The E3 extended weekend is over, and it was a (mostly) great time filled with exciting game reveals, updates on highly-anticipated titles, a little bit of NFT nonsense, and a whole lot of delicious indies. We saw just about everything this weekend, from Intellivision’s new retro consoles to diversity panels to Kevin Hart ruthlessly leaving Randy P hanging, but the one thing we didn’t hear one peep about during E3 2021 was Google Stadia. The streaming service didn’t have a showcase, not a single Stadia exclusive was announced, and hardly any of the games revealed during the weekend are even coming to Stadia at all. It’s yet another huge miss for the fledgling streaming service, which could have benefitted from the publicity of E3 more than anyone else.
Before you think I’m just another hater rooting for Stadia to fail, I’m actually a huge fan. I’ve praised Stadia just as often as I’ve criticized it because I believe in what the service offers and I sincerely hope to see it succeed. Unfortunately, skipping E3 entirely is not the move I hoped to see Stadia pull. If you watched the entire four-day E3 presentation, you would have seen the Stadia logo no more than ten times. In fact, while Xbox was busy announcing dozens of exclusives for its streaming service, Stadia essentially lost two of its own.
Two of the games featured at E3, Orcs Must Die 3 and Get Packed, were once timed Stadia exclusives, but now they’re coming to other platforms where they’ll undoubtedly find a bigger audience. There were no new Stadia exclusives announced. E3 2021 was basically a net loss for Stadia.
The one place you did see Stadia during E3 was at the Ubisoft conference. Stadia and Ubisoft have a great relationship, and Uplay+ was recently brought to Stadia as an optional add-on. Subscribers have the ability stream a handful of Ubisoft games through Stadia at no extra charge, and while specifics for upcoming Ubi games haven’t been detailed, there’s little doubt that we’ll see more games added to Uplay+ and Stadia.
Specifically, Rainbow Six Extraction, Just Play 2022, Riders Republic, Far Cry 6, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora were all confirmed for Stadia release when they come out. The Switch exclusive Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope is not coming to Stadia, and neither is Rocksmith+, but that’s still a decent collection of major titles that will be available on Stadia within the next year.
But that short list of Ubisoft titles is just a drop in the bucket of titles announced at E3 2021. Major titles like Starfield, Redfall, Guardians of the Galaxy, Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite, Elden Ring, Battlefield 2042, Stalker 2, Flight Simulator, Jurassic World Evolution 2, Evil Dead, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt, The Outer Worlds 2, and Death Stranding: Director’s Cut are just some of the games that won’t be playable on Google Stadia. That’s not to mention the hundreds of indie games showcased during E3 that will find their way to Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch, but not Stadia.
Stadia wasn’t the only game company to bow out of E3 this year. Sony started transitioning to a Nintendo Direct-style State of Play format in 2019 and opted out of E3 once again. Similarly, EA will be doing its own EA Play Live at the end of July. But Stadia doesn’t have the luxury of skipping the biggest video game showcase of the year like those publishers. I saw over 100,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch Monday night watching Mythical Games explain some kind of blockchain NFT nonsense. Stadia could have and should have had that audience. I have no idea how Stadia should be running its business, but I know this isn’t it.