7 ms·

You couldn't actually just use Gmail when it launched. You needed to get an invite for a fairly long time, which made it a little bit of status symbol. Google h

by jsnell 7y ago

You couldn't actually just use Gmail when it launched. You needed to get an invite for a fairly long time, which made it a little bit of status symbol. Google have tried repeating the same play a bunch of times since then, and it has always failed. For a while I did wonder whether they were trying it also with Stadia. The free "no subscription needed, just buy the game" tier of Stadia is the thing that should in principle be distinguishing them from the competition, and is actually kind of compelling from a consumer perspective. While the Stadia Pro just makes no sense as a product; it's targeting the people who least want this service and who are the most likely to already have huge game libraries on other platforms. How can it be that four months after launch, the tier that people might actuall want is still nowhere to be seen?

capableweb 7y ago
> The free "no subscription needed, just buy the game" tier of Stadia is the thing that should in principle be distinguishing them from the competition, and is actually kind of compelling from a consumer perspective Isn't that how every other game store works as well? Unreal's, Steam, Microsofts and others all work with that same idea. They also have additional subscription services, but by default it's just "no subscription needed, just buy the game"
- jsnell 7y ago
  Yes. But for all of those you need to buy hardware that can actually play the games. (A few hundred for a console, a thousand for a PC). The promise of game streaming is that you can play AAA games on the low-powered laptop or phone that you already have. There's a few possible business models for streaming. E.g. with PS Now you have to pay a subscription, you get access to a games library, and can only play the games that are part of the library. (Not other PS4 games that you own). Or GeForce Now which in practice requires a subscription (the free tier is only 1 hour at a time) and allows you to play a limited set of games as long as you own them on the right platform (e.g. Steam). Xcloud seems quite likely to just be sold bundled together as part of another subscription. So the free tier of Stadia should have been interesting due to not requiring a large up-front investment, and not requiring an ongoing subscription. Which at least at this moment is unique. Or rather, would be unique, because 9 months after the announcement it still has not launched.
  - chillfox 7y ago
    Except that you can’t actually use stadia to play on the low end equipment you already have. It only works on a select few high end phones, it only works on the most expensive chrome cast, and it requires a high end internet connection. The people who have the money for that stuff is likely to easily afford a Nintendo Switch which can actually be used for gaming everywhere without needing an internet connection.
    - technofiend 7y ago
      >Except that you can’t actually use stadia to play on the low end equipment you already have. Er, Stadia works just fine on a chromebook with a 10 Mbit/s internet connection? That's about as low end as it gets for both measures. Does it require a high end phone to play on a phone? Yup. Does it require a Chromecast Ultra for higher resolutions and a higher speed internet connection (35 Mbit/s) to play on a TV? Definitely. But you can play on Stadia for less than a Nintendo Switch even if you add together the cost of a chromebook and an xbox game controller. Which is what I use on my laptop to play Stadia games.
      - Traster 7y ago
        Okay, so you have a choice between a cheap Chromebook or an Xbox One at literally identical price points. Except the Xbox one actually comes with the xbox controller with games custom built to use the xbox controller.
        72deluxe 7y ago
        And when you buy the games, you get to keep them! No risk of your xbox disappearing overnight after you go to bed, unlike cloud offerings.
      - daemin 7y ago
        Well 10mbit is nice, until someone in the house starts streaming a video as well.
    - 7y ago
lonelappde 7y ago
Meanwhile, Nvidia GeForce Now is rounding up users with the tried and true freemium strategy with a 100% free tier to remove psychological barriers to sign up. There's only one reason to not do that: if your platform can't actually handle having users.
- drusepth 7y ago
  I haven't tried GeForce Now (but I have played ~300 hours so far on Stadia), but from what I've seen on Twitter they have some kind of waitlist for servers before free users are allowed to start playing a game (and paying users just jump to the front of that line), and then they can only play for one hour at a time (6 hours for paying users). That makes me think they might not have as many servers as they'd like people to think from such a freemium strategy at first glance.
  - ascagnel_ 7y ago
    GFN isn’t selling games, so they need to be more willing to degrade the free tier. Stadia is selling games, so the service should do its best to get out of its users way as much as possible.
- RL_Quine 7y ago
  I tired GeForce Now for about 30 minutes and found the latency to be unbearable. On a more than gigabit fibre connection right next to their data center.
  - fourmyle 7y ago
    I barely find Steam link playable on my home wired network.
    - Guillaume86 7y ago
      Same experience here, do not enjoy fast paced games over streaming, and can't imagine what is would be over the internet... Image quality also take a hit obviously, video compression isn't magic.
bibinou 7y ago
The difference is that Gmail was way better than its competitors at the time. The spam filter alone was a huge sell. edit: the 1GB mailbox !
- taneq 7y ago
  Yeah, back then Hotmail gave you something like 10MB and everyone literally thought 1GB was an April Fools' Day hoax. If Stadia was literally 100x better than the nearest competition while still having a far superior user experience then they wouldn't be having any trouble.
- autokad 7y ago
  the fact that it didnt catch on then says it was not better than its competitors. hotmail had that nice tie in with messenger, which was a huge plus other emails had the ability to delete email google tried to use email for ads which users found creepy google had an invite system that made signing up difficult etc etc
  - BigBubbleButt 7y ago
    Are you saying Gmail didn't catch on? That's like saying nobody buys an Android phone. Gmail is the #1 email provider in the world and Android is the #1 mobile OS in the world.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Yeah but it isn’t very profitable in the grand scheme of things. It came out in the Oracle trial that Google had only made around $23 billion in profit from Android from inception until around 2016. They pay Apple around $8 billion a year to be the default search. Apple has made more from Google in mobile than Google has made from Android.
    - autokad 7y ago
      It didnt catch on till 2012. It was also gmail that caused a change in public perception of google
autokad 7y ago
does anyone remember when gmail first launched it didnt have a delete email option because they wanted to 'teach users to value data like google values data'?
- mcny 7y ago
  It mostly worked on me if that was the goal. Except now my storage is at over 93% and I'm trying to figure out if I can just download my mbox file and delete all the emails for the next decade...
  - Doubl 7y ago
    I'm exactly on 93% too, I'm am going to clean out my Google drive which is full of stuff I could put elsewhere and will give me another few years. It's about time they increased their limit from 15GB though!
    - signal11 7y ago
      It's unlikely they will, there's an upgrade path called Google One that gets you 100GB storage for about $20 a year, across all their products, and shareable by family members. It also comes with human tech support.
  - _-david-_ 7y ago
    Google allows you to download your emails. I don't know what format it is in though. (https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en). If it is not mbox format I am sure there is a converter if you need it.

by jsnell 7y ago

capableweb 7y ago

> The free "no subscription needed, just buy the game" tier of Stadia is the thing that should in principle be distinguishing them from the competition, and is actually kind of compelling from a consumer perspective Isn't that how every other game store works as well? Unreal's, Steam, Microsofts and others all work with that same idea. They also have additional subscription services, but by default it's just "no subscription needed, just buy the game"

jsnell 7y ago
Yes. But for all of those you need to buy hardware that can actually play the games. (A few hundred for a console, a thousand for a PC). The promise of game streaming is that you can play AAA games on the low-powered laptop or phone that you already have. There's a few possible business models for streaming. E.g. with PS Now you have to pay a subscription, you get access to a games library, and can only play the games that are part of the library. (Not other PS4 games that you own). Or GeForce Now which in practice requires a subscription (the free tier is only 1 hour at a time) and allows you to play a limited set of games as long as you own them on the right platform (e.g. Steam). Xcloud seems quite likely to just be sold bundled together as part of another subscription. So the free tier of Stadia should have been interesting due to not requiring a large up-front investment, and not requiring an ongoing subscription. Which at least at this moment is unique. Or rather, would be unique, because 9 months after the announcement it still has not launched.
- chillfox 7y ago
  Except that you can’t actually use stadia to play on the low end equipment you already have. It only works on a select few high end phones, it only works on the most expensive chrome cast, and it requires a high end internet connection. The people who have the money for that stuff is likely to easily afford a Nintendo Switch which can actually be used for gaming everywhere without needing an internet connection.
  - technofiend 7y ago
    >Except that you can’t actually use stadia to play on the low end equipment you already have. Er, Stadia works just fine on a chromebook with a 10 Mbit/s internet connection? That's about as low end as it gets for both measures. Does it require a high end phone to play on a phone? Yup. Does it require a Chromecast Ultra for higher resolutions and a higher speed internet connection (35 Mbit/s) to play on a TV? Definitely. But you can play on Stadia for less than a Nintendo Switch even if you add together the cost of a chromebook and an xbox game controller. Which is what I use on my laptop to play Stadia games.
    - Traster 7y ago
      Okay, so you have a choice between a cheap Chromebook or an Xbox One at literally identical price points. Except the Xbox one actually comes with the xbox controller with games custom built to use the xbox controller.
      - 72deluxe 7y ago
        And when you buy the games, you get to keep them! No risk of your xbox disappearing overnight after you go to bed, unlike cloud offerings.
    - daemin 7y ago
      Well 10mbit is nice, until someone in the house starts streaming a video as well.
  - 7y ago

lonelappde 7y ago

Meanwhile, Nvidia GeForce Now is rounding up users with the tried and true freemium strategy with a 100% free tier to remove psychological barriers to sign up. There's only one reason to not do that: if your platform can't actually handle having users.

drusepth 7y ago
I haven't tried GeForce Now (but I have played ~300 hours so far on Stadia), but from what I've seen on Twitter they have some kind of waitlist for servers before free users are allowed to start playing a game (and paying users just jump to the front of that line), and then they can only play for one hour at a time (6 hours for paying users). That makes me think they might not have as many servers as they'd like people to think from such a freemium strategy at first glance.
- ascagnel_ 7y ago
  GFN isn’t selling games, so they need to be more willing to degrade the free tier. Stadia is selling games, so the service should do its best to get out of its users way as much as possible.
RL_Quine 7y ago
I tired GeForce Now for about 30 minutes and found the latency to be unbearable. On a more than gigabit fibre connection right next to their data center.
- fourmyle 7y ago
  I barely find Steam link playable on my home wired network.
  - Guillaume86 7y ago
    Same experience here, do not enjoy fast paced games over streaming, and can't imagine what is would be over the internet... Image quality also take a hit obviously, video compression isn't magic.

bibinou 7y ago

The difference is that Gmail was way better than its competitors at the time. The spam filter alone was a huge sell. edit: the 1GB mailbox !

taneq 7y ago
Yeah, back then Hotmail gave you something like 10MB and everyone literally thought 1GB was an April Fools' Day hoax. If Stadia was literally 100x better than the nearest competition while still having a far superior user experience then they wouldn't be having any trouble.
autokad 7y ago
the fact that it didnt catch on then says it was not better than its competitors. hotmail had that nice tie in with messenger, which was a huge plus other emails had the ability to delete email google tried to use email for ads which users found creepy google had an invite system that made signing up difficult etc etc
- BigBubbleButt 7y ago
  Are you saying Gmail didn't catch on? That's like saying nobody buys an Android phone. Gmail is the #1 email provider in the world and Android is the #1 mobile OS in the world.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Yeah but it isn’t very profitable in the grand scheme of things. It came out in the Oracle trial that Google had only made around $23 billion in profit from Android from inception until around 2016. They pay Apple around $8 billion a year to be the default search. Apple has made more from Google in mobile than Google has made from Android.
  - autokad 7y ago
    It didnt catch on till 2012. It was also gmail that caused a change in public perception of google

autokad 7y ago

does anyone remember when gmail first launched it didnt have a delete email option because they wanted to 'teach users to value data like google values data'?

mcny 7y ago
It mostly worked on me if that was the goal. Except now my storage is at over 93% and I'm trying to figure out if I can just download my mbox file and delete all the emails for the next decade...
- Doubl 7y ago
  I'm exactly on 93% too, I'm am going to clean out my Google drive which is full of stuff I could put elsewhere and will give me another few years. It's about time they increased their limit from 15GB though!
  - signal11 7y ago
    It's unlikely they will, there's an upgrade path called Google One that gets you 100GB storage for about $20 a year, across all their products, and shareable by family members. It also comes with human tech support.
- _-david-_ 7y ago
  Google allows you to download your emails. I don't know what format it is in though. (https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en). If it is not mbox format I am sure there is a converter if you need it.