer Conference, Google pulled back the curtains on their game streaming service, Stadia. The service will be coming later this year and the company is making big promises about 4k, 60FPS, and latency-free gaming.
But Google is not the only player in this segment and while many were hoping that the service would become available this week, that’s not the case. Google says it will ship the service in 2019 but also entering public trials this year is Microsoft’s xCloud.
Following the Google keynote, Phil Spencer sent out an email, that was shared with me by sources close to the company, to the gaming-org at Microsoft where he put the announcements in perspective. He said, “Their announcement is validation of the path we embarked on two years ago.” and that “Today we saw a big tech competitor enter the gaming market, and frame the necessary ingredients for success as Content, Community and Cloud.”
But, when you look at their announcement in detail, Phil stated, “There were no big surprises in their announcement although I was impressed by their leveraging of YouTube, the use of Google Assistant and the new WiFi controller”.
Google played its cards about how it envisions game streaming but Phil lays the foundation for significant announcements at the upcoming E3 conference: “Google went big today and we have a couple of months until E3 when we will go big.”
It’s clear that with Google entering the segment, there will be increased competition for everyone in the gaming space. This is a good thing for consumers but for Microsoft, it means that they must stay vigilant as they too, were once the new player and everyone wrote them off saying they could never compete. With Google showing off how it envisions the future, all eyes will turn to Microsoft at E3 to see how it plans to showcase xCloud.
You can read his email to below:
We just wrapped up watching the Google announcement of Stadia as team here at GDC. Their announcement is validation of the path we embarked on two years ago..
Today we saw a big tech competitor enter the gaming market, and frame the necessary ingredients for success as Content, Community and Cloud. There were no big surprises in their announcement although I was impressed by their leveraging of YouTube, the use of Google Assistant and the new WiFi controller.
But I want get back to us, there has been really good work to get us to the position where we are poised to compete for 2 billion gamers across the planet. Google went big today and we have a couple of months until E3 when we will go big.
We have to stay agile and continue to build with our customer at the center. We have the content, community, cloud team and strategy, and as I’ve been saying for a while, it’s all about execution. This is even more true today.
Energizing times.
Phil