No subscription can compete with just owning the games and the hardware.
The marketing was... not executed well. Most people didn't realize that you could actually just buy games on the platform and play them without paying the monthly subscription for Pro. The backbone of the business model was supposed to be driven by that 30% cut of game sales revenue that most gaming platforms / stores take.
The infrastructure was supposed to be further subsidized by selling off-peak compute as a cloud service. That never materialized.
The exclusives were lackluster compared to other platforms (Breath of the Wild? Halo Infinite? God of War Ragnarok?), and leadership shuttered the in-house game studios before they were able to release much of anything.
Beyond all that -- there were plenty of features that owning your own hardware simply could not compete with. Just to list a few:
- Not having to wait for video game downloads was an incredibly underrated feature -- being able to start playing a game within seconds meant you could play a game immediately after an impulse purchase, rather than having to wait half an hour (100GB download at 500Mbps) first.
- Family sharing meant that you could play Cyberpunk 2077 (which, by the way, launched with serious performance issues across most platforms... but played smoothly on Stadia), while the kids next to you on the couch played, I dunno, Paw Patrol, all on hardware you already owned, e.g. your laptop, or phone, or the Chromecast that came with the founder's edition (also 100% optional).
- You could seamlessly continue a game across multiple devices -- play a game at home on your TV, then continue at a friend's house on your phone.
