Thursday, September 29th 2022
Google Calls it Quits on Game Streaming, Shutting Down Stadia
Game streaming services, such as GeForce Now, Stadia and Amazon's Luna, haven't been the roaring success the companies behind them had hoped for. One of the pitfalls, that NVIDIA quickly found out, was that the game publishers weren't overly keen on gamers being able to play games they already owned on multiple systems, even if it wasn't on more than one system at once. Multiple services have already come and gone over the years and now it's time for Google to bid farewell to its Stadia service. In its blog post, Google didn't state the exact reasoning behind shutting down the service, beyond it not gaining the kind of traction the company had hoped for.
The good news here is that Google will be refunding all of its Stadia customers, regardless if it's someone that has bought hardware through the Google Store, or bought games or even add-on content for games through the Stadia Store. Google will be refunding all of its customers by the 18th of January 2023 and those using Stadia will continue to have access to all of their content until that date. Google expects its Stadia technology to be used for other services, or potentially be made available to third parties. As to the team behind Stadia, many will apparently carry on working for other departments at Google.
Source:
Google
The good news here is that Google will be refunding all of its Stadia customers, regardless if it's someone that has bought hardware through the Google Store, or bought games or even add-on content for games through the Stadia Store. Google will be refunding all of its customers by the 18th of January 2023 and those using Stadia will continue to have access to all of their content until that date. Google expects its Stadia technology to be used for other services, or potentially be made available to third parties. As to the team behind Stadia, many will apparently carry on working for other departments at Google.
179 Comments on Google Calls it Quits on Game Streaming, Shutting Down Stadia
The same goes for Facebook. Both companies live and breathe to hoover up personal data to know everything about you.
How any one specific individual is gaming has very little relevance to the video game industry as a whole. It's what the people in the 13-39 year old group is doing en masse, not what my relatives in their eighties are doing.
It's not just about you.
Didn’t google promise to upgrade the host hardware over time as well? IIRC, they were Ryzen+Vega hosts that you connected to. I had a feeling Stadia was doomed since they never announced any upgrades.
Ultimately consumers will follow content to wherever it can be found the cheapest and most convenient. For most people that's their phone.
Remember what Steve Jobs said about the original iPhone in 2007: "it's the computer for the rest of us."
First of all EGS is not a cloud streaming GaaS platform. It's a storefront both for one-time software purchases as well as free-to-play titles. Note the Epic Games is also a publisher as well as a GaaS company (making money off of subscriptions as well as one-time purchases).
Google's primary business is collecting users' online behavior and selling it to advertisers, a completely different business model.
Moreover, Epic Games isn't some shoestring operation. It's about 40% owned by Chinese media giant Tencent Holdings. Now while no company is "too big to fail" I'm guessing that their Chinese equity holders aren't going to let Epic Games flushed down the toilet.
Ignore EGS's weekly freebies, their main focus is to grow properties like Fortnite which provide steady revenue.
Again, Epic takes a percentage of game sales on the Epic Game Store. This was heavily covered during their litigation with Apple. They aren't giving games away from free. They are also a publisher and thus take a cut of sales from those titles.
Their big play is for GaaS, which in practice translates to ongoing subscriptions, in-game purchases, microtransactions, etc. Fortnite is free to play, they make their money from cosmetics, etc.
My guess is that the PC video game universe can support multiple storefronts. Note that Epic Games has a mobile presence on Android. They had an EGS app on iOS but following their unsuccessful litigation with Apple, the end result is that they got kicked out of the iOS/iPadOS market.
Amusingly, Apple users can still play Fortnite via GeForce NOW both on iDevices as well as Mac.
One of the major factors that has driven Unreal Engine success is its portability: desktop, console, mobile, and VR.
Netflix has been like that since the DVD-by-mail era. Remember the good ol' days when your Netflix subscription plan determined how many movies you could have checked out at once? You never owned any of the DVDs, you were only renting the content.
Cable TV has been like this for decades, again a monthly subscription, not PPV by individual program. Sports fans in particularly are used to add-on subscriptions for season passes like NFL Sunday Ticket or MLB TV+.
Even productivity software isn't new to this: Microsoft 365, Adobe Cloud, whatever.
The new Oceanic+ app for Apple Watch Ultra will be a subscription. That's not a new concept either, we saw mobile apps like password locker 1Password go from a one-time purchase to a subscription model years ago.
Do you have Amazon Prime? Not much different. Prime is basically Shopping as a Service and incentivizes subscribers to spend more money at Amazon so they are "getting their money's worth." Costco and Sam's Club memberships are similar.
Even your cellular plan is likely a subscription. You know you can still get PAYG (Pay As You Go) cellular service and only pay for what you use, right?
NVIDIA's GFNow is worst, though, and they definitely don't have the deep-pockets compared to Google but NVIDIA do architect the most costly part of the hardware though.
GFN demise soon?! :laugh:
Hi everyone,
We’ll be having a Stadia team meeting today, September 29th at 8:30 AM PT to share some important updates with everyone. Apologies for the short notice — we would appreciate it if you can please prioritise attending this meeting, or check in with your manager afterwards if you can’t make it. Details have been added to your calendars. This will be a virtual-only meeting, so please feel free to join from wherever you’re working today.
Best,
Phil