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Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

• Animats 6y ago
  Google had a game studio? Did it make anything?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • hexadec 6y ago
    Nothing of real note it seems: https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/google-stadia-announces-a-wave-of-upcoming-games-for-the-console-2707739 https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/google-stadia-announces...
  • bhaile 6y ago
    They brought over an exec to build the studio. [1] [1] https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/19/18272965/google-stadia-studio-games-entertainment-jade-raymond-gdc-2019 https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/19/18272965/google-stadia-stu...
  • dharmab 6y ago
    As far as I can tell they never released a game.
  • josefresco 6y ago
    Journey to the Savage Planet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_Savage_Planet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_Savage_Planet *through acquisition
• hexadec 6y ago
  Insert surprised Pikachu face That aside, I do not think this is a bad move at all. None of the titles they were working on were that appealing, hopefully it will mean they pivot to integrate more into a shared licensing model. I would pay $5 a month to be able to import my current Steam games and play remotely, but this fractured model is incredibly reminiscent of video streaming. We had a first mover (Steam/ Netflix) come in and now all the stragglers are saturating the market with similar but slightly differentiated products (Stadia/ Peacock). I am curious what the next evolution of this model will look like.
  • echelon 6y ago
    > I am curious what the next evolution of this model will look like. Marketplace.
    • hexadec 6y ago
      Don't we have a marketplace already? If we take the game example we have Steam, Origin, Epic, and other stores competing to sell games. There are differences in offerings but they all still do a healthy business. On the streaming video side it is even harder since we never license or pay for videos, just the ability to watch as long as the service persists.
      • echelon 6y ago
        The cost of production will come down dramatically. Big name directors like Villeneuve and Nolan are already yelling at the studios, but the days of their massive tent poles are over. I think we'll probably wind up subscribing to our favorite creators directly.
• tmpz22 6y ago
  For context, Amazon is also struggling to make first party games [1]. I think it was hubris that these large companies didn't start with smaller scoped games and instead jumped head first into building their own engines and ips. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-game-studios-struggles-to-find-a-hit https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-ga...
  • hombre_fatal 6y ago
    Perhaps hubris. But it could also be the same thing that plagues every developer that tries to build games: procrastinating the impossible part (building games, especially games worth a damn) by the doing the easy part (building tools). And the delusion that you're doing anything of value because it feels productive. And the allure of generalization.
    • narrator 6y ago
      What's funny is a friend of mine who is a talented developer and started a game studio surprised me when he started blogging about his experience and he was solely focused on the characters, story development, animation, etc. Instead of technology. Reading about the problems Amazon has been having, this seems like the only way to go.
  • jjoonathan 6y ago
    Did amazon build their own engine? I thought they licensed cryengine and slapped their brand on it?
  • wlesieutre 6y ago
    They didn't really build their own engine, they bought a re-licensable license to CryEngine, rebranded it to Lumberyard, and started their engine work from that. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160209005740/en/Amazon-Web-Services-Announces-Amazon-Lumberyard-%E2%80%94-A-Free-Cross-Platform-3D-Game-Engine-Integrated-with-AWS-and-Twitch https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160209005740/en/Ama... This sale is speculated to have saved Crytek from bankruptcy, as they were failing to pay their employees at the time. Lucky for Crytek, and Amazon was probably thinking "man, we got a great deal on this!" http://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/source-crytek-is-sinking-wages-are-unpaid-talent-leaving-on-a-daily-basis/ http://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/source-crytek-i... Unfortunately the engine they got a great deal on was CryEngine, which has made some cool games, but by a lot of accounts is not great to work in. Much like the issues reported at EA's studios (with Frostbite), if you're working on a game in it you want to be working closely with the engine devs. They're the ones who know how to make it work, or can fix it when it doesn't work. A number of CryEngine developers left to join Cloud Imperium's Frankfurt office working on Star Citizen. That office basically exists to pick up the ex-Crytek people who wanted a job where they'd get paid. I don't know if Amazon snagged any of them, it would've been a harder sell to relocate to the US, but with the amount of money they were pouring into this, not impossible.
• ketzo 6y ago
  I think this might get the “oh, Google shuts down another area after a few years, color me surprised” crowd going, but for me this is totally the right move. There are a LOT of videogame developers out there. Many of them are quite good at what they do. The cloud gaming space, while much better than it used to be, has plenty of room for improvement — it’s not remotely mainstream yet, and there’s still time yet to mint the cloud gaming household name.
  • AlotOfReading 6y ago
    I agree that they didn't need this in the first place, but this is the venture they started last March [1]. What changed for them in those 10 months that wasn't an obvious trend before? [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/4/21164801/google-stadia-shannon-studstill-playa-vista-studio-sony-santa-monica-god-of-war https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/4/21164801/google-stadia-sha...
    • JulianMorrison 6y ago
      I presume that they came out of the gate with the sensible perspective that if you build it, and there aren't any games on it, the players won't come. My guess is what changed is that the infrastructure is now viable as infrastructure, they don't need to prop it up with their own game releases.
      • meheleventyone 6y ago
        Likely it’s the other way around and Stadia isn’t doing well enough to think that first party titles released in a few years time will pay development costs or necessarily have a platform to launch on.
      • Invictus0 6y ago
        IMO, it would be better to take the Nintendo approach and build out a couple generic games that highlight the best features of the system. Wii tennis and wii bowling ended up being my favorite Wii games.
• castlecrasher2 6y ago
  How long until an article title is simply the first four words of this one's?
  • mkl 6y ago
    Well, this has been going since it launched: http://stadiacountdown.com/ http://stadiacountdown.com/
• Jyaif 6y ago
  Yeah, it's simpler to just take a percentage of all purchases that happen on their platform than to actually create the content.
• sneak 6y ago
  Is there anywhere one can gamble on the month and year that Google shuts down services?
  • dharmab 6y ago
    The service isn't shutting down; they're closing their internal game dev studio that never released a game. You might get a kick out of https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
    • sneak 6y ago
      I read the article. I'll bet real money that Stadia is cancelled within five years.
      • anxman 6y ago
        Same here and I worked on Stadia
        • xeromal 6y ago
          Did you have any fun working on it?
        • neillyons 6y ago
          What are your thoughts on market fit for Stadia? It seems like Nintendo made something that people really want with the Switch [1]. Do you know if Stadia is being used much? [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/1/22259836/nintendo-3q-2020-earning-switch-sales-record https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/1/22259836/nintendo-3q-2020-...
      • josefresco 6y ago
        It depends on how much they want to compete with Sony & Microsoft in this space. So far so good, IMHO, as an early Stadia adopter.
    • liaukovv 6y ago
• Jabbles 6y ago
  Maybe it's best that Google only owns the platform, not the content. The EU seems to be tired of tech companies owning both: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/platform-business-trading-practices https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/platform-busin...
  • deadmutex 6y ago
    There are a lot of examples of companies owning both though: 1. Microsoft: https://kotaku.com/microsoft-now-has-23-first-party-studios-heres-what-th-1845135898 https://kotaku.com/microsoft-now-has-23-first-party-studios-... 2. Nintendo owns many successful games on their platforms: Zelda, Mario based titles, etc. 3. Sony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sony_Interactive_Entertainment_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sony_Interactive_Enter...
    • Jabbles 6y ago
      True, but, in other areas this has been abused: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-launch-competing-products-11587650015 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its... https://www.computerworld.com/article/2468760/apple--steals--iphone-app-ideas-and-patents-them--and-lightsabers-.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2468760/apple--steals-...
      • deadmutex 6y ago
        Yeah, I think it is a bit tricky to draw the line. Consider brick and motor pharmacy stores putting generic brand white-labeled items next to name brand items. This has helped the consumer (IMO). But, at the same time I can see how it can be abused. The tricky part is coming up with a way to get best of both worlds. Unfortunately, I have personally seen the pendulum swing from one extreme to the other (based on rushed outrage driven legislation) too many times.
  • vineyardmike 6y ago
    The EU? That tax machine... its a wonder these companies still sell there at all. Seems like they should double down on Asian markets instead of bothering.
• minimaxir 6y ago
  > Said one source familiar with Stadia’s first-party operations, citing another tech giant’s widely publicized failure to create video games: “Google was a terrible place to make games. Imagine Amazon, but under-resourced.” "Google" and "under-resourced" in the same blurb is very funny.
  • riku_iki 6y ago
    By looking at how many projects/products they run, some individual niche team can be under-resourced.
    • ngold 6y ago
      I would like to know which projects are not under sourced? That's not adsense.
      • catmanjan 6y ago
        Quick Google shows they have around 150k employees, how many products do they have?
• lallysingh 6y ago
  > With the increased focus on using our technology platform for industry partners, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Google to pursue other opportunities. I'm glad she got out.
• guardiangod 6y ago
  I know Google/Stadia recently partnered with LG to bundle the Stadia app with LG TVs, but I wonder why Google doesn't do this with every TV manufacturers (save Sony.) If I were Stadia's marketing chief, I'd 1. Bribe the TV manufacturers to include the Stadia app 2. Advertise that the TV includes _a game console_ during TV commercials. 3. Allow the TV users to pay a bit extra ($20?) to buy a basic game controller. 4. Have all the store demo units to auto stream Stadia playing video games and explicitly explain you don't need a xbox/playstation to play these games. 5. Buy out Witcher 3/Call of Duty 4/Project Cars 2/other older games and make them free for TVs with Stadia bundles. Most smart TVs these days are more than fast enough to stream HD broadcast. I don't understand why Google doesn't push this. Fiddling with my phone to play Stadia on my TV is pretty crumple some. It's just too much work for normal folks. People just want to turn on the TV and start playing. Edit: I guess monopolistic abuse is a concern. However Sony and MS have their own streaming services. Google can just advertise 'play games with Stadia and Playstation Now and Xbox Cloud on your TV!' I am 100% if players switch to playing games on TV without game consoles, it hurts MS/Sony a lot more than to Google.
  • crucifiction 6y ago
    The reason they don’t push this is because Stadia, like a lot of things, is just a side project at google. It does nothing to drive significant new ad revenue, so it’s never going to get this kind of deep pocket investment.
    • scep12 6y ago
      Then why do it at all? What would possibly justify such a large investment of capital if Google didn't believe it to be a potentially nontrivial contributor of future revenue?
      • deegles 6y ago
        People need promotions I guess.
      • dleslie 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
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• czhiddy 6y ago
  I was looking forward to seeing some of the games that would have only been possible on Stadia's architecture. Imagine a Battlefield-style game with a larger map and over 500+ simultaneous players. Hopefully the games that SG&E do finish showcase what's possible when a developer targets Stadia's strengths.
  • jayd16 6y ago
    Why is that sort of game only possible with cloud rendering vs some dedicated server architecture? I think you'd need to go much higher in terms of how many unpredictable, latency dependent objects are needed on screen before you'd start hitting issues with client side rendering.
    • cuban-frisbee 6y ago
      Synchronising the game state in games now is exceptionally hard even with 64 players for any sort of latency dependent game. It's a constant grievance in most gaming communities today. If you just have to point a gpu view into the world, then it just depends on how many gpu's you can attach to the server.
  • WhatIsDukkha 6y ago
    Planetside 2 (2012) has 1200 players per continent ie one giant map with zero loading screens. Very active subscriber base and developer even in 2021.
  • nightowl_games 6y ago
    I just got into Planetside 2 and it's everything I wanted it to be.
  • gsich 6y ago
    >I was looking forward to seeing some of the games that would have only been possible on Stadia's architecture. Imagine a Battlefield-style game with a larger map and over 500+ simultaneous players. Never. As a game developer you don't want to be tied to a specific system.
  • 6y ago
• olivermarks 6y ago
  I feel bad for Phil Harrison. He worked v hard at Sony PlayStation to get a Facebook style platform off the ground way before FB ever existed, got shafted in the 1st party game dev worldwide studios politics wars, joined MSFT to try and resurrect Xbox and is now presumably not doing well with Stadia at Google which has broken a lot of very hard ground to enable cloud gaming. The games always come before the platform (People bought Sonic The Hedgehog, not the enabling Sega hardware). Assuming Stadia doesn't disappear someone else will probably profit from all this.
• paxys 6y ago
  Some of the industry's largest players have been in the game development space for 30+ years and even then are only marginally successful. Xbox itself was on the brink of being shut down/sold off a few years ago. What exactly did Google (and Amazon/Apple/Facebook) expect would happen? Focusing on Stadia's strength as a platform seems to be a good move forward. It is a technically sound service. I'm sure the massive bump it got from Cyberpunk showed execs that a partnership-only gaming model could be successful. They do need to expand licensing, improve their subscription catalog and get more indie studios involved. Relying on users to consistently pay $60+ for games on top of the monthly fees is a losing business model.
  • gman83 6y ago
    Yeah I agree this is the right move. They should use the YouTube model of just providing the best service for everyone else to provide their content on. Google has never been any good at creating original content.
    • catmanjan 6y ago
      I was going to disagree here, but then I couldn't think of anything good and original content made by Google...
  • sipos 6y ago
    They also desperately need to improve things like the store, which has no wish lists, no way to see all of the titles in specific categories, etc, at least on mobile.
• jtchang 6y ago
  This is a fantastic move by Google. The war for gaming as a service will be on the platform level and something that Google is well positioned to win in. Not saying that Steam, Nintendo, Nvidia won't be some serious contenders as well but the outlook for gamers is quite positive. I expect to see what the web went through in the early 90s as far as turmoil goes. Lots of platforms with all their quirks and developers getting behind various ones. Eventually (hopefully?) some standards enabling cross platform development of stream gaming. Bandwidth/latency still needs to play catch up but 5G is getting there. Cellular connections are getting more and more stable while landline methods are lagging. I expect to see each platform playing to their strengths with Google pushing their expertise in infrastructure and Nvidia with their hardware. Also expect to see the space get even more crowded as traditional players join the market.
  • dleslie 6y ago
    Considering how poorly Google's external developer support has historically been, I think it's safe to say that without Google dog-fooding Stadia it's going to sputter and die.
  • sorenjan 6y ago
    Cross platform is old school. You can send email between providers, call people on different phones, and access websites without knowing what kind of server they're on, but can you place a video call from Skype to Google Duo? Send messages from Slack to Discord? Tweet something using your Microsoft account? The open web is dead, it's all big companies' silos now.
• mattlondon 6y ago
  Until you can play your Steam game library (and perhaps Epic and Unisoft and GOG) on Stadia, I think they'll struggle. I have paid for Geforce Now which does let you play Steam et al games (although not everything is available which is annoying) - it is about £4 a month currently (or free if you can spend time waiting to play) and the experience feels largely the same to Stadia to me in terms of latency and quality. Many happy hours playing high-end PC games on a super cheap and lightweight Chromebook that starts up instantly and runs silently compared to my weighty, expensive, and noisy gaming laptop that needs to boot into windows (although that only takes 5-10s these days to be fair) Feels like nVidia (...and Xbox? Not tried that) have eaten Google's own lunch in the stream-to-chromebook context.
  • liaukovv 6y ago
    Imagine buying health insurance from someone for whom it's a hobby.
    • breakfastduck 6y ago
      I get the point you're trying to make, but actually your example is one where I wouldn't mind. I'd rather my bad health not be the central profit driver for someone...
      • liaukovv 6y ago
        Perharps amateur stock broker then?
      • eecks 6y ago
        Aren't health insurance companies losing money by paying out? It's in their interest that their paying customers stay in good health.
        • agentdrtran 6y ago
          alternative, it's in their interest to make paying out as difficult and byzantine as possible.
• lxe 6y ago
  > Google will close its two game studios, located in Montreal and Los Angeles. Neither had released any games yet. Were there any games currently in the works in these studios?
• andrewclunn 6y ago
  What's cheaper and more easily distributed: reliable high speed connections or Computing devices with dedicated graphical processors Survey says... nobody wants what you're selling Google, and nobody with half a brain trusts you to maintain services long term anyways. Stadia is doomed and riddance.
• Forbo 6y ago
  I'm having a hard time finding any info on what "SG&E" is despite a lot of searching. Can anyone provide some context?
  • paxys 6y ago
    Yeah it's weird that they would put that in a public blog post without any explanation. I'm guessing it's their game development division.
  • cjblomqvist 6y ago
    Their in house game development studio. It got started 10 months ago (if other comments are correct)
  • onion2k 6y ago
    "Stadia Games & Entertainment." It's Google's in-house content dev studio. Shutting it down means Stadia will need external support to work. If it's gets that then it'll be great. If it doesn't then it'll get killed off.
    • yodon 6y ago
      And why would any 3rd party studio invest resources into a platform the platform owner isn't willing to invest in? With SG&E shutting down Stadia is dead whether they admit it or not.
      • d0gbread 6y ago
        I've seen this comment a few times now across HN and article comments. Can you say more about why you hold this opinion? It seems clear to me that Google deciding not to focus on game development is showing a level of awareness we should want to see. In fact, by redirecting those resources they are directly investing in the platform instead of content for it that, let's be honest, probably would have flopped. I've been a happy Stadia Pro subscriber for about six months and in that time all I've heard from the community is "we want AAA, we want game x, y, and z" and with Google's decision, they're likely freeing resources to do just that.
• temp667 6y ago
  Initially I thought some straightforward fun first party games would be great. Make them cheap / free with platform, do some of the standards (a runner, a platformer, etc etc). Keep them pretty simple. That would have been nice - show off a bit what the platform can do, but be a fast follower for some popular genres. What engine was SGE using? When I heard AWS wasn't just going to do something like license Epic I thought - uh oh... here we go!
• Andrex 6y ago
  From Kotaku[0]: > "The service’s best moments may have been when its third-party ports showed off the strength of the cloud gaming model, in which a game can run well on just about any device with a screen and a strong internet connection. Ubisoft games such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey ran well on Stadia. Destiny 2’s Stadia support let players of that game drop in for an extra match or quest from their phone or laptop when they were far from their regular gaming gear. When Cyberpunk 2077 was faltering on everything else in December, it was running quite well on Stadia. They’re not wrong. If Phil *Harrison is trying to turn Stadia into, say, the "Unreal Engine of cloud gaming” (scare quotes added by me), he’ll likely be much more successful at doing that than trying to make "a traditional console like PS5, but, like, in the cloud." This shatters my confidence in Stadia as an ongoing consumer platform, though (especially that Stadio Pro sub, and possibly even the hardware/controllers too.) 0. https://kotaku.com/google-stadia-shuts-down-internal-studios-changing-bus-1846146761 https://kotaku.com/google-stadia-shuts-down-internal-studios...
  • Hadrianus 6y ago
    Phil Spencer is XBOX, Phil Harrison is Google
    • Andrex 6y ago
      Harrison was also formerly Xbox, but point taken and post updated!
      • Narishma 6y ago
        Seems like anything he touches goes sideways. PS3, Xbox One and now Stadia.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • itronitron 6y ago
    >> >"When Cyberpunk 2077 was faltering on everything else in December, it was running quite well on Stadia." This is the first time I have heard that, it seems like something that Stadia's marketing team would want to tell people.
• dleslie 6y ago
  As a game developer, Stadia does not in any way excite me because of my prior experiences with the Android App Store. That is to say, if somehow Stadia is successful then I expect a long term outcome where games are nearly all freemium adware or grind-to-win, with a few poorly-performing notable exceptions; mashing out the same three or four proven-successful concepts with new skins ad nauseum. The margins will be so razor-thin that there won't be any room to risk on innovation. This is because they don't care to improve discovery on their store front. It's always been awful, it will continue to be awful. There will be virtually no quality control to speak of, with sudden and opaque decisions to remove products, and so on... Recall that in the very early days of the Android app store it was flush with $20 games, and effectively absent of stolen content, adware and spyware. Look at it now. The two major improvements that it might have over the App Store experience would be an absence of asset-ripped "clones" (read: your APK is ripped, minorly re-branded, and re-uploaded with a similar name), and perhaps far less malicious software, because access to the local device will be limited.
  • andrewclunn 6y ago
    How dare you express a personal opinion that doesn't suck off the trend setting tech industry leaders! Down vote! Ban! Mwahahaha...
• liaukovv 6y ago
  That was quick
  • throwaway29303 6y ago
    The article says Google will continue to operate the Stadia gaming service and its $10 monthly Stadia Pro service. It’s unclear how many, if any, exclusive games will still come to the service, though the company has indicated that it can still sign new games and will bring more third-party releases to the platform. It nevertheless will look to many like a draw down of the plan to have Stadia run as a bona fide competitor to console platforms. So it's not dead yet. The race is still on.
    • liaukovv 6y ago
      I would agree if their service was a way you could play games you own on google's computers, but stadia is more of an another player in console wars, with its upsides and downsides. And we know that consoles without exclusives lose, I bet product managers at google know that too.
• ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  I just don't see the value add of stadia. Can someone explain? Why would a gamer choose it over a PS5 or Xbox?
  • psanford 6y ago
    You don't have to buy any hardware to start using stadia from your browser. If you want to play on your TV the hardware is a lot cheaper than a PS5 or Xbox. Its also nice to not have a large box hooked up to your TV.
  • smabie 6y ago
    it's way more portable so that's a major value proposition in my book. I would never use it for multi-player games, but for single player it's probably okay if you're an average gamer. I personally wouldn't use it because I'm anal about refresh rates/max settings/latency/etc but for other people (especially younger gamers with less disposable income) I think it's pretty compelling.
  • dharmab 6y ago
    For one, it's been very difficult to buy a PS5/Xbox/high end PC for quite a while now. Stadia and other similar services are one of the few platforms that can run the newest AAA titles well and does so without physical supply problems.
  • Eridrus 6y ago
    It's a lot cheaper. You can imagine the cost getting down to basically the cost of the controller if users already have a streaming device (eg Chromecast) capable of running the streaming client. Putting aside Cyberpunk's overall problems, it performed a lot better on Stadia than last gen hardware https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/10/22167303/cyberpunk-2077-ps5-console-google-stadia https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/10/22167303/cyberpunk-2077-...
    • Nullabillity 6y ago
      You're still paying for the hardware somehow, even if it's not in your home. Theoretically nobody's going to play 24/7 so you could share the hardware between multiple customers, but in practice latency means that your DCs need to be close to them anyway. The only way Stadia (or some other bullshit like it) could possibly be cheaper would be: 1. Price dumping 2. Preferential game pricing from publishers (to instead hide the hardware costs there) 3. Gym model (tricking casual users into signing long and expensive contracts)
• nexthash 6y ago
  For context: given Google's reputation with shutting down products and the struggles that Stadia and cloud gaming have been for Google in general, there exists a countdown to when Stadia is predicted to be axed: http://stadiacountdown.com/ http://stadiacountdown.com/
• jonas_kgomo 6y ago
  What technology is required to compete with this, mostly i notice that it is based on open-source Linux and Vulcan graphics rendering?
• klipklop 6y ago
  I don't believe Google has the right culture to make compelling video games anyways. Maybe at best a super safe mario clone for children. Anything remotely controversial will have half the staff protesting threatening to quit.
  • shmageggy 6y ago
    Why does a game need to be controversial to be compelling?
    • psyc 6y ago
      Compelling to a significant demographic maybe? “Controversial” can include violent. Seems like those games tend to be technically amazing, as well as particularly entertaining / humorous if that’s your thing.
      • klipklop 6y ago
        Exactly. Some of the best selling games are games like Call of Duty, GTA or Mortal Kombat. Any game like that would have a full on employee revolt as people demanded the team involved to be fired.
        • evanextreme 6y ago
          Google sells all of these games on Google Play without any form of "revolt" from their developers. So im not sure where you're getting this idea, other than baseless conjecture
    • malwarebytess 6y ago
      It's not a novel idea that all great art is in some way disruptive or transgressive. If you're aiming for art with cultural relevancy you've got to push some kind of boundary, mechanical, technical, or social. If you have an culturally oppressive environment, whatever flavor, you're going to struggle to make great art.
  • 6y ago
• theshrike79 6y ago
  Phil Harrison's (VP of Stadia) blog about the subject: https://blog.google/products/stadia/focusing-on-stadias-future-as-a-platform-and-winding-down-sge/ https://blog.google/products/stadia/focusing-on-stadias-futu...
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• deleted 6y ago
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• gman83 6y ago
  This will probably be an unpopular opinion here, but I love Stadia. I have a gaming pc, but my GPU is getting old so the newer games don't run well. So I gave Stadia a go. My internet is good enough and the fact of not having to download a game before playing is just fantastic. Also I can play on my tablet in bed. I definitely think this is the future, if it's not from Google, then it'll be Amazon, Microsoft, or Epic/Tencent.
  • PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    I don’t think many people have a problem with the concept of game streaming or even google implementation. It’s the fact that you have to buy games specifically for stadia and that one day google will shut down the service and a lot of people are going to lose the games they paid for.
    • lapetitejort 6y ago
      I'm very confident Stadia will shut down, but I'm also confident Google will give some offramp for people who bought games, either by refunding the full price or offering a digital key for some storefront.
  • krick 6y ago
    I don't know how HN feels about Stadia, so a honest question: why is it unpopular? I personally find it absolutely astounding that anyone can question that this is the future. I'm absolutely confident this is the future. Except, unlike you, I don't mean it in a positive way: I find it to be a one more face of the impending doom, anti-utopian authoritarian future, where people will be forbidden to perform arbitrary computations without a special permission. But that's that kind of wild socio-philosophical predictions that nobody discusses seriously, and nobody even thinks you are serious for suggesting something as preposterous (but then it happen anyway and nobody is really surprised). On the technical matter, though, it is so much better than owning your own hardware, that it's hard to imagine how that could fail. I mean, obviously, Google will not succeed in making their own games (never could have). And of course current state of Stadia may not suit the "real gamer" (always a minority), because you can have a better performance on your own hardware. But these problems will be solved, eventually. Better studios will make better games for this kind of platform, eventually it won't be games only, but the whole workspace. CAD running on Stadia will perform better than it could have on your upper-middle-range laptop you paid a shitload of money for, and that still lags and overheats when running your 100-tab browser on it. Your client device will be cheap, completely silent, low-temperature and will run on a battery for several days (that is, with no power-battery technology improvement). Light and portable. It will be unbreakable, compared to your current PC. Basically just a good display, a networking card, and some input device. There is absolutely no way your software won't run better on a shared hardware than you can buy for the same amount of money it will cost Google (or whoever will succeed with this). I don't know if latency will ever be low enough for every human-use application (which again makes me wonder why are they starting with games: probably the most latency-sensitive thing an average customer uses), but it is surprisingly good right now, and there's still some room for improvement: computation servers will be more evenly distributed (CDN-style), and last-mile latency (the biggest problem, anyway) will improve in the upcoming years, especially on mobile.
• astlouis44 6y ago
  Had Google been willing to invest in some next gen "cloud only" titles, we could have seen something truly magical. Imagine a WW2 game with thousands and thousands of concurrent players, or a real time 3D life Sim where people could meet and socialize like in real life. I think it's being realized across the industry that there isn't huge value prop in bringing existing games to the cloud and targeting low-spec gamers, but rather architecting entirely new experiences that simply are not possible without cloud compute. Jeff Bezos seems to recognize this, his exact marching orders for Amazon's game efforts was to make "computationally ridiculous games". That to me is the bigger opportunity, because it opens the doors to the next internet called the Metaverse.
• Keyframe 6y ago
  Eerie in accuracy http://stadiacountdown.com/ http://stadiacountdown.com/
• macspoofing 6y ago
  Typical Google half-assery. If they wanted Stadia to succeed, they should have been investing in game studios years before so at launch they would some games to demonstrate the concept of cloud gaming and actually drive sales. After all, it's really all about the games. And third-parties are never going to do it. But there was no plan. They just did it and hoped success would just happen.
  • danbolt 6y ago
    Yeah, I feel like they should have looked how Microsoft more or less lucked out with Bungie producing a killer app for them. [1] Successfully creating a game service requires content, content, and more content. That said, there's still space for Stadia's infrastructure to compete with Xbox/Azure. [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwqjg3/the-complete-untold-history-of-halo-an-oral-history https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwqjg3/the-complete-untold-h...
    • jlawer 6y ago
      Yeah luck was involved, but Microsoft was at least smart enough to buy a company with a good looking game which had been in development for a while. This brought down the timeline. Bungie had showed off halo at MacWorld and was initially targeted at Mac (with an expected port to PC). Google could do this, or pay even bigger $ for a timed exclusive from a AAA publisher. Instead google started their own studios, which would likely pay off in the long run, but google doesn't have the attention span to operate like that.
    • redisman 6y ago
      Microsoft has also acquired every good mid-sized game company with a track record in the last 5 years to their Xbox Studios. They are really good at this while Google, obviously has no clue what they're doing.
• mlex 6y ago
  @dang I think that while this is the exact title from Kotaku, it misses the context (given by what site it's on) that they're shutting down specifically their _gaming_ studios. I feel like it would be clearer if this said "Google Stadia shuts down internal game studios, changing business focus". Quote from the article: Google will close its two game studios, located in Montreal and Los Angeles. Neither had released any games yet.
• drusepth 6y ago
  I know it's cool to hate on Stadia still (but less so than it used to be, now that everyone seems to just use it as a Cyberpunk console...) but this move makes sense to me. 1. First-party AAA games are a huge investment (in time and money), especially for a company without any experience in building them. Starting a first-party game studio is a huge risk (financial and planning) that I'm not surprised didn't pan out. 2. Stadia has a reputation as the "indie game streamer" platform in a lot of circles after such a large % of their first games were older and from smaller dev cos. The unpolished first-party AAA game (if it ever came out) wouldn't do much to help this reputation; focusing on partnerships and getting new releases on the platform seems like it'd do far more for the service's future. 3. Unpopular opinion but I don't think exclusives should exist for any platform. It may be good for business but it's bad for most gamers. 4. Politically, it feels like we're about to move into a period where companies need to be way more careful with monopolistic moves into new markets. "Owning the platform and the content" seems to be a wedge-prone position that a lot of companies are worried about (Amazon, Apple, Google, etc) and this kind of just clears Stadia/Google from having to worry about that on "their console". FWIW I have almost 100 hours on Stadia and 49 friends online in Stadia at the time of writing this comment, but YMMV, I am most definitely in some kind of Stadia-bubble, I probably have some confirmation bias, and this may also be wishful thinking based on the fact that I want Stadia (and cloud gaming as a whole) to succeed.
  • jonathannorris 6y ago
    I get all the doom and gloom about this announcement, but it's exactly what I would be doing if I ran Stadia. Don't waste money trying to build first-party games when you don't have scale, spend all your money on scaling. Specifically: - Spend budget on getting more AAA titles released on Stadia on launch day. (like they did with Cyberpunk) - Spend budget giving huge discounts on AAA titles to attract more users. - Spend the money to get integrated into every Smart TV platform (Roku, Google TV, LG Web OS, Tizen, Apple TV, ect.). TV Boxes should include a Stadia controller in their box and a few months free. - Advertise that you can play AAA console games on the TV / Streaming box you already own.
    • ece 6y ago
• Negitivefrags 6y ago
  Fundamentally these big tech companies just don’t understand game development. AAA games cost a lot of money, so these companies think that if you come with a bunch of money, you will end up with a AAA game. My company was pitched by both Google (for stadia) and Amazon to create games for them and it was totally clear they had no idea what they were doing, and no idea what they were even trying to achieve. The funny thing is that in both cases we felt that their attitude was also “These guys have no idea what they are doing” about us too. It’s just a total ideological mismatch.
  • pid_0 6y ago
    >The funny thing is that in both cases we felt that their attitude was also “These guys have no idea what they are doing” about us too. This is pretty much how every Googler thinks.
    • afterburner 6y ago
      So, like any consultancy then? Interesting.
  • ehsankia 6y ago
    It's just a different culture and process even. Game studios are more entertainment companies than tech companies. There's also a high ratio of artists and other talent which tech companies aren't used to dealing with. The development process and workflows are very different too.
  • gdsdfe 6y ago
    hah interesting! This was also my guess ... They probably just assumed : well games are software, we know software, therefore we can make games.
  • aspaceman 6y ago
    I love to imagine the interactions between professional artists and engineers / executives at Google. Moreso executives. I think a lot of folks have never had to work with an artist.
• dartdartdart 6y ago
  Makes their controller promo video look like a joke now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYDSZnjvSH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYDSZnjvSH0. Looks like they spent $10 million to create a PS3 controller in 2020
• mindfreeze 6y ago
  Recently I came across this https://shadow.tech/ https://shadow.tech/ They do something promising and better (?)
  • hobofan 6y ago
    I've had a great experience with their service quite some time ago, though I'm a bit worried about their ability to scale up. IIRC they had suspended new sign ups for some time, and rollout of their Ultra and Infinite offerings seems pretty slow (possibly because of GPU shortages?).
  • ourcat 6y ago
    I was going to mention Shadow. I see quite a few people who want to play PCVR games using it if they don't have a PC up to the job. Also with VR, many people use 'VirtualDesktop' to link between a PC and the Oculus Quest wirelessly. I can see a future where they offer remote PCs to connect via their software too. And to add to that, in the future too, I can see Facebook/Oculus adding 5G connectivity to a next-generation headset alongside a future Snapdragon XR2(+).
  • cryptoquick 6y ago
    I also liked Shadow. I could play Windows games on Arch Linux without booting into Windows, their latency wasn't terrible, the wait wasn't too long (only about a month for me), it wasn't terribly expensive, and best of all, their business model actually required them to do their best to make the product a success. A novel concept to some large tech companies, it would seem.
• Thaxll 6y ago
  Amazon is next, I guaranty you FANG has no idea on how to makes game. The smart move is to buy studios, don't start from scratch. Also lot of people on this thread don't undertsand that it's the gamestudio shuting down not Stadia the cloud platform.
• nightowl_games 6y ago
  Jade Raymond needs to write a memoir.
• rektide 6y ago
  I can't help but feel like any big software platform company that's not trying to get good at virtual worlds, gaming, virtual space is making a huge mistake. It's hard as heck. One can do all the things, and keep turning up with un-fun games. Games require magic, in a way few other things do. But I also think these big companies have some of the best chance of creating something special and better. They keep reaching for better scaled universes, better scaled worlds, and I think this ambition is really key. Better scaled worlds is what's important, is what we need to be up to. Lots of simulated agents, lots of space, lots of players, all in virtual space. EVE Online seems to be really running up into the wall, these days. It feels like there's such basic fixes for some of this stuff (allow modules to be set-to-go online while in warp), but the huge grid filled with players, the massive time-dialation.... it's a real cluster $@#@#$[1]. Few others have tried to be anywhere near as cool. We all get some little shells, shards, and the bigger total us never happens. [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/how-eve-online-commandos-pulled-off-a-suicide-mission-to-save-170-elite-pilots/ https://www.pcgamer.com/how-eve-online-commandos-pulled-off-...
• ilamont 6y ago
  Anyone have insights into how Apple Arcade is doing? It seems to have a lot more games than Stadia, but the variety is limited and it's hard to see the compelling reason is to use it as opposed to simply getting games in the app store.
• bastawhiz 6y ago
  I'm dumbfounded at Google's lack of planning on this. I tried Stadia, and they had (have?) so few games that they seem to have neither search nor pagination on the list that you can play. None of the games are ones that I care about. It feels like they could have—at the cost of short-term profit and pride—partnered with Valve and shipped something mind-blowing. But instead we're left with a bunch of AAA games that feel half-baked (Hitman crashes on first boot and complains about a lack of a controller) and a bunch of indie games that feel like a sad attempt to squeeze a few extra bucks out of a middling title (the Hello Neighbor hide and seek game) and titles released half a decade ago (superhot). Minecraft is on every console imaginable—except Stadia. What about Roblox? Fortnite? Factorio? Among Us? Any Sid Meier's game? Any Paradox game? Every genre of game that I actually put time into is completely absent on their platform. Every game from the top 10 (perhaps 20 or more?) on Twitch right now is absent on Stadia. I don't know what they're doing, but whatever it is, it's wrong.
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Everyone knew this was a bad idea, and the truly curious thing is, how does anyone who greenlit this on any level still have a job? Stadia had a narrow set of interesting use cases around features deeply integrated with Google products: Zero of them were ready for launch, and I think all but one are still unavailable today. The value for gamers is debateable at best, but exclusive titles would be the only serious way to draw a bunch of people to Stadia outside of that... and if Google is unable to make the business justification to develop Stadia exclusives, neither will anyone else.
    • bastawhiz 6y ago
      It's only been a failure because of the lack of games. The tech (at least to me) feels fine. Which is honestly the worst part—it _could_ be a success but the business side is broken.
      • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        Right... I thought as an idea, it was perfectly sound. The types of technology required to make cloud gaming work seemed to play to Google's strengths. They just really screwed up on the content side. And, well, anecdotally I've heard the tech isn't so great either compared to Google's peers—no idea how that happened, really.
• rco8786 6y ago
  This is totally the right move. I am a (very happy) user of Stadia. If you haven't tried it, you really should...it's an amazing piece of tech. I can find myself with 20-30 minutes worth of downtime during the day, fire up Cyberpunk 2077 or Hitman or Assassin's Creed in moments from my browser *on a macbook* and play at high settings with no noticeable lag. Obviously you need a strong, steady internet connection for Stadia to shine, but I'd guess that the HN crowd skews towards that. If you're an old gamer who wants to play newer games but doesn't have a ton of time and don't want to drop $1k+ on a gaming rig, check out Stadia. The game library does leave a lot to be desired, no question about that. But this decision seems to be the right move to mitigate that by giving developers better access to getting their games on Stadia rather than Google trying to be both the platform and the content.
  • muppetman 6y ago
    Great that it works where you are, I assume the US. Here in New Zealand of course it's not launched. So while I can pick one of any other consoles/devices to play games on, Stadia isn't one of them. If you can't reach more than one country, why would anyone want to develop for it?
    • cheeze 6y ago
      Stadia is supported in 21 countries though. A majority of NA and EU. Totally feel for you, but similar to anything that requires a decent internet connection, NZ and AUS get left in the dust
      • mdoms 6y ago
        NZ has excellent internet speeds.
        • jankeymeulen 6y ago
          Stadia needs low latency to a Google DC. There are plenty of such DCs in the US and Europe, but not in NZ.
• cryptoquick 6y ago
  Imagine it being a banner year for PC gaming during a pandemic, and then shutting down your cloud gaming service. It's almost like Google can easily make their money elsewhere, so they don't have to make their money any other way, or even put in the work to make it work.
• echelon 6y ago
  $10,000 long bet that Google kills Stadia by 2025.
• nikolay 6y ago
  Microsoft shutdown Invoke - I got a $50 voucher and I still can use the device as a bluetooth speaker. What happens with my Stadio investment in hardware when they shut it down soon?! How many times we need to say: "Not again!" investing any time with a new product/service from Google?! My daughter got a Pixel 3a - it has so many issues and Google won't fix saying it has to do with my carrier. Their forums are flooded with people from different carriers having the same issues, but, not, they blame Bluetooth problems to T-Mobile! Same with Google Home Max - I bought one wanted to buy another until it's gone (when it was $179) just to be brought back at full price ($299) and then be gone again! Same with Google OnHub - I bought it, then it became unsupported and gone! Google cannot run a business, they really don't know how to protect their brand, and never fail to piss off everybody and especially their early adopters!
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    > What happens with my Stadio investment in hardware when they shut it down soon?! My guess: Hardware, they say "it's still a Bluetooth game controller and a Chromecast, they can be used as those things". Software: They give you some Steam codes for the games you bought on Stadia.
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Hardware, they say "it's still a Bluetooth game controller and a Chromecast, they can be used as those things". IIRC, it only works as a bluetooth controller with Stadia (either supported Chromecast or Chrome web app); otherwise, it is only a wired USB controller.
      • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
        ...lol. Well, I guess it's a USB controller at least. I would hope standard Bluetooth game controller compatibility could be pushed as an update though.
• hnburnsy 6y ago
  GraceFromGoogle at r/stadia... "Hi everyone, I completely understand your emotions surrounding the news, so I wanted to chime in with a couple more thoughts. Please note that Stadia.com, Stadia Pro, and your games aren’t going anywhere. In fact, we’ll keep bringing more games to the platform and Stadia Pro. We had an exciting launch with Cyberpunk 2077 back in December, and the Stadia team is dedicated to bringing even more titles to the platform this year.“
  • TheJoYo 6y ago
    Which games? They are completely opaque with everything from the release all the way up to the uplay+ roll-out. There really isn't anything left to take their word on anymore.
• readyoubestbook 6y ago
  Google seems to be best in creating - or buying and scaling - a platform to let "creatives" make "things". They simply time after time seem to confirm that they just can not be "creative" themselves but they do build great technologies. And from a technical perspective Stadia does makes sense, you just seem to be making an interactive YouTube?
• mongol 6y ago
  I am completely out of the loop on games. The only game-related thing that is of the slightest interest to me is Microsoft's new flight simulator. Is it in the cards that it will become available on a streaming platform?
• joe_91 6y ago
  Why doesn't good spin off these amazing projects into their own companies and have 3,5,10 year goals associated with these projects. Like I get the need to shut something down if there's no product market fit but at least when you've got pretty much unlimited free money give it a good shot. The way projects such as Stadia are structured now just shows how only incentivising the launching of a new product/project is not the right way to go about things. You also need, people with a long term vision willing to see a project through and enough resources given to a project. If this was spun off into its own entity it could easily raise money and become a proper competitor to Sony/Microsoft...
• flipcoder 6y ago
  Well that didn't last long
• f6v 6y ago
  Mark my words: there’s going to be a “Stadia going forward” obituary in the next year or two.
• timwaagh 6y ago
  Stadia is a good idea that did not reach its potential. But the same can be said about just about anything Google launches these days. I'm starting to get worried about waymo in particular. Perhaps it will not see any of the necessary investments either.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  What an embarrassment. They showed off so many groundbreaking features that are only possible playing via the cloud then turned it into just another game streaming service.
• qzx_pierri 6y ago
  We all knew this was going to happen. All Google products outside of Gmail/Drive/Youtube are monetized side projects.
• devin 6y ago
  My friend asked me if I'd tried Stadia. "What's Google Stadia?" I replied.
• Phlarp 6y ago
  Seems like Google is really streamlining the process between optimistic launch of a new product and it's eventual demise. Is anyone collecting objective data on the average lifespan of google products that aren't search, ads or maps?
  • eitland 6y ago
    https://gcemetery.co https://gcemetery.co shows start, end and lifespan for each product. also: https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com
• f430 6y ago
  You'd think after OnLive's failure Google might have learned a few lessons. It just doesn't work. Not until we have 6G everywhere at very low cost and even then it won't be as good as running games off your own machine.
  • CyberDildonics 6y ago
    Why would 6G make it work and why would it be better than hard wired internet?
• gbolcer 6y ago
  Gamestonk should buy them & raise some Google Ventures funds to see how far they can take it. Both Stadia and Geoforce Now, while not for most of the games I play, do have their place.
• m4rtink 6y ago
  http://stadiacountdown.com/ http://stadiacountdown.com/ (Maybe that's actually a bit too optimistic. ;-) )
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• alm1 6y ago
  I'm surprised at all the negative comments equating closure of the _game stuido_ to Stadia not doing well. Google is not known for good content production. Only example I can think of are Youtube Originals which hardly stand out. I read the announcement as Google doubling down on title acquisition which probably worked out well. Cyberpunk was the largest game release last year (last 5 years?) and seemingly very popular on Stadia. Other titles they have (RDR2, Doom, Odyssey) are also among the best games of the last few years. Personally, I never played any of the non-AAA titles on Stadia and would imagine most users are in a similar boat. Just doesn't make much sense to use a streaming service for low-key games I can play on my laptop directly. This is a big difference from early Netflix model, where they went for quantity. My guess is that the internal studio failed to pitch any competitive titles and was disbanded. Makes sense to focus on the plumbing, while leaving titles to external studios who know how to do it well.
  • athrowaway23524 6y ago
    My read is that Google has soured on Stadia but needs to wind it down slowly to manage their image, and because Gamers are notorious for taking bad news badly. The studio goes now. Hedged with a commitment to bringing you yesterday's games next year, from a skeleton crew of portfolio managers. Next, the GPU clusters will track GCP usage, not the PC hardware hype cycle. Cloud GPU users only need commodity compute; Gamers want ray tracing cores, AI processors, the latest DirectX features, yadda yadda. The enthusiast hardware market is a well-oiled marketing machine. Stadia, by virtue of running on a platform that only buys workhorse cores, will become increasingly hostile towards gaming use-cases. Studios won't waste time porting an unreleased game to oddball hardware. Stadia probably doesn't have the subscriber numbers to make the juice worth the squeeze. Last comes the email that your Stadia games will be accessible until June 202X. Alternatively, they might actually think they have a chance to succeed from the publisher & platform angle. Everything will look fine internally until the fund dries up because publisher bets are multi-year affairs and exclusivity is expensive. Best case, they have a hit and people subscribe long enough to play it. Now find another hit, no big deal. Most likely case, they don't find a hit in time. These kinds of publisher funds only get funded once.
• notadev 6y ago
  I bet they just acquire Crayta to have their own Roblox-like game with more realism.
• Traster 6y ago
  I think this just reinforces the fact that Google isn't a content company. They aren't producing video games for the same reason that Cobra Kai is now a Netflix production. Google doesn't have what it takes to adapt to a new market and actually adapt. Can I view the exact pixel your eye browses to whilst playing a video game and use that to sell you incontinence pads? No. Well then Google isn't interested. This is unfortunate, because this is exactly what killed Intel. Funneling tonnes of cash into businesses they didn't understand and then failed in because they had no idea how they were going to capture any more value from their core market that share holders had already accounted for.
• s1k3s 6y ago
  Love how the same community that trashes Google for killing their products is also trashing them on every single attempt at building one. It doesn't work in my country which means it sucks. It doesn't have whatever game I want which means it sucks. It doesn't work on my crap WIFI (although they explicitly say you need a powerful internet connection) which means it sucks, and so on. I think Stadia is one of the few really innovative products released in the gaming world in years. Everyone else is just pumping their money into sales & marketing and you keep buying their products year after year, even though there's nothing new to them. Perhaps they wouldn't kill more than half of the projects they start if you'd give them some real feedback on how to improve them instead of constantly throw shit at them like they owe you something.
  • Trasmatta 6y ago
    > I think Stadia is one of the few really innovative products released in the gaming world in years It's not really innovative though, Google was not even close to the first company to try cloud gaming. OnLive started in 2010. PS Now started in 2014. It was a bad implementation for a number of reasons, and Google should be criticized for it.
• radium3d 6y ago
  I have zero interest in remote terminal gaming. No thank you. Not sure if I'm the only one?
  • rolph 6y ago
    no you are not. i used to be very interested in gaming until the trend toward remote terminal consoles began. I havent bought a game[among other digiassets] for some time. If its not on physical media, if it requires an internet connection to even see runtime, im not interested anymore.
• javchz 6y ago
  Honest question. What will happen if Google shut down stadia with the games I purchased? That's the main issue I have with the platform, will be a refund or even a steam / epic key after? I loved Google Play Music, Reader, Hangouts and god knows how many chat apps google have made over the years to later kill. Still don't get why they don't better just make a startup with the idea and be like a VC, as right now it's really hard to trust any "made by google", it's almost a meme that will not last long.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• galaxyLogic 6y ago
  I think a cloud game-platform should focus on allowing avatars jumping between the games, you know multi-dimensional star-ports. When and enemy is chasing you in one game, you could perhaps escape into another.
• MarcScott 6y ago
  FWIW, I paid for and played RDR2, AC Odyssey and Valhalla on Stadia, and thoroughly enjoyed them both, on my outdated laptop. I'm old enough not to worry about microsecond lag, as my reaction times are by far the biggest factor. I'd be sad if Stadia was eventually shuttered, but I haven't invested a significant amount of money, compared to building a rig, and have no intention of replaying games that I've already run through.
• huffmsa 6y ago
  15 months until they announced it's gon, 25 until they shutter it
• brodock 6y ago
  I am really happy this didn't succeed. Google is the type of company with the wrong incentives to screw up the whole gaming industry turning them into marketing data mining, microtransactions ad machines.
• gafferongames 6y ago
  Google Stadia was a move in the right direction but it didn't go far enough. We need to deploy edge compute nodes in every home. We'll call them "consoles".
• whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  Google never puts the real effort required into any of these platforms like Stadia or VR. They give it five minutes and if it’s not an instant success just run away from it and give up. Building a game platform takes time and gamers need a reason to be there.
• gordon_freeman 6y ago
  The concept of Stadia is mind-blowing but execution is not so much. I got Stadia controller+Chomecast Ultra free as I have YT Premium subscription and enjoying* playing a few games (Example: Tomb Raider is pretty good on Stadia) but as much as I like the concept of playing any game without worrying about buying console or PC and thinking of how much higher the hardware specs required to run the game, It hurts to know in a couple of years Stadia is still struggling with expanding its game availability in any meaningful way. I am always nervous of buying a game thinking if the service would be discontinued by Google then I'd lose my content library. Google really needs to make sure to add every major game title (past classics/platinum hits and future titles) on Stadia to really compete with Xbox or PS here. * For anyone curious: I have 120 mbps internet connection and Stadia works fine on it.
• chillfox 6y ago
  Honestly, As someone who lives 3000+ km from the closest cloud data centre (cable length is closer to 4000 km) I hope that this technology fails. It would really suck if a significant amount of games ended up being exclusively available through streaming.
• zeouter 6y ago
  Heart really goes out to the staff at these studios, that really sucks.
• 1MachineElf 6y ago
  Last year Google axed the Chromecast Ultra specifically so they could re-introduce it but with Stadia support. Given that context, this move is shocking.
• facorreia 6y ago
  The only way I would even consider buying a game on the Stadia platform is if Google provided a money-back guarantee for if (or when?) it joins Google Graveyard.
• bogwog 6y ago
  Google doesn't know how to compete. They're used to just releasing something and having hundreds of millions of customers overnight. It seems like if that doesn't happen, the leadership immediately blames the product rather than themselves. This is the main reason I hate Google. They're one of the largest corporations in the world, they have immense resources and power to move the human race forward. Yet they don't. Some might attribute it to laziness, or stupidity. And maybe it's both, but those are symptoms, and the root cause is the lack of competition allowed to fester by the flaccid noodle that is our government. Break them up already!
• cloudking 6y ago
  They forgot one thing, hardcore gamers that play AAA titles already have PCs or consoles.. and next gen consoles just got released. It's a good idea, just too early for the market.
• bullen 6y ago
  Humans don't understand motion-to-photon latency. Humans also don't understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
• ineedasername 6y ago
  This should be a warning to anyone thinking of buying games locked up in a service that is subject to the poor strategic roll out & eventual cancellation that Google will probably announce in a year or so.
• yyyk 6y ago
  The problem with Stadia is the its value proposition is in conflict with its technical direction and in conflict with its business strategy - the former is manageable, the latter will kill Stadia. Stadia has an decent proposition for cheap casual gamers, everywhere else you have a better option. These are however the lowest value gamers for most game companies, at least the ones that build AAA games. However, the technical direction is overbuilt for some (mostly unused as of yet) special capabilities. So the companies that go for casual gamers have to port/build their product with no support. Result: both casual and AAA companies just go for different more profitable platforms. In addition, the type of gamers with the most benefit from Stadia are the ones least likely to hear about it. Google doesn't market it directly anywhere as much as it could. That means you need some kind of external support for marketing - like, say, Android's many many resellers. The game equivalent would be exclusives. But there's no good reason for an AAA company to agree (again, relatively low-value gamers). In short, Google needs to either admit Stadia is a casual platform and manage it appropriately - or pivot into a very different type of platform focused on things only cloud gaming could do, which may well require making its own games if others don't care about the capabilities. Closing its own studios probably kills the latter option, but it's not enough to make a pivot into casual. Since Google is unlikely to do it (casual is a lower status thing), I expect Stadia to be closed within 3-5 years.
• coldtea 6y ago
  Of course it does... What kind of Google project would it be if it didn't shut down?
• canibal57 6y ago
  My experience with this platform seems to be completely antithetical to most people's and this article's proposal. They just released Madden, meaning they've made a deal with EA. Clearly no one cared about exclusive games. Everyone in the sphere wants this to be a console without a console. Which it is, and better, because any screen. If the gaming media anti-hype is the downfall of this product, I and others, will be sorely disappointed. I hadn't gamed in years, because, being an adult, I couldn't justify a purchase of over $150 on a console purely for gaming, this was a no-brainer, especially during quarantine. And coming from catching up on Steam on a 5yr old Linux box with a mildly upgraded video card, it was easily worth it to play mainstream titles with no compatibility concerns. I was super skeptical at first, but have been won over by any-browser playability, and server-grade performance, with only mild bugs.
• JeremyNT 6y ago
  I really wanted to check out Stadia! It seemed like it might be a decent value and a good way to play recent games without a high powered PC. Unfortunately, I have the latest Google chromecast with Google tv... and it doesn't support Stadia. I swear it seems like Google is entirely unable to commit to anything new. How much have they wasted on Stadia? What do they have to show for it? Dabbling and half assing everything, pissing away money only to pull the plug. I'm glad they didn't bother to support their flagship chromecast for this thing, so I never wasted any time on it. At this point it's clearly destined for the Google graveyard.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sitkack 6y ago
  Google's attention span is so short that it can't not throw the baby out with the bath water.
• pjmlp 6y ago
  That was to be expected, Google definitely has no idea how to talk with game studios. Every time they do talks, it is all about KPI, Play console and user acquisition (marketing), almost never about SDKs, rendering techniques, tools, anything that what Intel, AMD, ARM, Apple, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo regularly do at GDC and their own conferences.
• thatgerhard 6y ago
  This is why I don't sign up for new Google things anymore..
• blacklight 6y ago
  I'm wondering why they didn't think of this from the very beginning. The idea of running a game on the cloud and letting users play it from any device as long as they have an internet connection is surely interesting. But if you want to convince gamers who have already spent lots of money for their beefy gaming machines to switch, you'd better provide them with content - especially exclusive titles. And, let's be honest, the content was extremely scarce, and in many cases it wasn't anything that you wouldn't already find for standard PC. Google tried to play both the part of the platform developer and game producer without having any experience on the latter, and it expectedly failed. When Stadia was announced I remember that my first reaction was "why don't they just provide the platform to gaming companies and let them develop their titles, instead of trying to do everything in-house?" Now, more than one year later, it seems that they've reached the exact same conclusion.
• kovac 6y ago
  I'm wondering why a company like Microsoft didn't try this who I feel is far better poised to create something like Stadia. They already have publishers for both Windows and XBox so they could support anyone one of those platforms on cloud infrastructure so that it's no cost to the publishers. Microsoft also has the necessary cloud infrastructure as well as a player base. So, if this product makes sense, what's holding them back?
• nottorp 6y ago
  Google cancels (ok, winds down for now) new project they launched with a lot of fanfare. Anyone surprised? This was predicted on launch day.
• pjmlp 6y ago
  Game developers point of view on the decision. https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/cloud-gaming-should-be-a-service-not-a-platform-and-it-looks-like-google-is-starting-to-realise-that/amp/ https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/cloud-gaming-should-be-a...