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It's worth remembering that Google tried this with Stadia, with levels of investment unimaginable for a regular startup and a product that was superior in many

It's worth remembering that Google tried this with Stadia, with levels of investment unimaginable for a regular startup and a product that was superior in many ways (instant games! no hardware requirements!), and still failed. Of course you can Monday morning quarterback this and point out Stadia's limitations (weak games library, hurr durr Google Reader, etc), but still, the cards were stacked in their favor and they still couldn't pull it off.

swores 4y ago
I work in the games industry, and honestly I don't know anyone who was optimistic about Stadia. Some people thought no chance, others thought that Google would care enough to keep pushing it for many years and keep spending unlimited money to maybe find success, and I didn't hear from anyone who thought better than that. Of course I'm not claiming to speak for everyone in the industry, just for people in my network who I either discussed it with or whose opinions I saw online. But it very much isn't the case that everyone predicted success until "Monday morning quarterback"ing.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
I work at Google and I was immediately skeptical of Stadia (I don't work on that product, obviously). Partly from being a gamer myself, thinking about latency, but also because: * Google has a reputation for abandoning services, and games bought on Stadia would be locked there. What happens if/when Stadia goes under? Who knows, but there's a decent chance of, "tough shit, all your games are gone." * It's hard to get momentum when you're targeting hardcore gamers, who mostly already have consoles/PC's, thus removing one of your biggest advantages.
- Handytinge 4y ago
  > What happens if/when Stadia goes under? Who knows, but there's a decent chance of, "tough shit, all your games are gone." This had now been answered [1]: > We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia Store. 1. https://www.ign.com/articles/google-is-shutting-down-stadia-its-cloud-gaming-service https://www.ign.com/articles/google-is-shutting-down-stadia-...
- Gigachad 4y ago
  The whole setup just hardly makes any sense. They are targeting people who have super fast and reliable internet, are hardcore gamers, and don't have a gaming pc. I just can't imagine who this target market is. Fast hardware is usually much more accessible than fast internet. The idea might have worked if the subscription included access to games. Since at least then you aren't buying in to the platform with lock in.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    If latency wasn't an issue, I could see it as a luxury/convenience thing. Pay for the top tier experience, don't have to manage your own hardware, including the weirdness and annoyances you get into sometimes with PC gaming. But latency is an issue, so the experience will always be inferior in terms of responsiveness. Which, to a lot of gamers, means it would have to be a budget option, not a luxury one.
    - msh 4y ago
      I think the latency part depends a lot on the games. I have used stadia and geforce now and for single player games I cant feel any latency difference. I have tried playing multiplayer games like CS:GO on geforce now, and that gave me latency issues and was not a great experience.
      - leodriesch 4y ago
        My experience on Stadia was that when playing controller the latency is barely noticeable, but keyboard and mouse was really uncomfortable to me.
  - Yizahi 4y ago
    This could be a lot of people with a business or Apple laptop living far from home - business trips, expats, migrants. I had to migrate recently and currently have only a work laptop with me, so I have tried Stadia and it was rather good for some games. Best example - ESO, which for 10$ pulled all my progress and DLCs from the cloud. But yes, with the Google "reputation" and the requirement to re-buy all games the second time Stadia is dead in the water, I won't invest there anything above a few dollars.
- solardev 4y ago
  IMHO, as a gamer too, Stadia sucks not because it's streaming (the other streaming services are great for when I'm not on my desktop) but because Google totally botched its execution. Terrible pricing compared to Steam and other resellers, no crossplay, no mods, tiny library. And I think their architecture required specific ports from developers, vs GeForce Now's one-checkbox integration. Game streaming isn't for everyone, but there IS a market for it. In that market, though, Stadia is by far the worst offering. They should've had gamers lead its design and development, but they run it like it's some sort of business cloud offering... just totally missed the culture.
unionpivo 4y ago
They didn't really try that hard. I play lots of games, have over 1000 of them on steam, and jet somehow stadia only had 5 that i was interested and already had on steam. But hey, lets try anyway, so I try to subscribe and: its not available here. Almost no promotion, most of my friends(some of whom live in USA where I presume stadia does work) who also game didn't even know about stadia. And then when they didn't6 just autowin all the customers, they kind of just let it go.
dontlaugh 4y ago
The business model was stupid. You paid a subscription for the benefit of being able to buy games on the platform, with you couldn’t access without the subscription. And all of this only works with amazing internet and for games where latency isn’t an issue.
- MarioMan 4y ago
  >You paid a subscription for the benefit of being able to buy games on the platform, with you couldn’t access without the subscription. This was only true during the first five months of release, when you had to buy the Founder's Edition, which came with hardware to access the service. All purchased games can be accessed without the subscription via Stadia Base, and they planned it this way from the start[1]. Stadia Pro primarily provides the perk of running games on better cloud hardware, providing a 4K HDR surround sound stream instead of the baseline 1080p stereo stream. 1: https://blog.google/products/stadia/summer-announcement/ https://blog.google/products/stadia/summer-announcement/
DocTomoe 4y ago
I wanted to try Stadia. My Google account hails from 2004, when GMail first came out. I am in good standing, and consume a lot of Google services, many of which I pay for. Stadia would just not accept any credit card I threw at them, including a virtual card I created specifically for this service after the other ones failed. It also even refused those which Google happily uses to charge me for my GWS and YouTube Premium. It was not a geolocation thing - Stadia happily serviced a neighbour. Under these circumstances, I gave up. If you make it hard for me to give you money, I simply won't.
tuyiown 4y ago
You are greatly dismissing the limitations. The technical challenge the met was the bare minimum to start building any kind of credibility to attract consumer, they knew it, and they did it. But still it was the bare minimum. Once you have the platform, the bare minimum, you can start trying to get customer. You do that by playing on price, quality (within your platform parameters), catalog and since it's subscription base, long term commitment. Basically, either it was a hit, or they had to accept bleeding a lot of money to finalize their market entry. They didn't push much and price and catalog, and they didn't commit either, as everyone expected. They pull off a tech demo, they were never serious on the gaming market, and it showed.
solardev 4y ago
Google never cared about Stadia or marketed it much. GeForce Now, Luna, PSNow, XCloud, etc. are doing much better. Stadia is just the neglected stepchild of game streaming, not representative of the overall health of the technology. I should note that Google by no means invented game streaming. OnLive did it ten years ago, and today there are still other small providers like Shadow.tech, Parsec, Paperspace... I think Nvidia has the real advantage here though, being the only ones who can produce those gfx cards at datacenter scale. Unless one of the other providers want to develop their own chips, they're always at the mercy of Nvidia. Even during the COVID GPU shortage, Nvidia was able to keep GeForce Now sustained with enough hardware while the other providers struggled... Shadow had a waitlist of several months, for example.

swores 4y ago

I work in the games industry, and honestly I don't know anyone who was optimistic about Stadia. Some people thought no chance, others thought that Google would care enough to keep pushing it for many years and keep spending unlimited money to maybe find success, and I didn't hear from anyone who thought better than that. Of course I'm not claiming to speak for everyone in the industry, just for people in my network who I either discussed it with or whose opinions I saw online. But it very much isn't the case that everyone predicted success until "Monday morning quarterback"ing.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

I work at Google and I was immediately skeptical of Stadia (I don't work on that product, obviously). Partly from being a gamer myself, thinking about latency, but also because: * Google has a reputation for abandoning services, and games bought on Stadia would be locked there. What happens if/when Stadia goes under? Who knows, but there's a decent chance of, "tough shit, all your games are gone." * It's hard to get momentum when you're targeting hardcore gamers, who mostly already have consoles/PC's, thus removing one of your biggest advantages.

Handytinge 4y ago
> What happens if/when Stadia goes under? Who knows, but there's a decent chance of, "tough shit, all your games are gone." This had now been answered [1]: > We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia Store. 1. https://www.ign.com/articles/google-is-shutting-down-stadia-its-cloud-gaming-service https://www.ign.com/articles/google-is-shutting-down-stadia-...
Gigachad 4y ago
The whole setup just hardly makes any sense. They are targeting people who have super fast and reliable internet, are hardcore gamers, and don't have a gaming pc. I just can't imagine who this target market is. Fast hardware is usually much more accessible than fast internet. The idea might have worked if the subscription included access to games. Since at least then you aren't buying in to the platform with lock in.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  If latency wasn't an issue, I could see it as a luxury/convenience thing. Pay for the top tier experience, don't have to manage your own hardware, including the weirdness and annoyances you get into sometimes with PC gaming. But latency is an issue, so the experience will always be inferior in terms of responsiveness. Which, to a lot of gamers, means it would have to be a budget option, not a luxury one.
  - msh 4y ago
    I think the latency part depends a lot on the games. I have used stadia and geforce now and for single player games I cant feel any latency difference. I have tried playing multiplayer games like CS:GO on geforce now, and that gave me latency issues and was not a great experience.
    - leodriesch 4y ago
      My experience on Stadia was that when playing controller the latency is barely noticeable, but keyboard and mouse was really uncomfortable to me.
- Yizahi 4y ago
  This could be a lot of people with a business or Apple laptop living far from home - business trips, expats, migrants. I had to migrate recently and currently have only a work laptop with me, so I have tried Stadia and it was rather good for some games. Best example - ESO, which for 10$ pulled all my progress and DLCs from the cloud. But yes, with the Google "reputation" and the requirement to re-buy all games the second time Stadia is dead in the water, I won't invest there anything above a few dollars.
solardev 4y ago
IMHO, as a gamer too, Stadia sucks not because it's streaming (the other streaming services are great for when I'm not on my desktop) but because Google totally botched its execution. Terrible pricing compared to Steam and other resellers, no crossplay, no mods, tiny library. And I think their architecture required specific ports from developers, vs GeForce Now's one-checkbox integration. Game streaming isn't for everyone, but there IS a market for it. In that market, though, Stadia is by far the worst offering. They should've had gamers lead its design and development, but they run it like it's some sort of business cloud offering... just totally missed the culture.

unionpivo 4y ago

They didn't really try that hard. I play lots of games, have over 1000 of them on steam, and jet somehow stadia only had 5 that i was interested and already had on steam. But hey, lets try anyway, so I try to subscribe and: its not available here. Almost no promotion, most of my friends(some of whom live in USA where I presume stadia does work) who also game didn't even know about stadia. And then when they didn't6 just autowin all the customers, they kind of just let it go.

dontlaugh 4y ago

The business model was stupid. You paid a subscription for the benefit of being able to buy games on the platform, with you couldn’t access without the subscription. And all of this only works with amazing internet and for games where latency isn’t an issue.

MarioMan 4y ago
>You paid a subscription for the benefit of being able to buy games on the platform, with you couldn’t access without the subscription. This was only true during the first five months of release, when you had to buy the Founder's Edition, which came with hardware to access the service. All purchased games can be accessed without the subscription via Stadia Base, and they planned it this way from the start[1]. Stadia Pro primarily provides the perk of running games on better cloud hardware, providing a 4K HDR surround sound stream instead of the baseline 1080p stereo stream. 1: https://blog.google/products/stadia/summer-announcement/ https://blog.google/products/stadia/summer-announcement/

DocTomoe 4y ago

I wanted to try Stadia. My Google account hails from 2004, when GMail first came out. I am in good standing, and consume a lot of Google services, many of which I pay for. Stadia would just not accept any credit card I threw at them, including a virtual card I created specifically for this service after the other ones failed. It also even refused those which Google happily uses to charge me for my GWS and YouTube Premium. It was not a geolocation thing - Stadia happily serviced a neighbour. Under these circumstances, I gave up. If you make it hard for me to give you money, I simply won't.

tuyiown 4y ago

You are greatly dismissing the limitations. The technical challenge the met was the bare minimum to start building any kind of credibility to attract consumer, they knew it, and they did it. But still it was the bare minimum. Once you have the platform, the bare minimum, you can start trying to get customer. You do that by playing on price, quality (within your platform parameters), catalog and since it's subscription base, long term commitment. Basically, either it was a hit, or they had to accept bleeding a lot of money to finalize their market entry. They didn't push much and price and catalog, and they didn't commit either, as everyone expected. They pull off a tech demo, they were never serious on the gaming market, and it showed.

solardev 4y ago

Google never cared about Stadia or marketed it much. GeForce Now, Luna, PSNow, XCloud, etc. are doing much better. Stadia is just the neglected stepchild of game streaming, not representative of the overall health of the technology. I should note that Google by no means invented game streaming. OnLive did it ten years ago, and today there are still other small providers like Shadow.tech, Parsec, Paperspace... I think Nvidia has the real advantage here though, being the only ones who can produce those gfx cards at datacenter scale. Unless one of the other providers want to develop their own chips, they're always at the mercy of Nvidia. Even during the COVID GPU shortage, Nvidia was able to keep GeForce Now sustained with enough hardware while the other providers struggled... Shadow had a waitlist of several months, for example.