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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

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
    Because of how Google's internal performance evaluation works. You need to ship and show user growth. You are effectively punished for making improvements and fixes that do not have a clear connection to user growth.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    So another company can't.
  - Exmoor 6y ago
    Cynical answer: Because at big tech companies culture leads them to believe they have to have a competing product in every new market rather than letting their "competitors" go unopposed. Occasionally it works out, but often you just get a ton of also-rans. The companies are so big a profitable that even complete failure barely moves the stock price. Nobody is incentivized to point out the proverbial emperor has no clothes. Top execs have something they can point to as "innovation" for a few quarters. Lower leadership for the project has their kingdom expanded and probably comes out the other end better off career wise. I would imagine its most frustrating for the actual IC's and PM's who pour their lives into something that eventually just gets unceremoniously deprecated, but they get to cash some pretty good paychecks and it probably helps their careers as well.
    - adrr 6y ago
      How do you increase revenue/stock price in meaningful way without expanding into other markets? Google does these half ass attempts with minimal risk. They could be a major player in cloud computing, IoT etc. Amazon is dominating these areas with Ring and AWS.
      - dralley 6y ago
        You can do a few things well, or many things poorly. Google used to be the former but they've shifted towards the latter over time.
  - ballenf 6y ago
    When you have Google's resources and talent, you probably need a reason not to do these kinds of things. If a product has a decent chance of generating revenue or building out consumer profiles or reaching a new demographic and doesn't undermine the ads business, it has a shot of being pursued. For gaming, I bet you could make a strong case that Google needs another hook into younger users who will stop using Google search the second their phone changes default search engines. Kind of an insurance policy. The psychological profiles of users that could be built are also kinda terrifying. Hopefully that's not a part of the business case for Stadia. Finally there's a case to be made for synergy with Youtube and its efforts to compete with Twitch.
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    Senior engineer retention program?
  - curiousllama 6y ago
    Think of it like there’s generally two ways to innovate. 1) Old-school Waterfall: evaluate, commit, and then build (Tesla, Apple, 2000s MSFT are examples) 2) Spray and Pray: build, evaluate, and then commit (Facebook, Amazon are examples) Google is 2
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  I expect this is true. Perhaps Jade Raymond will start a service like Stadia and do this. It would be an excellent move on her part.
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  I think they know that it’s a sub standard product that is “good enough” for today but it will never be good enough for a use case like VR. I think the future of gaming is in ultra low latency, high resolution experiences and people will look at Stadia like a silent film from the 1920s. Also it’s clear that by getting rid of their reference developer they don’t have the appetite to dog food Stadia for themselves. There is a secondary and tertiary reason Apple and Microsoft write software for their platforms, it’s to 2) serve as a reference for other developers what is possible and 3) iron out the bugs in their SDKs. Google doesn’t take that seriously and it shows us the Stadia is already starting to wind down.
  - fathermocker 6y ago
    Stadia already has very low latency. Maybe not enough for VR, but it's still an impressive achievement.
  - topkai22 6y ago
    I think you are right that Google isn’t taking it seriously, but one of the futures of gaming is subscription streaming, for basically the same reasons as video. Streaming can dramatically improve user experience by making it trival to acquire or switch between games, and subscription revenue allows providers to sponsor the creation of content that doesn't make financial sense in a individual purchase model- think games that strongly appeal to a single demo or amazing, but short, experiences.
- causality0 6y ago
  Bingo. They didn't even bother to include Stadia support in the latest Chromecast. To me that says nobody high up at Google cares about Stadia in a meaningful way. At this point I'm taking bets on how much Play Store credit Stadia subscribers are going to receive when the service shuts down and all their purchased games evaporate. The saddest part is, the technology works well. Really well. If Stadia had launched as a Netflix for games it would be very successful. Paying full price for individual games that stop existing as soon as Google gets bored? That's a dangerous investment my friend.
  - tclancy 6y ago
    Do you mean the Google TV? Because Chromecast Ultra has been how you use Stadia from the start. Google TV support is apparently coming this year but yeah, I am suspicious of the whole thing. Worst case, I am out $60 for the controller and not all my email or something.
    - notatoad 6y ago
      the latest chromecast is the "Chromecast with Google TV", also called the 3rd-gen chromecast. The Chromecast ultra is the previous generation. https://store.google.com/ca/product/chromecast_google_tv https://store.google.com/ca/product/chromecast_google_tv
      - the-dude 6y ago
        That is one of the most obnoxious sales pages I have seen in a while. WTF is up with the scrolling?
        mikestew 6y ago
        Meh, another HN complainer going on about<click>...OMG, what the hell is up with that web page?! That some truly nausea-inducing scroll behavior. Is there a RNG behind it somewhere?
    - causality0 6y ago
- notatoad 6y ago
  but up until now they did apparently have funding to be running an internal studio? seems like those funds could have been better spent bribing tv companies like the parent is suggesting.
  - username90 6y ago
    Google is a company of engineers. Engineers solve problems by building stuff, not by bribing companies. I think the main exception is Android and Ads, which also happens to be the main parts of Google I disagree with...
    - tjalfi 6y ago
      Building successful platforms isn't about engineering - many well-engineered platforms were market failures. You have to enable third parties to be successful. Steve Yegge's Google platform rant[0] discusses this topic in detail. If your platform isn't popular then you need to provide incentives for developers to target it. "Each of the people we spoke with, who asked to be granted anonymity due to ongoing employment in the video game industry, echoed this sentiment — and said Google simply wasn't offering enough money, in addition to several other concerns." [1] The interviewed developers also have doubts about whether Stadia has a future. "This concern — that Google might just give up on Stadia at some point and kill the service, as it has done with so many other services over the years — was repeatedly brought up, unprompted, by every person we spoke with for this piece." [1] [0] https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-so-few-games-on-google-stadia-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-so-few-games-on-goog...
      - username90 6y ago
        I know, it was kind of a jab at engineers since I listed two of Googles most successful parts as their most business driven parts.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Google is like a rich guy who switches hobbies. He may have real musical talent, but he'll never put in the blood, sweat & tears for the band to make it big.
  - danellis 6y ago
    Google has ADHD.
    - Lopiolis 6y ago
      Have they tried Ritalin? I hear it helps quite a bit.
- SR2Z 6y ago
  There are like 700 full time engineers working on it. That's not a side project.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wronglebowski 6y ago
There was recently an article about Stadia where a developer from a decent sized studio claimed they were approached by Google for Stadia. What did Google offer for the developer to bring the game to Stadia? Almost nothing. The figure was in the tens of thousands. For reference when Microsoft/Epic approaches the studios for games on their platforms they front the entire development cost. Sometimes millions of dollars. Google is just cheap and won’t invest in their own platform. Direct quote: "We were approached by the Stadia team," one prominent indie developer told me. "Usually with that kind of thing, they lead with some kind of offer that would give you an incentive to go with them." But the incentive "was kind of non-existent," they said. "That's the short of it." https://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-so-few-games-on-google-stadia-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-so-few-games-on-goog...
- Jare 6y ago
  > when Microsoft/Epic approaches the studios for games on their platforms they front the entire development cost We once had a Microsoft rep come visit us to get us to publish our upcoming mobile games for Windows Mobile Tablet notreallysurewhatwasthatanymore. When we asked what kind of support they were ready to provide, they offered to lend us a device for a few weeks. Of course it's not representative of how things should happen, but for every big partnership or exclusive you read about, there's a dozen dumb wastes of time.
  - lrae 6y ago
    Yeah, not sure where the idea comes from that Microsoft fronts like the entire development cost for ... for what even? As a publisher? Sure, maybe. For games coming to Game Pass? No. Same for the EGS, it's not like they front all those games. (Most exclusivity is bought way later in the process.) But the original comment is pretty much Windows Phone back then. To this day I have no idea why Microsoft was so cheap and didn't even try to get developers on their platform. Rip Lumias, some of you were some great devices.
    - wronglebowski 6y ago
Jabbles 6y ago
Sounds like a lot of effort, why not just put an ad on the Chrome new tab page? https://9to5google.com/2020/10/23/google-chrome-shopping-new-tab-page/#:~:text=An%20experiment%20in%20newer%20versions,what%20are%20essentially%20shopping%20ads.&text=This%20new%20module%20shows%20ads,they're%20not%20entirely%20random https://9to5google.com/2020/10/23/google-chrome-shopping-new....
jayd16 6y ago
Stadia could already be on those TVs. Google/Android TV has built in chromecast support but Stadia doesn't register these as a supported chromecast. I think its probably some technical issue or they don't want to risk getting a bad reputation by supporting a wide list of semi-compatible devices.
p1necone 6y ago
Not enough people have consistently fast internet without data caps for this to work. Can you imagine the backlash when everyones tv with "included game console" turns out to be a stuttery laggy mess?
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  Moreover, the people with really fantastic Internet access tend to also be the same people that can afford to buy a console or gaming pc instead.
washadjeffmad 6y ago
I don't know if this is a consideration, but the reason Sony's PlayStation 3 included "OtherOS" feature was so that it would be classified as a computer instead of a gaming console to avoid a stiff import tax. I wonder if there's a difference between making Stadia available via an app store and having it pre-installed or advertised as a core function of the device?
paulpan 6y ago
Sounds like the right approach, and it seems Google is slowly moving in that direction...starting with this decision. As others have commented, it was pure hubris for Google (and Rick Osterloh) to believe they could just start a new game studio and use it to fuel growth of the Stadia streaming platform. Xbox surely would've died without Halo! This "do it all myself" approach needs to start with building a massive user base upon which to lure other game developers and TV manufacturers - not the other way around. A telling sign is that the newest Google TV dongle doesn't yet support Stadia... From a hardware technical standpoint, I think most TV manufacturers don't include a powerful enough SOC from which to run a Stadia app (e.g. a built-in Chromecast != Chromecast dongle). There's also some server-side compatibility issues that we're not aware of.
renewiltord 6y ago
Google generally doesn't do BD that well. I think it's something to do with their start as a consumer-facing company. They prefer making a thing and then marketing it rather than using partnerships to get in. The Android stuff seemed to suffer quite a bit from this early on, though they seem to have a handle on it now.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
smileybarry 6y ago
> Most smart TVs these days are more than fast enough to stream HD broadcast. I don't understand why Google doesn't push this. A lot of them have pretty bad game mode latency, though, which isn't a problem with home consoles but start to become a problem once you add streaming latency. Then some of them have >10ms decode latency, and all of it starts to ramp up the delay.
oliwarner 6y ago
Hey Google, show me the perfect antitrust suit. Seriously though, I think Microsoft and Sony would scream the house down if Google made movements like this. They may not be monopoly holders in console gaming, but you think that would stop a suit like that being heard?
de6u99er 6y ago
You can call me old-school but I prefer to play on PS5 and Switch. If I only have 20min time, ai wouldn't even bother start playing.

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
  Because of how Google's internal performance evaluation works. You need to ship and show user growth. You are effectively punished for making improvements and fixes that do not have a clear connection to user growth.
- Lammy 6y ago
  So another company can't.
- Exmoor 6y ago
  Cynical answer: Because at big tech companies culture leads them to believe they have to have a competing product in every new market rather than letting their "competitors" go unopposed. Occasionally it works out, but often you just get a ton of also-rans. The companies are so big a profitable that even complete failure barely moves the stock price. Nobody is incentivized to point out the proverbial emperor has no clothes. Top execs have something they can point to as "innovation" for a few quarters. Lower leadership for the project has their kingdom expanded and probably comes out the other end better off career wise. I would imagine its most frustrating for the actual IC's and PM's who pour their lives into something that eventually just gets unceremoniously deprecated, but they get to cash some pretty good paychecks and it probably helps their careers as well.
  - adrr 6y ago
    How do you increase revenue/stock price in meaningful way without expanding into other markets? Google does these half ass attempts with minimal risk. They could be a major player in cloud computing, IoT etc. Amazon is dominating these areas with Ring and AWS.
    - dralley 6y ago
      You can do a few things well, or many things poorly. Google used to be the former but they've shifted towards the latter over time.
- ballenf 6y ago
  When you have Google's resources and talent, you probably need a reason not to do these kinds of things. If a product has a decent chance of generating revenue or building out consumer profiles or reaching a new demographic and doesn't undermine the ads business, it has a shot of being pursued. For gaming, I bet you could make a strong case that Google needs another hook into younger users who will stop using Google search the second their phone changes default search engines. Kind of an insurance policy. The psychological profiles of users that could be built are also kinda terrifying. Hopefully that's not a part of the business case for Stadia. Finally there's a case to be made for synergy with Youtube and its efforts to compete with Twitch.
- moron4hire 6y ago
  Senior engineer retention program?
- curiousllama 6y ago
  Think of it like there’s generally two ways to innovate. 1) Old-school Waterfall: evaluate, commit, and then build (Tesla, Apple, 2000s MSFT are examples) 2) Spray and Pray: build, evaluate, and then commit (Facebook, Amazon are examples) Google is 2
ChuckMcM 6y ago
I expect this is true. Perhaps Jade Raymond will start a service like Stadia and do this. It would be an excellent move on her part.
birdyrooster 6y ago
I think they know that it’s a sub standard product that is “good enough” for today but it will never be good enough for a use case like VR. I think the future of gaming is in ultra low latency, high resolution experiences and people will look at Stadia like a silent film from the 1920s. Also it’s clear that by getting rid of their reference developer they don’t have the appetite to dog food Stadia for themselves. There is a secondary and tertiary reason Apple and Microsoft write software for their platforms, it’s to 2) serve as a reference for other developers what is possible and 3) iron out the bugs in their SDKs. Google doesn’t take that seriously and it shows us the Stadia is already starting to wind down.
- fathermocker 6y ago
  Stadia already has very low latency. Maybe not enough for VR, but it's still an impressive achievement.
- topkai22 6y ago
  I think you are right that Google isn’t taking it seriously, but one of the futures of gaming is subscription streaming, for basically the same reasons as video. Streaming can dramatically improve user experience by making it trival to acquire or switch between games, and subscription revenue allows providers to sponsor the creation of content that doesn't make financial sense in a individual purchase model- think games that strongly appeal to a single demo or amazing, but short, experiences.
causality0 6y ago
Bingo. They didn't even bother to include Stadia support in the latest Chromecast. To me that says nobody high up at Google cares about Stadia in a meaningful way. At this point I'm taking bets on how much Play Store credit Stadia subscribers are going to receive when the service shuts down and all their purchased games evaporate. The saddest part is, the technology works well. Really well. If Stadia had launched as a Netflix for games it would be very successful. Paying full price for individual games that stop existing as soon as Google gets bored? That's a dangerous investment my friend.
- tclancy 6y ago
  Do you mean the Google TV? Because Chromecast Ultra has been how you use Stadia from the start. Google TV support is apparently coming this year but yeah, I am suspicious of the whole thing. Worst case, I am out $60 for the controller and not all my email or something.
  - notatoad 6y ago
    the latest chromecast is the "Chromecast with Google TV", also called the 3rd-gen chromecast. The Chromecast ultra is the previous generation. https://store.google.com/ca/product/chromecast_google_tv https://store.google.com/ca/product/chromecast_google_tv
    - the-dude 6y ago
      That is one of the most obnoxious sales pages I have seen in a while. WTF is up with the scrolling?
      - mikestew 6y ago
        Meh, another HN complainer going on about<click>...OMG, what the hell is up with that web page?! That some truly nausea-inducing scroll behavior. Is there a RNG behind it somewhere?
  - causality0 6y ago
notatoad 6y ago
but up until now they did apparently have funding to be running an internal studio? seems like those funds could have been better spent bribing tv companies like the parent is suggesting.
- username90 6y ago
  Google is a company of engineers. Engineers solve problems by building stuff, not by bribing companies. I think the main exception is Android and Ads, which also happens to be the main parts of Google I disagree with...
  - tjalfi 6y ago
    Building successful platforms isn't about engineering - many well-engineered platforms were market failures. You have to enable third parties to be successful. Steve Yegge's Google platform rant[0] discusses this topic in detail. If your platform isn't popular then you need to provide incentives for developers to target it. "Each of the people we spoke with, who asked to be granted anonymity due to ongoing employment in the video game industry, echoed this sentiment — and said Google simply wasn't offering enough money, in addition to several other concerns." [1] The interviewed developers also have doubts about whether Stadia has a future. "This concern — that Google might just give up on Stadia at some point and kill the service, as it has done with so many other services over the years — was repeatedly brought up, unprompted, by every person we spoke with for this piece." [1] [0] https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-so-few-games-on-google-stadia-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-so-few-games-on-goog...
    - username90 6y ago
      I know, it was kind of a jab at engineers since I listed two of Googles most successful parts as their most business driven parts.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Google is like a rich guy who switches hobbies. He may have real musical talent, but he'll never put in the blood, sweat & tears for the band to make it big.
- danellis 6y ago
  Google has ADHD.
  - Lopiolis 6y ago
    Have they tried Ritalin? I hear it helps quite a bit.
SR2Z 6y ago
There are like 700 full time engineers working on it. That's not a side project.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wronglebowski 6y ago

There was recently an article about Stadia where a developer from a decent sized studio claimed they were approached by Google for Stadia. What did Google offer for the developer to bring the game to Stadia? Almost nothing. The figure was in the tens of thousands. For reference when Microsoft/Epic approaches the studios for games on their platforms they front the entire development cost. Sometimes millions of dollars. Google is just cheap and won’t invest in their own platform. Direct quote: "We were approached by the Stadia team," one prominent indie developer told me. "Usually with that kind of thing, they lead with some kind of offer that would give you an incentive to go with them." But the incentive "was kind of non-existent," they said. "That's the short of it." https://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-so-few-games-on-google-stadia-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-so-few-games-on-goog...

Jare 6y ago
> when Microsoft/Epic approaches the studios for games on their platforms they front the entire development cost We once had a Microsoft rep come visit us to get us to publish our upcoming mobile games for Windows Mobile Tablet notreallysurewhatwasthatanymore. When we asked what kind of support they were ready to provide, they offered to lend us a device for a few weeks. Of course it's not representative of how things should happen, but for every big partnership or exclusive you read about, there's a dozen dumb wastes of time.
- lrae 6y ago
  Yeah, not sure where the idea comes from that Microsoft fronts like the entire development cost for ... for what even? As a publisher? Sure, maybe. For games coming to Game Pass? No. Same for the EGS, it's not like they front all those games. (Most exclusivity is bought way later in the process.) But the original comment is pretty much Windows Phone back then. To this day I have no idea why Microsoft was so cheap and didn't even try to get developers on their platform. Rip Lumias, some of you were some great devices.
  - wronglebowski 6y ago

Jabbles 6y ago

Sounds like a lot of effort, why not just put an ad on the Chrome new tab page? https://9to5google.com/2020/10/23/google-chrome-shopping-new-tab-page/#:~:text=An%20experiment%20in%20newer%20versions,what%20are%20essentially%20shopping%20ads.&text=This%20new%20module%20shows%20ads,they're%20not%20entirely%20random https://9to5google.com/2020/10/23/google-chrome-shopping-new....

jayd16 6y ago

Stadia could already be on those TVs. Google/Android TV has built in chromecast support but Stadia doesn't register these as a supported chromecast. I think its probably some technical issue or they don't want to risk getting a bad reputation by supporting a wide list of semi-compatible devices.

p1necone 6y ago

Not enough people have consistently fast internet without data caps for this to work. Can you imagine the backlash when everyones tv with "included game console" turns out to be a stuttery laggy mess?

alasdair_ 6y ago
Moreover, the people with really fantastic Internet access tend to also be the same people that can afford to buy a console or gaming pc instead.

washadjeffmad 6y ago

I don't know if this is a consideration, but the reason Sony's PlayStation 3 included "OtherOS" feature was so that it would be classified as a computer instead of a gaming console to avoid a stiff import tax. I wonder if there's a difference between making Stadia available via an app store and having it pre-installed or advertised as a core function of the device?

paulpan 6y ago

Sounds like the right approach, and it seems Google is slowly moving in that direction...starting with this decision. As others have commented, it was pure hubris for Google (and Rick Osterloh) to believe they could just start a new game studio and use it to fuel growth of the Stadia streaming platform. Xbox surely would've died without Halo! This "do it all myself" approach needs to start with building a massive user base upon which to lure other game developers and TV manufacturers - not the other way around. A telling sign is that the newest Google TV dongle doesn't yet support Stadia... From a hardware technical standpoint, I think most TV manufacturers don't include a powerful enough SOC from which to run a Stadia app (e.g. a built-in Chromecast != Chromecast dongle). There's also some server-side compatibility issues that we're not aware of.

renewiltord 6y ago

Google generally doesn't do BD that well. I think it's something to do with their start as a consumer-facing company. They prefer making a thing and then marketing it rather than using partnerships to get in. The Android stuff seemed to suffer quite a bit from this early on, though they seem to have a handle on it now.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

smileybarry 6y ago

> Most smart TVs these days are more than fast enough to stream HD broadcast. I don't understand why Google doesn't push this. A lot of them have pretty bad game mode latency, though, which isn't a problem with home consoles but start to become a problem once you add streaming latency. Then some of them have >10ms decode latency, and all of it starts to ramp up the delay.

oliwarner 6y ago

Hey Google, show me the perfect antitrust suit. Seriously though, I think Microsoft and Sony would scream the house down if Google made movements like this. They may not be monopoly holders in console gaming, but you think that would stop a suit like that being heard?

de6u99er 6y ago

You can call me old-school but I prefer to play on PS5 and Switch. If I only have 20min time, ai wouldn't even bother start playing.