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Stadia isn't being shut down because it wasn't successful; it was no less successful than other services that are still up (like GeForce Now, or, for that matte
by derefr 4y ago
Stadia isn't being shut down because it wasn't successful; it was no less successful than other services that are still up (like GeForce Now, or, for that matter, PS Now.)
Instead, it is my understanding that the point of Stadia was to give Google Cloud GPU instances a first-party "spot workload" to run when otherwise underutilized, since Google were building that instance type out ahead of confirmed business demand. They had all these idle GPUs just sitting around; may as well let people play games on them!
The moment the first GPU-backed generative AI models were open-sourced, though, there was suddenly tons of business demand for cloud GPU instances, to back all the "this[whatever]doesnotexist"-type services that were popping up. And "actually renting the GPU time to people with a business use-case for it" is much higher-margin than letting people play games with them. (That was the original intent of building out the instance class, after all.)
Stadia accomplished its purpose. The demand for the instances arrived, so Google didn't need Stadia any more.
- sulam 4y agoThis sounds like a retcon at best. Google wouldn’t have had to build a first party studio of the intent was to turn if off all along. I know the Eng VP that was there from the beginning (not to the end, tho!) and this is not his story at all. I think they honestly are trying to find new “surfaces” to give people access to compute.
- derefr 4y agoCunningham's Law at work. I've asked whether my hypothesis was anything like the truth numerous times now, but never received a knowing response. Phrase it one time as a bald statement of fact, though, and someone who can cite primary sources as to why I'm wrong will be summoned! :)
- yreg 4y agoDo we think Stadia during its lifetime earned more money than it cost though?
- shaunsingh 4y agoThey recently refunded every purchase made on stadia when they announced it was going to close down, and they created 2 first party studios for it (along with deals with rockstar games etc.) Did stadia itself make any money? Probably not. I'm sure the money they made from re-using those servers for their cloud/ai departments certainly paid of the dept though.
- yreg 4y agoBut derefr's explanation is the other way around. Google built the servers for the cloud/ai department and crated Stadia to reuse them. To me it seems that it couldn't have been profitable even if we say Stadia got the servers for free.
- shaunsingh 4y agoafaik stadia used custom built hardware from amd's instinct line. Almost all of their cloud offerings are nvidia based or utilize their own TPU's. I can't say for certain that derefr's explanation is wrong, but from what it looks like they did create bespoke hardware for stadia instead of reusing their existing infrastructure.
- mocheeze 4y agoderefr admitted to making that up in order to elicit a response.
- lelandfe 4y agoI suppose they burned a small fortune building two game studios to make use of "spot money": https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/1/22260803/google-stadia-game-development-studio-shut-down-jade-raymond https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/1/22260803/google-stadia-gam...
- fragmede 4y agoah the ole' Google voice trick. Maybe?