4 ms·

> Admittedly, google stadia was kind of a joke since the beginning I don't see anything wrong with the premise of the service or even from what I understand th

> Admittedly, google stadia was kind of a joke since the beginning I don't see anything wrong with the premise of the service or even from what I understand the technical execution. Seems like the failure was around business development, marketing, community management, and brand reputation. I haven't followed to closely though so other would know better than me.

tedivm 4y ago
>Seems like the failure was around business development, marketing, community management, and brand reputation. To be fair that's normally the case for Google.
unnouinceput 4y ago
The failure was around tech. We are not there yet. Speed of light is what needs to be overcome in order for this kind of service to be viable. Until then no amount of money, business development, marketing, brand reputation will ever make this viable.
- mountainb 4y ago
  Using the (discontinued) Steam remote dongle over wireless device to put a game from my computer in one room to a TV in the living room about 5-10 yards away introduced noticeable latency to a game. Obviously things like Stadia are a lot worse. There is only so much that can be done with this kind of technology. I think people are more tolerant of it for specific use cases like being able to play any game you want on a hotel internet connection while you're traveling for work, but given how affordable hardware is it doesn't really make sense as a home entertainment service except for the third world, which was not their target market anyway.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  The speed of light delay actually wasn't the main issue. It was only a small part of the total latency. Wifi connections having high jitter (ie. usually the link is 1ms, but sometimes spikes up to 100ms) was a big issue. Poor software design was also a big problem - so big in fact they had to modify the android OS and Chrome to have a special low latency rendering mode that cut out chunks of the compositor. Both Windows and Mac also have issues with getting data from the network card to the screen in less than a few milliseconds. They could have pretty much solved the latency issues with a basic predictive neural network that predicts 'given that this set of keys have been pressed, and the screen looked like this, and this number of milliseconds have passed, what will the screen look like?'. Such a neural net could be very small, since effectively it will just deal with mouse movements, panning, scrolling, and maybe flashes like gunfire. On a per-pixel basis it would simply provide motion vectors and an additive R/G/B figure.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  I've played like 400 hours of endgame destiny on it during the pandemic, it's fine. The criticism that you need to be near a major city may be valid, I don't know because I'm near a major city. The wifi latency is a bigger factor than the rest.
sennight 4y ago
> I don't see anything wrong with the premise of the service You will own nothing and be happy. Great.
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
The technical side was initially plagued by lag in games that were ill suited for it but this has consistently approved. I think the real failing is what you stated - biz dev and brand reputation. Read the other replies and you will see folks say "There were no games" or "The selection was limited." Why in the world would a major game company hesitate to invest in google and google services? Well, if you have a reputation of killing off your services like the grim reaper, I imagine that would come up in an executive risk assessment. Google can fix their reputation but its going to take a lot of work. Consider Microsoft's reputation in the late mid to late 90's on slashdot and other forums compared to their reputation today. It took a lot of work but possible. Googles going to have to put down the scythe though.
- jfoster 4y ago
  > Google can fix their reputation but its going to take a lot of work. Every time they take a decision like this one, they are making the hole deeper.
- CaptainZapp 4y ago
  > Google can fix their reputation but its going to take a lot of work. To regain trust with enterprise customers (that's where the money is) it would take at least a decade of cleaning up their act very thoroughly. I remember a poster proudly announcing that they will announce one year in advance when they plan to shut down a service on GCS. Maybe they should look what happens when a company like HP announces end of support for OpenVMS 5 - 10 years in advance (as just an example pulled out of my ass with some Wikipedia backing the statement up) there's a lot of wailing and howling amongst their enterprise customers. Those are the timescales big shops think in when it comes to their strategic IT decisions. Frankly, I don't see Google ever satisfying such requirements backed by iron clad guarantees.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > To regain trust with enterprise customers (that's where the money is) it would take at least a decade of cleaning up their act very thoroughly. I disagree. It is much easier to regain trust with enterprise customers than with end users. Enterprise costumers have contracts and lawyers on retainer. Google can draft a contract which binds them to performing a service. They can write in penalties with bite which shows to their enterprise customers that they mean it. That is assuming that they really want to. On the other hand this trick doesn't work with end users. They don't have lawyers to evaluate such an offer, and they have lot less of a chance of successfully suing google even if they would have favourable contracts.
coremoff 4y ago
most of the user commentary I remember, and certainly my thoughts on the matter, were that Google would grow bored and shut it down pretty quickly...

tedivm 4y ago

>Seems like the failure was around business development, marketing, community management, and brand reputation. To be fair that's normally the case for Google.

unnouinceput 4y ago

The failure was around tech. We are not there yet. Speed of light is what needs to be overcome in order for this kind of service to be viable. Until then no amount of money, business development, marketing, brand reputation will ever make this viable.

mountainb 4y ago
Using the (discontinued) Steam remote dongle over wireless device to put a game from my computer in one room to a TV in the living room about 5-10 yards away introduced noticeable latency to a game. Obviously things like Stadia are a lot worse. There is only so much that can be done with this kind of technology. I think people are more tolerant of it for specific use cases like being able to play any game you want on a hotel internet connection while you're traveling for work, but given how affordable hardware is it doesn't really make sense as a home entertainment service except for the third world, which was not their target market anyway.
londons_explore 4y ago
The speed of light delay actually wasn't the main issue. It was only a small part of the total latency. Wifi connections having high jitter (ie. usually the link is 1ms, but sometimes spikes up to 100ms) was a big issue. Poor software design was also a big problem - so big in fact they had to modify the android OS and Chrome to have a special low latency rendering mode that cut out chunks of the compositor. Both Windows and Mac also have issues with getting data from the network card to the screen in less than a few milliseconds. They could have pretty much solved the latency issues with a basic predictive neural network that predicts 'given that this set of keys have been pressed, and the screen looked like this, and this number of milliseconds have passed, what will the screen look like?'. Such a neural net could be very small, since effectively it will just deal with mouse movements, panning, scrolling, and maybe flashes like gunfire. On a per-pixel basis it would simply provide motion vectors and an additive R/G/B figure.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
I've played like 400 hours of endgame destiny on it during the pandemic, it's fine. The criticism that you need to be near a major city may be valid, I don't know because I'm near a major city. The wifi latency is a bigger factor than the rest.

sennight 4y ago

> I don't see anything wrong with the premise of the service You will own nothing and be happy. Great.

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

The technical side was initially plagued by lag in games that were ill suited for it but this has consistently approved. I think the real failing is what you stated - biz dev and brand reputation. Read the other replies and you will see folks say "There were no games" or "The selection was limited." Why in the world would a major game company hesitate to invest in google and google services? Well, if you have a reputation of killing off your services like the grim reaper, I imagine that would come up in an executive risk assessment. Google can fix their reputation but its going to take a lot of work. Consider Microsoft's reputation in the late mid to late 90's on slashdot and other forums compared to their reputation today. It took a lot of work but possible. Googles going to have to put down the scythe though.

jfoster 4y ago
> Google can fix their reputation but its going to take a lot of work. Every time they take a decision like this one, they are making the hole deeper.
CaptainZapp 4y ago
> Google can fix their reputation but its going to take a lot of work. To regain trust with enterprise customers (that's where the money is) it would take at least a decade of cleaning up their act very thoroughly. I remember a poster proudly announcing that they will announce one year in advance when they plan to shut down a service on GCS. Maybe they should look what happens when a company like HP announces end of support for OpenVMS 5 - 10 years in advance (as just an example pulled out of my ass with some Wikipedia backing the statement up) there's a lot of wailing and howling amongst their enterprise customers. Those are the timescales big shops think in when it comes to their strategic IT decisions. Frankly, I don't see Google ever satisfying such requirements backed by iron clad guarantees.
- krisoft 4y ago
  > To regain trust with enterprise customers (that's where the money is) it would take at least a decade of cleaning up their act very thoroughly. I disagree. It is much easier to regain trust with enterprise customers than with end users. Enterprise costumers have contracts and lawyers on retainer. Google can draft a contract which binds them to performing a service. They can write in penalties with bite which shows to their enterprise customers that they mean it. That is assuming that they really want to. On the other hand this trick doesn't work with end users. They don't have lawyers to evaluate such an offer, and they have lot less of a chance of successfully suing google even if they would have favourable contracts.

coremoff 4y ago

most of the user commentary I remember, and certainly my thoughts on the matter, were that Google would grow bored and shut it down pretty quickly...