Game Pass is a massive success, and PlayStation Now was just revamped to be more like it. How Stadia managed to be so close, yet so completely miss the biggest

Game Pass is a massive success, and PlayStation Now was just revamped to be more like it. How Stadia managed to be so close, yet so completely miss the biggest trend in gaming is frankly quite astonishing. I remember Google was talking up how you'd be able to watch a game stream on YouTube, then with a single click "fork" the game into your own instance and continue playing. Or even just basic things like watching a game trailer and being able to jump into a playable demo. But they didn't realize any of that, instead they went with the most conservative possible approach of selling games for $60, which is a non-starter in a world of constant sales and where Game Pass already exists. It's like if YouTube was a platform where every video was $1 to watch, how successful would that have been? I also think if Google shuts down Stadia instead of pivoting into a Game Pass like service, the reputational damage to GCP alone will be more than whatever the cost of Stadia is.