6 ms·

Google has become impressively good at killing their own products. It's just unfortunate they can't support things enough to get them off the ground in the firs

Google has become impressively good at killing their own products. It's just unfortunate they can't support things enough to get them off the ground in the first place.

skybrian 4y ago
I don’t think it’s all on Google. The customers get a say too. Most gamers said no, so the product failed.
- falcolas 4y ago
  The gamers said no because it was a product where you didn't own the games, didn't own the hardware it ran on, and couldn't play the games without being within a few dozen miles of a Google datacenter (an exaggeration, but I'm certainly not close enough to play anything with a reflex check, and I'm on fiber in the lower 50 states). I can't blame them; the value proposition for most gamers was approximately zero.
  - wjnc 4y ago
    Happy user of Stadia here. Fit the dad gamer in off hours usecase perfectly. Spent enough on it that even the total refund felt like something. And now on top of that I own a controller to use with the GeForce Now embedded in my LG TV. Consumer galore.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      I hate to put it this way, but you got lucky in getting a total refund. Question though: Did you get to keep your progress in the games, or did you lose that with the shutdown?
      - wjnc 4y ago
        If I understand correctly Ubisoft even put the games I got refunded in their portal including progress for me conditional on me making an account. All other progress is lost. The Xbox days of caring about perfectly finishing games are long behind me. I did think about the money and Google angle up front. I saw no reason Google could get away with no refunds under Dutch law. That might have been optimistic, but in the end might also have driven them to refunds. Same risk is in my eBook or audiobook collection.
      - drusepth 4y ago
        IIRC, Google said from the beginning they'd refund purchases if they shut down. >Question though: Did you get to keep your progress in the games, or did you lose that with the shutdown? You can get all your game savedata from Google Takeout, but in order to actually use it you'd need to own the game on another platform that lets you import that save data (like PC). The refund for each game is nice for re-buying the games elsewhere, but some consoles aren't that easy to import existing save data into. Some games implemented some cloud saves to help move data around, but there's probably some games where you're SOL getting your progress into your next platform.
    - nailer 4y ago
      I played Cyberpunk in both stadia and GFN on the same connection on the same machine in early 2021. Performance in GFN was way better than Stadia.
    - ChildOfChaos 4y ago
      I was a happy Stadia user too, I think they should have marketed it more to casual audiences, it's untapped, plenty of people would love to play the odd game but don't as they don't have hardware etc. Partly as the service had games like Monopoly and Uno on it, lots of casual party games, that is all it needed. Bad marketing from Google here, they should have pivoted to that market once they lost the toxic gaming community.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - AceJohnny2 4y ago
    > and couldn't play the games without being within a few dozen miles of a Google datacenter (an exaggeration, but I'm certainly not close enough to play anything with a reflex check, and I'm on fiber in the lower 50 states). Counterexample: I was happily playing Destiny (a "twitchy" FPS) on an iPad in AirBnBs by Lake Tahoe or in Washington. I was really impressed. In contrast, one of my friends who migrated to Geforce Now has been complaining about much worse latency, graphical and audio glitches. I assume Google's excellent ISP peering helped Stadia.
    - drusepth 4y ago
      >Counterexample: I was happily playing Destiny (a "twitchy" FPS) on an iPad in AirBnBs by Lake Tahoe or in Washington. I was really impressed. Another anecdote: I played through the entirety of Celeste (an extremely difficult frame-perfect platformer) on Stadia with almost no issues. I switched to GeforceNow when Stadia announced they were shutting down. It's comparable in quality most of the time, but has quite a few quirks and the UX leaves a lot to be desired.
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
        Celeste is a very strong data point in favor of the platform. That being said, it is amusing that you are describing a game that could likely run on 10 year old hardware without any issue.
        AceJohnny2 4y ago
        > it is amusing that you are describing a game that could likely run on 10 year old hardware without any issue. That really has no relation to the inherent problem of cloud gaming: latency. In fact, an Apple II can have better latency than a modern computer! [1] And as a counterpoint to Celeste, they recently released their toy/testing game "The Worm Game" as a sort of parting gift, and I was shocked at the latency on that, where I had to really anticipate turning the snake. It was a completely different experience, and had I tried that first I never would've believed in the platform. [1] https://danluu.com/input-lag/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  It's circular though - I think a lot of gamers said no because they knew that Google could kill the service, and in this case everything they bought would disappear forever. I didn't want to invest in such an ecosystem. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point.
  - ascagnel_ 4y ago
    Additionally, there are competitors (Microsoft's xCloud, NVidia's GeForce NOW) that side-step the problem of Stadia's ecosystem. xCloud is only available with Microsoft's all-you-can-eat, Netflix-style game subscription service (and generally only plays games available on that service), while GFN works with a user's existing digital library. Stadia seemingly offered the worst of all options: games had to be purchased at full price through Google's storefront, could not be played locally, and required Google's streaming back-end to be available.
    - dividedbyzero 4y ago
      You can use Steam with Geforce Now?
      - ascagnel_ 4y ago
        Per a marketing page, GFN supports some Steam games (publishers can opt their games out). https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/
      - drusepth 4y ago
        GFN works by linking your accounts on existing storefronts (Steam, Epic, GOG). Not all games from those libraries are supported (publishers have to opt in, not out), but if you own a supported game already, you can stream it on GFN for free, or subscribe to a paid GFN tier for a better experience. Anecdotal numbers: I have a Steam library of 197 games and 44 of them are available on GFN.
  - myself248 4y ago
    We all remember PlaysForSure™.
- james_in_the_uk 4y ago
  Target market = people who: (I) like to play computer games (II) haven’t already invested in hardware and a library (II) aren’t sensitive to latency. Not exactly surprising that it didn’t take off.
  - SkyPuncher 4y ago
    I can't even tolerate the latency of playing my PS5 one room over. Can't see how it'd be any fun to play a game hosted hundreds of miles away.
    - _cenw 4y ago
      Weirdly enough, a lot of the latency doesn't seem to be all network related, but rather encoder/decoder and pacing related. I can't play games on the same LAN over Moonlight/Parsec without noticing the severe drop in responsiveness, but I can barely notice when using GeForce Now. Shadow and Xbox Cloud Streaming are basically unplayable again though.
- sp332 4y ago
  Partly, but also they spun up an entire game studio and then shut it down after two years. What was that even for?
- xeromal 4y ago
  This product specifically is DOA. Its userbase is too niche. Gamers are not found of latency and this product is very much latency. I used something like stadia called OnLive in 2012 and while very neat, I preferred gaming on my system or PC.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    I'm sorry, but did you actually use Stadia? For many, including myself, latency was minimal and not a problem at all for the tons of story based games (Red Dead Redemption 2, Hitman, various Assassin's Creeds). It wasn't DOA, it was killed by Google's poor marketing, strategy and reputation (which could have been compensated if they had done the first two right).
- AceJohnny2 4y ago
  It's certainly an uphill battle to convince players. I blame their feeble marketing. For example I remain flabbergasted that the landing page for Stadia always redirected to a "Need Chrome" page if you weren't already on it, with zero enticement for why you should.
- fleddr 4y ago
  It is all on Google as the lack of a market fit is absurdly obvious. In theory, cloud-only gaming would make it possible for low budget gamers to experience high budget gaming. To play games they normally can't run because they can't afford the hardware. That should be the entire point of moving heavy compute to the cloud. That theory doesn't work out because the network requirements to make this playable correlate with people that are NOT on a budget. Plus, you still have to pay full price for individual games, so in any case it's not low budget gaming. Which brings into view the more likely target audience: the convenience gamer or "dad gamer". Gamers constrained by time but not money. When you game infrequently yet consistently, a console is still the superior deal. They are heavily subsidized hardware, don't have the network overhead for rendering, a very long lifecycle (7 years), a huge selection of games, additional functionality (a media center for your TV), supports fully offline games, and are backed by actual gaming companies rather than the erratic toddler named Google. Why would you possibly go for Stadia? To experiment? To not want to commit to owning a console? Fine, all valid. But you can't seriously think that's a sizable market. Simple market research or basic common sense should have revealed this prior to this disaster. I'm especially calling it a disaster because during launch, Google got roasted with questions about the platform being future-proof, given their questionable reputation. They promised to commit this time, for real. Just 14 months later their internal game studio got shutdown, and things started rolling from there. Zero market research and just throwing things at the wall, business as usual. Any other company being this unreliable would have been out of business long ago, but Google's arrogance knows no bounds as it prints money with ads. They should not be celebrated for a graceful shutdown. They should be thought of as an unserious business to avoid. Don't ever put anything of value (time, money, energy, emotion) into a Google product.
  - cptskippy 4y ago
    > Don't ever put anything of value (time, money, energy, emotion) into a Google product. To be fair, any product that allows them to capture data about your habits and improve their ability to push Ads at you is generally good (e.g., Google Account, Gmail, Android). But I completely agree with you. They used OR instead of AND in their market research.

Google has become impressively good at killing their own products. It's just unfortunate they can't support things enough to get them off the ground in the first place.

skybrian 4y ago

I don’t think it’s all on Google. The customers get a say too. Most gamers said no, so the product failed.

falcolas 4y ago
The gamers said no because it was a product where you didn't own the games, didn't own the hardware it ran on, and couldn't play the games without being within a few dozen miles of a Google datacenter (an exaggeration, but I'm certainly not close enough to play anything with a reflex check, and I'm on fiber in the lower 50 states). I can't blame them; the value proposition for most gamers was approximately zero.
- wjnc 4y ago
  Happy user of Stadia here. Fit the dad gamer in off hours usecase perfectly. Spent enough on it that even the total refund felt like something. And now on top of that I own a controller to use with the GeForce Now embedded in my LG TV. Consumer galore.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    I hate to put it this way, but you got lucky in getting a total refund. Question though: Did you get to keep your progress in the games, or did you lose that with the shutdown?
    - wjnc 4y ago
      If I understand correctly Ubisoft even put the games I got refunded in their portal including progress for me conditional on me making an account. All other progress is lost. The Xbox days of caring about perfectly finishing games are long behind me. I did think about the money and Google angle up front. I saw no reason Google could get away with no refunds under Dutch law. That might have been optimistic, but in the end might also have driven them to refunds. Same risk is in my eBook or audiobook collection.
    - drusepth 4y ago
      IIRC, Google said from the beginning they'd refund purchases if they shut down. >Question though: Did you get to keep your progress in the games, or did you lose that with the shutdown? You can get all your game savedata from Google Takeout, but in order to actually use it you'd need to own the game on another platform that lets you import that save data (like PC). The refund for each game is nice for re-buying the games elsewhere, but some consoles aren't that easy to import existing save data into. Some games implemented some cloud saves to help move data around, but there's probably some games where you're SOL getting your progress into your next platform.
  - nailer 4y ago
    I played Cyberpunk in both stadia and GFN on the same connection on the same machine in early 2021. Performance in GFN was way better than Stadia.
  - ChildOfChaos 4y ago
    I was a happy Stadia user too, I think they should have marketed it more to casual audiences, it's untapped, plenty of people would love to play the odd game but don't as they don't have hardware etc. Partly as the service had games like Monopoly and Uno on it, lots of casual party games, that is all it needed. Bad marketing from Google here, they should have pivoted to that market once they lost the toxic gaming community.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- AceJohnny2 4y ago
  > and couldn't play the games without being within a few dozen miles of a Google datacenter (an exaggeration, but I'm certainly not close enough to play anything with a reflex check, and I'm on fiber in the lower 50 states). Counterexample: I was happily playing Destiny (a "twitchy" FPS) on an iPad in AirBnBs by Lake Tahoe or in Washington. I was really impressed. In contrast, one of my friends who migrated to Geforce Now has been complaining about much worse latency, graphical and audio glitches. I assume Google's excellent ISP peering helped Stadia.
  - drusepth 4y ago
    >Counterexample: I was happily playing Destiny (a "twitchy" FPS) on an iPad in AirBnBs by Lake Tahoe or in Washington. I was really impressed. Another anecdote: I played through the entirety of Celeste (an extremely difficult frame-perfect platformer) on Stadia with almost no issues. I switched to GeforceNow when Stadia announced they were shutting down. It's comparable in quality most of the time, but has quite a few quirks and the UX leaves a lot to be desired.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
      Celeste is a very strong data point in favor of the platform. That being said, it is amusing that you are describing a game that could likely run on 10 year old hardware without any issue.
      - AceJohnny2 4y ago
        > it is amusing that you are describing a game that could likely run on 10 year old hardware without any issue. That really has no relation to the inherent problem of cloud gaming: latency. In fact, an Apple II can have better latency than a modern computer! [1] And as a counterpoint to Celeste, they recently released their toy/testing game "The Worm Game" as a sort of parting gift, and I was shocked at the latency on that, where I had to really anticipate turning the snake. It was a completely different experience, and had I tried that first I never would've believed in the platform. [1] https://danluu.com/input-lag/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/
SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
It's circular though - I think a lot of gamers said no because they knew that Google could kill the service, and in this case everything they bought would disappear forever. I didn't want to invest in such an ecosystem. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point.
- ascagnel_ 4y ago
  Additionally, there are competitors (Microsoft's xCloud, NVidia's GeForce NOW) that side-step the problem of Stadia's ecosystem. xCloud is only available with Microsoft's all-you-can-eat, Netflix-style game subscription service (and generally only plays games available on that service), while GFN works with a user's existing digital library. Stadia seemingly offered the worst of all options: games had to be purchased at full price through Google's storefront, could not be played locally, and required Google's streaming back-end to be available.
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    You can use Steam with Geforce Now?
    - ascagnel_ 4y ago
      Per a marketing page, GFN supports some Steam games (publishers can opt their games out). https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/
    - drusepth 4y ago
      GFN works by linking your accounts on existing storefronts (Steam, Epic, GOG). Not all games from those libraries are supported (publishers have to opt in, not out), but if you own a supported game already, you can stream it on GFN for free, or subscribe to a paid GFN tier for a better experience. Anecdotal numbers: I have a Steam library of 197 games and 44 of them are available on GFN.
- myself248 4y ago
  We all remember PlaysForSure™.
james_in_the_uk 4y ago
Target market = people who: (I) like to play computer games (II) haven’t already invested in hardware and a library (II) aren’t sensitive to latency. Not exactly surprising that it didn’t take off.
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  I can't even tolerate the latency of playing my PS5 one room over. Can't see how it'd be any fun to play a game hosted hundreds of miles away.
  - _cenw 4y ago
    Weirdly enough, a lot of the latency doesn't seem to be all network related, but rather encoder/decoder and pacing related. I can't play games on the same LAN over Moonlight/Parsec without noticing the severe drop in responsiveness, but I can barely notice when using GeForce Now. Shadow and Xbox Cloud Streaming are basically unplayable again though.
sp332 4y ago
Partly, but also they spun up an entire game studio and then shut it down after two years. What was that even for?
xeromal 4y ago
This product specifically is DOA. Its userbase is too niche. Gamers are not found of latency and this product is very much latency. I used something like stadia called OnLive in 2012 and while very neat, I preferred gaming on my system or PC.
- sofixa 4y ago
  I'm sorry, but did you actually use Stadia? For many, including myself, latency was minimal and not a problem at all for the tons of story based games (Red Dead Redemption 2, Hitman, various Assassin's Creeds). It wasn't DOA, it was killed by Google's poor marketing, strategy and reputation (which could have been compensated if they had done the first two right).
AceJohnny2 4y ago
It's certainly an uphill battle to convince players. I blame their feeble marketing. For example I remain flabbergasted that the landing page for Stadia always redirected to a "Need Chrome" page if you weren't already on it, with zero enticement for why you should.
fleddr 4y ago
It is all on Google as the lack of a market fit is absurdly obvious. In theory, cloud-only gaming would make it possible for low budget gamers to experience high budget gaming. To play games they normally can't run because they can't afford the hardware. That should be the entire point of moving heavy compute to the cloud. That theory doesn't work out because the network requirements to make this playable correlate with people that are NOT on a budget. Plus, you still have to pay full price for individual games, so in any case it's not low budget gaming. Which brings into view the more likely target audience: the convenience gamer or "dad gamer". Gamers constrained by time but not money. When you game infrequently yet consistently, a console is still the superior deal. They are heavily subsidized hardware, don't have the network overhead for rendering, a very long lifecycle (7 years), a huge selection of games, additional functionality (a media center for your TV), supports fully offline games, and are backed by actual gaming companies rather than the erratic toddler named Google. Why would you possibly go for Stadia? To experiment? To not want to commit to owning a console? Fine, all valid. But you can't seriously think that's a sizable market. Simple market research or basic common sense should have revealed this prior to this disaster. I'm especially calling it a disaster because during launch, Google got roasted with questions about the platform being future-proof, given their questionable reputation. They promised to commit this time, for real. Just 14 months later their internal game studio got shutdown, and things started rolling from there. Zero market research and just throwing things at the wall, business as usual. Any other company being this unreliable would have been out of business long ago, but Google's arrogance knows no bounds as it prints money with ads. They should not be celebrated for a graceful shutdown. They should be thought of as an unserious business to avoid. Don't ever put anything of value (time, money, energy, emotion) into a Google product.
- cptskippy 4y ago
  > Don't ever put anything of value (time, money, energy, emotion) into a Google product. To be fair, any product that allows them to capture data about your habits and improve their ability to push Ads at you is generally good (e.g., Google Account, Gmail, Android). But I completely agree with you. They used OR instead of AND in their market research.