When Google announced last year that it was shutting down Stadia because the cloud gaming service hadn’t “gained enough traction,” it wasn’t entirely clear exactly how the platform stacked up against competitors like Nvidia’s GeForce Now and Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming. Now, shared statistics by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) show that Stadia had a significantly smaller presence than rival services, with an estimated zero to 5 percent share of the cloud gaming market in 2022 (through 9to5Google).
The CMA said its findings are based on global information provided directly by each company. The charts don’t include actual numbers, and Google has remained mum on how many Stadia subscribers in fact had. However, Well-informed person reports that the service had about 750,000 monthly active users in 2020, short of its goal of 1 million for that year. The CMA’s findings indicate that Stadia held just a 5 to 10 percent share of the cloud gaming market by 2021 after launching in 2019 and was already dominated by Xbox Cloud Gaming, GeForce Now and PlayStation Cloud before to lose ground in 2022.
The CMA study was conducted as part of the regulator’s investigation into Microsoft’s intention to acquire Activision Blizzard. throughout his provisional conclusions report, the CMA claims that the merger could prevent other platforms from offering a competitive game library should Microsoft make exclusive franchises for its Xbox Cloud Gaming service and suggests that Stadia’s lack of content contributed to its demise. “We tentatively believe that content is particularly important to the success of a cloud gaming service,” the report read. “Particularly considering Google’s failure with Stadia, which our evidence suggests was caused, at least in part, by a lack of gaming content, which was related to using a Linux operating system.”
The CMA claims that Microsoft Xbox Cloud Gaming had 60 to 70 percent of the cloud gaming market by 2022, but that has to be taken with a grain of salt. There are a ton of asterisks around that number, which the CMA spends two whole pages addressing. For example, game streaming services from Microsoft and Sony are available as part of larger bundles like Game Pass Ultimate and PlayStation Plus Premium. Users who have access to streaming services through these packages may not use them as they are considered a free add-on, but the CMA counted them towards each company’s market share.
The survey may not accurately reflect actual market share as some companies bundle their cloud gaming services with other products.
The regulator also says it likely overestimated Sony’s market share in 2021 and 2022 by double-counting some people who had used its game streaming and subscribed to PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now. It’s also difficult to accurately compare the numbers, as the data was collected at different times: Xbox Cloud Gaming’s numbers were taken between January and September 2022, while GeForce Now only provides data for January, for example.
However, it’s clear that Microsoft, Sony and Nvidia dominate the market for cloud gaming services, with Google taking home the leftovers.
Amazon Luna also reportedly held between zero and 5 percent of the cloud gaming market as of September 2022 after launching in March 2022. The service has made efforts to entice new users to the platform through free trials, but it is limited in scope as it is still restricted. to US customers. If Stadia’s shutdown is anything to go by, Amazon may have its work cut out to prevent Luna from sharing a similar fate.
