4 ms·

I think the reason this is a big deal is that one of the selling points of Stadia was that "cloud gaming" would enable things that consoles and PCs didn't, like

by hn8788 6y ago

I think the reason this is a big deal is that one of the selling points of Stadia was that "cloud gaming" would enable things that consoles and PCs didn't, like huge persistent worlds with a ton a players in a single area. With no first party support, Stadia is just going to be a way to stream ports of games designed for consoles and PCs. Imagine if Valve released the Index, then announced that they aren't making VR games any more. That's basically what Google is doing by saying it isn't worth it to develop games specifically for Stadia.

alach11 6y ago
To me this pivot makes a lot more sense. They’re sticking to their core competency. Gaming as a service, without a dedicated device or powerful machine, already has big appeal. If they nail that, they can always try some first party offerings to push the boundaries.
- bentcorner 6y ago
  I don't know about that. Google has even less skin in the game now, with a game studio you could be convinced they were in it for the long haul, but now they can pull the plug almost effortlessly. IMO the single business decision that doomed it from the start was the fact that you had to buy Stadia game to play on Stadia. Nothing from Steam/Epic/Ubisoft, and no cross-play. I would not at all be surprised to hear within a year that they stop taking new subscribers, with a sunset a year after that.
ketzo 6y ago
That's a pretty interesting thought, I hadn't at all considered the "cloud native game" angle. Based purely on my own experience with games, I tend to think that for the best results, you'd need a really good game studio to learn how to make a cloud game; I'm not sure you want a really good cloud company to learn how to make a game. But it's still a really good point. Was the Stadia studio explicitly for these kind of cloud-gaming-enabled games?
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  Cloud native is another concept that’s grossly oversold. It’s just GaaS with an extra step.
  - ketzo 6y ago
    I dunno. Cloud gaming (theoretically) means that anyone could play from anywhere at any time. Surely such a powerful idea enables some cool new experiences out there in the infinite realm of human creativity?
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
      We already have that with mobile gaming. Cloud native (and streaming) offers a couple of advantages over installed games. Cheating becomes much harder, although not impossible. And people can launch the game easily without an install. It has some real trade offs as well. Increasing felt latency is the one people love to talk about. But a huge increase in compute and bandwidth cost for the game operator is the other. Both in terms of the wiz bang features people imagine which are also possible with an installed game. And because for each player at peak CCU you have to run the game for them, encode video and transmit that to them. That’s quite the ops cost increase over a traditional game. The bandwidth consumption and compute cost hurt the play anywhere at anytime idea. Firstly because places where bandwidth and latency are acceptable for play are not ubiquitous and there is no clear roadmap for that to happen. Secondly because the hike in compute cost per user free accounts are considerably more expensive to allow. Adding subscriptions removes ubiquitousness, allowing free players will bring dark patterns to convert that would make Zynga blush. Platform subscriptions will result in a chase for ‘engagement’ and more of the latter. All without anyone able to offer more than vague affirmations that there is anything creatively interesting. Cloud native is really good for one thing though. Getting investor money.
drusepth 6y ago
I agree, but I do think they've been doing a good job lately getting partners to dip their feet in the "cloud-only" functionality Stadia enables. For example: - GRID added a 40-car race mode that's "just not possible on consoles". (Unfortunately there were rarely enough Stadia players playing GRID for matchmaking 40-car races to work well!) - Orcs Must Die 3 added Stadia's "Stream Connect" feature, which is basically like screensharing with people in your party. They also apparently increased horde sizes on Stadia compared to other platforms. - The Hitman series added Stadia's "State Share" feature, which lets players set up scenarios and create customized game states that they can share with others to play. - Dead by Daylight and Baldur's Gate 3 added "Crowd Choice", which lets streamers create polls for in-game choices that automatically selects an outcome based on viewer votes (e.g. choosing whether the streamer is a killer or survivor in DbD) - Outcasters uses Crowd Play which lets stream viewers instantly jump into games with the streamer they're watching - etc There's a lot of cool stuff that can be enabled when the hardware runs on beefy cloud servers. Although it would be cool to see what novel functionality Google's internal studio would have showcased, I also think it's pretty important to focus on getting "real" games and encouraging devs to take advantage of cloud-specific functionality. There's probably something to be said for the Ubisoft+ model (basically a separate, smaller streaming service on top of Stadia/Luna/etc), but I don't think cable-like "channels" bundles are the way to go for streaming of any kind.

by hn8788 6y ago

alach11 6y ago

To me this pivot makes a lot more sense. They’re sticking to their core competency. Gaming as a service, without a dedicated device or powerful machine, already has big appeal. If they nail that, they can always try some first party offerings to push the boundaries.

bentcorner 6y ago
I don't know about that. Google has even less skin in the game now, with a game studio you could be convinced they were in it for the long haul, but now they can pull the plug almost effortlessly. IMO the single business decision that doomed it from the start was the fact that you had to buy Stadia game to play on Stadia. Nothing from Steam/Epic/Ubisoft, and no cross-play. I would not at all be surprised to hear within a year that they stop taking new subscribers, with a sunset a year after that.

ketzo 6y ago

That's a pretty interesting thought, I hadn't at all considered the "cloud native game" angle. Based purely on my own experience with games, I tend to think that for the best results, you'd need a really good game studio to learn how to make a cloud game; I'm not sure you want a really good cloud company to learn how to make a game. But it's still a really good point. Was the Stadia studio explicitly for these kind of cloud-gaming-enabled games?

meheleventyone 6y ago
Cloud native is another concept that’s grossly oversold. It’s just GaaS with an extra step.
- ketzo 6y ago
  I dunno. Cloud gaming (theoretically) means that anyone could play from anywhere at any time. Surely such a powerful idea enables some cool new experiences out there in the infinite realm of human creativity?
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    We already have that with mobile gaming. Cloud native (and streaming) offers a couple of advantages over installed games. Cheating becomes much harder, although not impossible. And people can launch the game easily without an install. It has some real trade offs as well. Increasing felt latency is the one people love to talk about. But a huge increase in compute and bandwidth cost for the game operator is the other. Both in terms of the wiz bang features people imagine which are also possible with an installed game. And because for each player at peak CCU you have to run the game for them, encode video and transmit that to them. That’s quite the ops cost increase over a traditional game. The bandwidth consumption and compute cost hurt the play anywhere at anytime idea. Firstly because places where bandwidth and latency are acceptable for play are not ubiquitous and there is no clear roadmap for that to happen. Secondly because the hike in compute cost per user free accounts are considerably more expensive to allow. Adding subscriptions removes ubiquitousness, allowing free players will bring dark patterns to convert that would make Zynga blush. Platform subscriptions will result in a chase for ‘engagement’ and more of the latter. All without anyone able to offer more than vague affirmations that there is anything creatively interesting. Cloud native is really good for one thing though. Getting investor money.

drusepth 6y ago

I agree, but I do think they've been doing a good job lately getting partners to dip their feet in the "cloud-only" functionality Stadia enables. For example: - GRID added a 40-car race mode that's "just not possible on consoles". (Unfortunately there were rarely enough Stadia players playing GRID for matchmaking 40-car races to work well!) - Orcs Must Die 3 added Stadia's "Stream Connect" feature, which is basically like screensharing with people in your party. They also apparently increased horde sizes on Stadia compared to other platforms. - The Hitman series added Stadia's "State Share" feature, which lets players set up scenarios and create customized game states that they can share with others to play. - Dead by Daylight and Baldur's Gate 3 added "Crowd Choice", which lets streamers create polls for in-game choices that automatically selects an outcome based on viewer votes (e.g. choosing whether the streamer is a killer or survivor in DbD) - Outcasters uses Crowd Play which lets stream viewers instantly jump into games with the streamer they're watching - etc There's a lot of cool stuff that can be enabled when the hardware runs on beefy cloud servers. Although it would be cool to see what novel functionality Google's internal studio would have showcased, I also think it's pretty important to focus on getting "real" games and encouraging devs to take advantage of cloud-specific functionality. There's probably something to be said for the Ubisoft+ model (basically a separate, smaller streaming service on top of Stadia/Luna/etc), but I don't think cable-like "channels" bundles are the way to go for streaming of any kind.