Stadia Accidentally Calls Attention to How Few Games the System Has

It’s no secret that Google Stadia has had a difficult time building up a large library of games. While the game streaming system has some truly great games to play, the line-up is rather paltry in comparison with Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. Despite the fact that this isn’t exactly breaking news, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Stadia would want to call attention to, but that’s just the thing the company did over the weekend, while spelling out the system’s name using titles from the service’s library. The company seemed to have no trouble with most of the letters, but one in particular gave the social media team some difficulty: the letter “i.”

In Stadia’s defense, there aren’t a whole lot of games that start with the letter “i.” Still, it’s not the best way to call attention to the fact that games like Inside, Ikaruga, and Into the Breach aren’t available on Stadia. Twitter users immediately picked up on that glaring hole in the library, and proceeded to have some fun at the struggling system’s expense.

It’s true that Stadia has had problems making more games available, but Google is taking active steps to get more exclusives on the console. According to Google, at least 10 timed exclusives will be available this year, and the company just started a new development team based in Playa Vista focused on creating exclusive games for Stadia. The studio is headed by Shannon Studstill, the former head of SIE Santa Monica. Whether or not any of the games developed by Playa Vista will start with the letter “i” remains to be seen.

At the end of the day, Stadia’s tweet isn’t a massive mistake, but it does represent another unforced error to add to a figurative laundry list since the console launched in November. It’s just never a good look when so many posters get the opportunity to point out how few games your system has. Given that this continues to be Stadia’s biggest problem, they might have wanted to hold this tweet in reserve until the system had a game that started with the letter “i,” at the very least.

What do you think about Stadia’s line-up thus far? Would more games convince you to give the system a try? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!