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Enabling Bluetooth connections on Stadia Controllers
- deafpolygon 4y agoMore than likely, and knowing Google.. having it connect via WiFi meant that the controller can probably collect some form of telemetry on its users. Now that it's being shuttered, they can "remove" ('unlock') this feature.
- madeofpalk 4y agoWhat does that mean for a game service where everything runs entirely on Google’s servers?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- harrego 4y agoThe Stadia closure has left a controlled leak of fascinating internal Google projects. First it was cdc-file-transfer, "born from the ashes of Stadia," now it's the internal Worm Game used for testing that "the Stadia team spent a LOT of time playing." Love to see it.
- tantalor 4y agoNot leaks.
- harrego 4y ago"Controlled leaks," a provocative way of saying releases ;)
- denimnerd42 4y agoHopefully more to come. They ran all the games on Linux right? Linux gaming could take a step forward with the experience generated at Google and other studios that were porting the games.
- LarryMullins 4y agoWeird, why were they even locked in the first place? I have a PS4 controller I connect to my computer; I never had to unlock it. Was Google afraid people would use their controller to... play games run on their own computers?
- highwaylights 4y agoThe kit was being subsidised. At several points, they were essentially giving away starter kits of controllers and chromecast ultras. I guess they figured it was concerning enough that people were going to pick them up just for a free Chromecast Ultra without also giving them a free controller for Steam too.
- Hamuko 4y agoI got mine for free alongside a Chromecast Ultra after buying Cyberpunk 2077 (which also got a 10€ discount).
- sneak 4y agoFun fact: I ordered a Stadia "founder's edition" at launch for actual money, an order which Google later cancelled unilaterally. A couple weeks/months later, they emailed me a promo offering a similar kit for free (just pay shipping). I've no idea why they didn't make money and had to shut down.
- lokar 4y agoIt may not be locked as much as just not supported as a generic bt controller. When using it for stadia it uses Wi-Fi, the bt was just for setup.
- DistractionRect 4y agoMore than likely it they used some kind of proprietary communication stack for latency reasons or some such. Other reasons may include: - not having to deal with supporting other controllers on stadia - not having to support their controller on other platforms Not that it's defunct, they don't really have to deal with support aspect of things, and this is just a good will gesture so the controllers aren't paperweights.
- admax88qqq 4y agoInteresting, I gave Stadia it's first try as a result of this post. Tried the Worm Game. It confirms exactly my concerns about cloud gaming in general. The input lag. The classic "worm" game is timing sensitive, gotta turn before you hit a wall or yourself, but also gotta turn as late as possible to ensure you don't leave empty space. The input lag was noticeably bad, doing precise turns requires correctly guessing the input lag and clicking the turn command early. I guess I see why it's being shut down.
- jolux 4y agoI’ve played input-sensitive games with friends on GeForce Now for several months at this point — no major issues with lag.
- bobleeswagger 4y agoUnless the GeForce now servers were co-located to your local ISP, it's hard to believe. Even then, you're adding quantifiable jitter to the equation on the order of a few milliseconds. It's noticeable.
- jolux 4y agoI mean, in the case of multiplayer probably a lot comes out in the wash of optimistic updates and such, but it’s still very playable and I couldn’t personally notice the lag most of the time. Occasionally when my connection got bad it would have issues, but that was more noticeable because the resolution dropped significantly.
- aaomidi 4y agoI’ve had the same experience. I could not tell the latency for GeForce now, and I’m using a municipal ISP. I’m not really a casual gamer either. I’m still surprised that GeForce now doesn’t have an app for Linux. I switch to my Mac laptop to play stuff like Fortnite.
- bobleeswagger 4y ago
- wnevets 4y agoGoogle deserves credit for how they have been handling the Stadia shut down IMHO.
- harrego 4y agoI think the team over there are proud of what they built, was a lot of new ground so I don't blame them.
- oritsnile 4y agoFor sure, I've back the money for my Chromecast+stadia controller a month ago, whit this update both will still be useful, after the shutdown.
- delecti 4y agoIt makes me wonder if the higherups are using this to counteract the worries that google will shut things down. I'd be less hesitant to invest in their services for fear of them shutting down if I thought I'd get my money back if they did.
- permo-w 4y agoI suspect they’re trying to avoid a class-action lawsuit. sunsetting software is one thing: it’s not so tangible and software licenses are legally slippery. but when hardware’s involved, you’re on much shakier ground this idea that its to encourage future investment is predicated on Google thinking that the masses are paying attention to their refund policies. yes this kind of thing may be a big deal for people on HN or certain subreddits, but I doubt it’s a large % of the target market
- delecti 4y agoThere are lots of examples of support for hardware being dropped, the IoT space is full of it, likewise with non IoT devices, and I can't think of any examples of a company getting heat for it. And google is very aware that their reputation for killing products hurts adoption of new launches. https://www.itpro.com/software/360376/google-cloud-seeks-to-turn-around-its-killed-by-google-reputation https://www.itpro.com/software/360376/google-cloud-seeks-to-... (just one of many results, just happened to be the top result for "google kills things reputation")
- t3estabc 4y ago[dead]
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoStill been playing stadia all this week and will continue until it closes, such a shame, nothing like the service!
- dmitshur 4y agoThere’s something about the thought of playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the last day, right until the moment the plug is pulled by a large corp.
- yreg 4y ago> I actually got Cyberpunk 2077 specifically on Stadia so I could play the meta-game of "Can I win Cyberpunk before the unaccountable mega-corpo revokes my access to Cyberpunk?" > I will be losing that game. - shadowgovt, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33023050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33023050
- russellbeattie 4y agoPerfect timing. I’m moving and just fished my stadia controllers out of the donate box after reading this - another day and they would have been gone. They’re decent controllers, so it’s nice they haven’t become yet more e-waste. Next question is how good the Bluetooth chip is. The range of speeds even for the latest chips is vast. Since the controllers only used Bluetooth for setup, Google could have opted for a less powerful chip to lower the BOM and they might end up not being particularly useful for games over BT.
- ineedasername 4y agoNice that they’re doing what they can to not leave people with e-waste bricks, but why would these be locked down in the first place?
- xahrepap 4y agoIt’s worth noting that if you plugged them in via USB they always worked. It’s the wifi (not BT) connection that never worked off-platform.
- delecti 4y agoThey weren't "locked down" really, they just weren't bluetooth controllers; they connected over wifi directly to Stadia. This isn't removing shackles, it's adding new functionality.
- drusepth 4y agoThe Stadia controller is/was my favorite controller of any recent consoles (with my next-fave being maybe a PS1 variant). I've been using it wired with looong cords on other platforms because it just feels so good in hand. Very, very happy to hear this news. It'll be nice to go back to wireless.
- RobotToaster 4y agoNice of them to do that at least. It's a shame they're not open sourcing it for third party firmware though, if it can manage streaming games it must have a decentish processor.
- charcircuit 4y agoThe controller only streamed inputs to Stadia's servers. Your PC / phone / chromecast was the device streaming the video.
- codyogden 4y agoThis is exactly how Google needed to handle this situation, and they need to be praised for it! The shutdown of Stadia was completely predictable, but I am overwhelmingly surprised at them providing refunds to users for games & hardware and going the extra mile to ensure the hardware is not immediate waste. As the cryptkeeper over at Killed by Google, I'm very happy with the outcome for Stadia users (myself included). However, I don't think this will move the needle of Google's 'killer' reputation as much as people think given all the skepticism about how long this product would last in the first place. The "death pool," and the people who voted basically predicted the timeline within a few days[1]. 1. https://whenwillgooglekillstadia.com https://whenwillgooglekillstadia.com
- DismantleMars 4y agoThe irony is, if Google had made their plan for how to handle end-of-life for Stadia clear from the beginning, they might have got a lot more users. I'm not sure if their strategy ever changed along the way, but when Stadia was first announced, it was a purely cloud gaming platform where you still needed to buy a license for every game. Not knowing what would happen to my purchased games was the main thing keeping me from trying Stadia - I'd have been happy to use it if it was a Netflix / Xbox Game Pass style service where you pay a flat monthly rate for access to a library, or if it was clear that any games you bought would be refunded if the service suddenly shut down. As it was though, it seemed as though you could drop a ton of money on Stadia games, and Google might pull the plug the very next day, and you lose everything you just purchased. That worry was the deciding factor for me to never give Stadia a go.
- tdeck 4y agoStadia required custom development work from game developers, my guess is that getting them on board was at least as challenging as getting consumers. It's a risk to tell developers "we're already thinking of how to kill this platform that you're investing in".
- bingobob 4y agoMicrosoft acquisition of Bethesda was the nail for stadia as they supported Stadia from the beginning.
- causality0 4y ago...they weren't already? Is there a long German word that means "when a company lowers your opinion of them by announcing something you thought they were already doing"?
- jdlyga 4y agoThe trouble with cloud gaming is latency. Most solutions now just do a glorified remote desktop. It would require some rearchitecting, but why can't a client have an ultra-responsive frontend while farming out the heavy work to a cloud server somewhere? We're reaching a point where GPU's are becoming more and more expensive, so is a more distributed architecture the next step?
- leodriesch 4y agoSo rendering the HUD locally and a 3d scene on a remote server?
- code_duck 4y agoGoogle is the Netflix of something. Like Netflix is now known for cancelling series prematurely, for me Stadia was "that sounds cool, I should check that out" and then it was cancelled by the time I was seriously considering it.
- coziestSoup 4y agoSomething I never understood - Why didn't Stadia push slow games harder? Games like Civ VI or Simulator games would've more or less hidden the input lag. Instead they seemed to be pushing fast-twitch games in their marketing.
- sealeck 4y agoProbably because the value proposition was that Stadia would run the games on very fast (tm) servers in a datacentre.
- azornathogron 4y agoI would guess the key factor for which games were pushed in marketing was the popularity & name recognition of the games, not any particular technical aspect. I think Stadia was also good enough tech to support the games they were marketing, at least for a casual player. I played Cyberpunk on Stadia and it was plenty smooth enough for me, but then I'm only a casual player. Also my impression was that Stadia was aiming for "a console without the console" experience, and IMHO Civ and Sim games tend to be more PC focused (complex input requirements etc).
- kerpotgh 4y ago[dead]
- franczesko 4y agoDupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34375251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34375251
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- truemoose 4y agoNow if only they'd unlock volume control on their A-series Pixel Buds too.
- vouaobrasil 4y agoIt's hard to believe why anyone would buy anything Stadia related...obviously Google was gonna shut it down. They can't do anything right.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tshaddox 4y agoThat’s great news. Finally a way to use the controller from the free promotional Stadia kit (which also can with an already-useful Chromecast Ultra) that they sent me. Bizarrely, they sent it to me for free without any way of actually trying the Stadia service short of creating a fake Gmail account, because I had already apparently used my free trial and they wouldn’t re-enable a free trial despite sending me a $100+ hardware kit for free.