Kine's Gwen Frey doesn't think Google will cancel Stadia

Google Stadia is due for release next week, on November 19 to be precise, and there has been a lot of conversation around the product ever since it was first unveiled. A lot of people are even going as far as to suggest that Google may shelf it if it's not immediately successful, but Kine developer Gwen Frey doesn't think that's on the cards.

"The biggest complaint most developers have with Stadia is the fear is Google is just going to cancel it. Nobody ever says, 'Oh, it's not going to work.' or 'Streaming isn't the future.' Everyone accepts that streaming is pretty much inevitable. The biggest concern with Stadia is that it might not exist. And if you think about it like that, that's kind of silly," she told GamesIndustry.biz.

"Working in tech, you have to be willing to make bold moves and try things that could fail. And yeah, Google's canceled a lot of projects. But I also have a Pixel in my pocket, I'm using Google Maps to get around, I only got here because my Google Calendar told me to get here by giving me a prompt in Gmail. It's not like Google cancels every f****** thing they make."

Elsewhere in the interview Frey was positive about the potential Stadia has not only for games, but technology in general.

"The best platforms for games tend to be things that don't just have games on them," she said. "The PS2 is probably one of the most successful consoles, because it was a DVD player. We didn't buy phones to play games, we bought phones to be phones. It just happened that because everyone had one that it became a platform for games. And I think Stadia can transcend games by quite a bit."

"We didn't buy phones to play games, we bought phones to be phones. It just happened that because everyone had one that it became a platform for games"

"Stadia could change conferences, for instance. Rami [Ismail] did a conference this year where everything was streamed live in eight different languages. You could much more easily do that with a system like Stadia. This isn't just about games, it's about anything that's interactive, that's streamed as far as video goes. There are ways to think about this that are much bigger than games."

"That's not the direction Google is going with Stadia," Frey admitted. "I think Google is pushing Stadia in a direction to compete with consoles, and I think it will compete with consoles. In the short-term, it's going to be in territories where there are a lot of consoles and where the internet is very good, so in the short-term I think it won't reach its potential."

"I'm not sure it will have a super-strong launch initially, but I don't even think they want to have a super-strong launch," she added. "I get the sense that they want to scale slowly and see where this goes."

"This is cool, and it could really change things."

What do you think will happen with Stadia at launch and in the future?