Why?

Yeah, until they buy a studio or an exclusive and then you’re forced to play it on their shit stream box.

@thesoftware730 There are incentives. Note that the Stadia doesn't offer the standard digital download option either for people who may not care so much about having a game physically but who may prefer being able to have a game saved on their system and accessible at any time, not pending connection to a server. PS4s and XB1s are also multimedia devices. It's possible this Stadia will have support for Netflix among other things, but it won't play blurays, and Google has yet to announce if their box will support other services or if it's just theirs, because that would be equivalent to Sony releasing a PS4 that only allows access to Now and literally nothing else.

Permanently renting anything is more expensive. This would just be a big rent feast with a monthly fee! The day I stop paying I have nothing to play. No thank you.

Because people are insecure about their plastic boxes from companies that don't care about them. They need reassurance that their precious consoles aren't going away. It's ridiculous.

Stadia is just another option. If people aren't interested they don't have to use it, that's totally acceptable. But we shouldn't be praying for it to fail.

Competition makes console manufacturers push themselves harder, resulting in better games and products for us.

Tbh things will change with data caps. I don't know where you are from but in the UK companys like Vodafone do bundles where your data cap excludes netflit or misic stream services. This will happen with gaming to do the road. I also don't think data caps are on any home Internet providers in the UK any more to.

There will likely always be a market for physical hardware and playing games locally. That is not going away, at least any time even remotely soon.

That's a fair point. Though in the case of GameStop their issue was bad professional practices, bad customer relations and service, and for years they refused to admit their strategy wasn't working. GameStop could have turned things around years ago, or at least tried to. But they refused and they doubled down on the things that were driving customers away.

It's to late..they will all join this race.

MS is already got their set up for this year as well.

In Japan we had a few games that were streaming to switch. RE7 and AC.

Gamepass and PSnow(different but still going the service route)

And Sony no longer allowing game cards to be sold at retailers.

Like it or not its inevitable..weather it takes over traditional consoles in the next 10--15 years..we will see.

The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.

Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.

15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.

Let me be clear. This is sarcasm

They would be better breaking up what valued assets they still have and put them out to auction for the competition.
There is no more financial gain for them on any trajectory in the entertainment space.