5 ms·

Agreed, 100%. In retrospect, the Epic approach is obviously the right way to do it. It was pretty obvious before too, but I think most people would have discou

by Lazare 7y ago

Agreed, 100%. In retrospect, the Epic approach is obviously the right way to do it. It was pretty obvious before too, but I think most people would have discounted the "build a platform by throwing an enormous pile of money at it" approach as being impractical (if for no other reason than most people who want to build gaming platforms don't have enormous piles of money lying around). Epic showed that, no, actually, you can just go ahead and do the obvious thing. :) And I find it odd because first, Epic did all this before Stadia's dissapointing launch, so it's not like Google execs can claim they just literally had no idea you could build a gaming platform this way, and second, because (like Epic) Google can clearly afford it. It almost feels like Google doesn't want Stadia to succeed...? Or is this just a culture clash from Google's experience with ads, search, video, and webmail, where success seemingly just fell into their lap, and they're struggling to imagine needing to market a service? (I find the latter suggestion implausible since, actually, quite a lot of marketing went into making those a success, but man, I don't have a lot of other ideas.)

ehsankia 7y ago
To be fair, Epic's approach doesn't require many resources other than just money. Hell, for the longest time their store literally did not have even a "search" function, and I'm pretty sure it still doesn't even have a shopping cart. Software development takes time, but they mostly bypassed that and went straight into giving out free games. The games themselves already exist for PC, Epic didn't need to do much there. The case of Stadia is wildly different, because it requires a lot more engineering, both from Google and the developers. They also need a lot more resources per user, as each active user basically has their own dedicated cloud instance running the game. Scaling that up and giving that out for free isn't as trivial, even if money wasn't an issue. So I don't think it's an apples to apples comparison here. We'll see what the demo looks like once Stadia actually releases it, what we have so far is really more of an early access to test out the infrastructure.
- meheleventyone 7y ago
  No wonder they’re having a hard time finding games then! A lower margin platform, with less customers and that requires significant engineering work is not at all attractive. It also shows a lack of understanding about the games industry.
- Mindwipe 7y ago
  > To be fair, Epic's approach doesn't require many resources other than just money. People massively underestimate the business affairs aspect of getting people to come onto your platform. It requires really good people, and a lot of them. Google seem to have made the same mistake.
p1necone 7y ago
Doesn't "enter a market by throwing enormous piles of cash at it" violate various anti trust laws, unless you're really careful?
gentleman11 7y ago
That is only necessary because of the steam monopoly

by Lazare 7y ago

ehsankia 7y ago

To be fair, Epic's approach doesn't require many resources other than just money. Hell, for the longest time their store literally did not have even a "search" function, and I'm pretty sure it still doesn't even have a shopping cart. Software development takes time, but they mostly bypassed that and went straight into giving out free games. The games themselves already exist for PC, Epic didn't need to do much there. The case of Stadia is wildly different, because it requires a lot more engineering, both from Google and the developers. They also need a lot more resources per user, as each active user basically has their own dedicated cloud instance running the game. Scaling that up and giving that out for free isn't as trivial, even if money wasn't an issue. So I don't think it's an apples to apples comparison here. We'll see what the demo looks like once Stadia actually releases it, what we have so far is really more of an early access to test out the infrastructure.

meheleventyone 7y ago
No wonder they’re having a hard time finding games then! A lower margin platform, with less customers and that requires significant engineering work is not at all attractive. It also shows a lack of understanding about the games industry.
Mindwipe 7y ago
> To be fair, Epic's approach doesn't require many resources other than just money. People massively underestimate the business affairs aspect of getting people to come onto your platform. It requires really good people, and a lot of them. Google seem to have made the same mistake.

p1necone 7y ago

Doesn't "enter a market by throwing enormous piles of cash at it" violate various anti trust laws, unless you're really careful?

gentleman11 7y ago

That is only necessary because of the steam monopoly