Google Calls it Quits on Game Streaming, Shutting Down Stadia

[Deleted member 185088]

You're not looking at the big picture when you say "most games". Anything that's not a fast-paced FPS or arcade game, can easily deal with the added latency.

Agreed, the issue was Google pushing for this kind of games, have they focused on more casual games it would've made more sense.
Plus the image quality, the bandwidth is very low compared to native, games need to look simple as well.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

PC Gamer is reporting that Stadia game developers were caught off guard at today's announcement:

Stadia game developers had no idea Google was killing Stadia

Here's how the games industry is reacting to the news that Stadia is going away.

www.pcgamer.com

So it's not just Google employees who were kept in the dark. It was also Stadia partners. One developer even said that their game was due to launch in 2 days time on Stadia.

Google can offer new positions for displaced Stadia employees but they can't do anything for game developer employees who are part of teams assigned to a dead platform.

If anyone at those studios kept up with any Stadia news they shouldnt have been surprised that it was going to happen sooner or later. My guess is management had a hint but kept such news from its employees intentionally to keep production moving forward.

 

[bug]

Agreed, the issue was Google pushing for this kind of games, have they focused on more casual games it would've made more sense.
Plus the image quality, the bandwidth is very low compared to native, games need to look simple as well.

The issue was they didn't have a solution on their hands first. They floated a half-baked service, hoping users will flock to it giving them leverage to strong-arm publishers into adding their titles to Stadia. When that didn't pan out, the whole thing crumbled.
Plus, this time people actually expected Stadia to fail. or otherwise be killed by Google for whatever reasons.

 

[trparky]

Plus, this time people actually expected Stadia to fail. or otherwise be killed by Google for whatever reasons.

Like all things outside of Google's core business of advertising and the hoovering up of personal information yes, most of us expected Stadia to not be around long. And here we are proving just how right we all were.

 

[bug]

Like all things outside of Google's core business of advertising and the hoovering up of personal information yes, most of us expected Stadia to not be around long. And here we are proving just how right we all were.

This may just a feeling of mine, but I think this is bigger than us proving Google we were right. I think Stadia is the tipping point where the public told Google we will not flock to their products anymore, before they prove they're willing to commit first.

 

[lexluthermiester]

First reaction: That didn't take long.

Second reaction: Holy crap, has it really been three years? How'd it last that long?

I was thinking: "Damn, that took long enough..."

 

[trparky]

the public told Google we will not flock to their products anymore, before they prove they're willing to commit first.

And unfortunately, anything new, no matter what it is, is going to face that kind of criticism from the public because they, themselves, did it to themselves. They've essentially ruined their reputation.

 

[lexluthermiester]

And unfortunately, anything new, no matter what it is, is going to face that kind of criticism from the public because they, themselves, did it to themselves. They've essentially ruined their reputation.

I disagree. The failure of Stadia has nothing to do with Google's reputation. No one wants to do game streaming, it's a sub-par experience at best, under optimal conditions, unplayable at worst. No one is immune. NVidia's streaming service is just as unacceptable.

 

[Arco]

Why did it take so long? Cloud gaming is horrible.

 

[bug]

I disagree. The failure of Stadia has nothing to do with Google's reputation. No one wants to do game streaming, it's a sub-par experience at best, under optimal conditions, unplayable at worst. No one is immune. NVidia's streaming service is just as unacceptable.

I believe Google's reputation had a lot to do with how Stadia performed.
Streaming can be perfectly fine for playing something like Fallout or Witcher. However, after Googled screwed my with Google Play Music (for no particular reason), I decided that even if I was curious about Stadia, I would sit it out and see how it plays.

Where everybody hits a wall, is publishers that refuse to let you pay once, play everywhere. If someone manages to build a solid user base, that may change. But it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Nvidia seems to have taken a different path: tell people GPUs are too expensive and they should rent rendering services instead (see Mr. Huang recent statements). Personally, I have no idea where this will all end up.

 

[trparky]

I disagree. The failure of Stadia has nothing to do with Google's reputation.

I'm talking about the "Google Situation" from a more than just Stadia. Go ahead and look at the Google Graveyard - Killed by Google and tell me, would you trust Google to come out with something and keep at it long term? Nope. Nope. Nope.

However, after Googled screwed my with Google Play Music

Exactly. This is what I'm talking about here. Google has no staying power in whatever they've done. If it wasn't for how Android is basically a walking spy OS, they'd probably have killed it off years ago.

Remember, if it doesn't practically print the green stuff, Google shuts it down. And now that mentality is killing any possibility of Google getting anything new because who the hell will trust Google? Not me.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I believe Google's reputation had a lot to do with how Stadia performed.
Streaming can be perfectly fine for playing something like Fallout or Witcher. However, after Googled screwed my with Google Play Music (for no particular reason), I decided that even if I was curious about Stadia, I would sit it out and see how it plays.

Where everybody hits a wall, is publishers that refuse to let you pay once, play everywhere. If someone manages to build a solid user base, that may change. But it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Nvidia seems to have taken a different path: tell people GPUs are too expensive and they should rent rendering services instead (see Mr. Huang recent statements). Personally, I have no idea where this will all end up.

I'm talking about the "Google Situation" from a more than just Stadia. Go ahead and look at the Google Graveyard - Killed by Google and tell me, would you trust Google to come out with something and keep at it long term? Nope. Nope. Nope.

Exactly. This is what I'm talking about here. Google has no staying power in whatever they've done. If it wasn't for how Android is basically a walking spy OS, they'd probably have killed it off years ago.

Remember, if it doesn't practically print the green stuff, Google shuts it down. And now that mentality is killing any possibility of Google getting anything new because who the hell will trust Google? Not me.

And both of those expressions are examples of experience based bias. I too had a large Google Play Music library. It was my goto place to buy music. However, times change and Goggle wasn't making money from the Music side of things. That's hardly no reason.

The reality is Google is a pioneering company. They try things and take risks. This means they have a lot of failures. Stadia was an easy one to pick out.

As for the other comments expressed, I'm just not touching them except to say that you are welcome to your opinions.

 

[trparky]

However, times change and Goggle wasn't making money of the Music side of things.

And yet if you go over to the Apple side of things, Apple Music is making money. Spotify makes money too. Sometimes you have to go in it for the long term and potentially lose a hell of a lot of money in order for something to take off.

 

[lexluthermiester]

And yet if you go over to the Apple side of things, Apple Music is making money. Spotify makes money too.

Those are both primary music streaming services..

 

[trparky]

Those are both primary music streaming services..

And yet if Google had decided to keep at it, they too may've been in the position of making money hand over fist in the music streaming business. However, they didn't.

 

[lexluthermiester]

And yet if Google had decided to keep at it, they too may've been in the position of making money hand over fist in the music streaming business. However, they didn't.

Not disagreeing. Killing Google Play Music was a mistake. Killing Stadia was not.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yep google couldn't compete with candy crush

 

[bug]

And both of those expressions are examples of experience based bias. I too had a large Google Play Music library. It was my goto place to buy music. However, times change and Goggle wasn't making money of the Music side of things. That hardly no reason.

Except that didn't kill Google Play Music, they folded it into that YouTube Music abomination. For no reason at all.

The reality is Google is a pioneering company. They try things and take risks. This means they have a lot of failures. Stadia was an easy one to pick out.

How about their endless stream of IM applications? They not pioneering anything wrt to IM.
From what I have read, it's all about groups gaining (and losing) influence within Google and shoving their projects over anyone else's. A phenomenon management either doesn't want or cannot manage.

And, as I've said it before, I'm not against software evolution, even it's radical from time to time. But do it Apple's way: rip the guts out of everything and anything you want, just don't change the UI without a good reason. You don't have to announce (and market) a new IM or video call project, just because you've changed your internal architecture on the server or something like that.

 

[dirtyferret]

Well this certainly came out of left field. I've only heard positive news about the service...minus the in house studio shut down, constant rumors of service shut down, lack of significant customer base...but other than that all positive news

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

And both of those expressions are examples of experience based bias. I too had a large Google Play Music library. It was my goto place to buy music. However, times change and Goggle wasn't making money of the Music side of things. That hardly no reason.

The reality is Google is a pioneering company. They try things and take risks. This means they have a lot of failures. Stadia was an easy one to pick out.

As for the other comments expressed, I'm just not touching them except to say that you are welcome to your opinions.

The reality is Google is a profiteering company, if it wasnt it wouldnt need your personal information for profit. Clearly STadia was not making the money Google expected. What no touched on was that fact that Stadia was announced along side the other game streaming services, bias has everything to do with choice of which one to subscribe to. I said at that time Google is not know for its gaming expertise, that players will take that into consideration too. Reputation cannot be dismissed and will always a factor until whatever being sold has been proven worthy of accessing your wallet.

 

[TechLurker]

Stadia would have had a bit more longevity if there was a more powerful Chromecast device could at least also act like a full Android device; install some games onto it and just play it on the screen. Basically a much better version of the Ouya (which used a proprietary library instead of a common Android library). I wonder if there will be any way to repurpose the controller once Stadia shuts down.

 

[Makaveli]

No matter all the evidence some will still believe the future of PC gaming is cloud based. It reminds me of 12 years ago when the chicken littles were crying out that PC gaming was dying. Now look at us. Growing by billions of dollars every year. Larger revenue than either Xboxes or Playstations. It's the opposite of dying. It's so ridiculously lucrative that MS and Sony have started porting over their former console exclusives to PC just to cash in on the fortune of yearly PC gaming revenue.

as long as people are stuck with crap internet looking at cable with low uploads with Data caps, low speed DSL etc Latency will always make cloud gaming a non starter. People that actually play games understand this the general public does not.

 

[trparky]

as long as people are stuck with crap internet looking at cable with low uploads with Data caps, low speed DSL etc Latency will always make cloud gaming a non starter.

Yeah. DOCSIS 4.0 is supposed to solve a lot of the issues with cable Internet, but I have a feeling that many people are going to be waiting years to have that deployed in their area.

As for xDSL, it's pretty much dead and even the likes of AT&T who bet heavily on VDSL/VDSL2 with FTTN is waking up to the idea that it's time to deploy FTTH. In my area, AT&T is deploying FTTH as fast as they possibly can. The only hindrance is that according to an AT&T tech that I know, even with installers working 60-hour weeks they can't keep up with the workload. Apparently, installations are two weeks out. I had my service (500/500) installed back when people were only waiting a week to have service installed.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Yeah. DOCSIS 4.0 is supposed to solve a lot of the issues with cable Internet, but I have a feeling that many people are going to be waiting years to have that deployed in their area.

As for xDSL, it's pretty much dead and even the likes of AT&T who bet heavily on VDSL/VDSL2 with FTTN is waking up to the idea that it's time to deploy FTTH. In my area, AT&T is deploying FTTH as fast as they possibly can. The only hindrance is that according to an AT&T tech that I know, even with installers working 60-hour weeks they can't keep up with the workload. Apparently, installations are two weeks out. I had my service (500/500) installed back when people were only waiting a week to have service installed.

I was today years old when I learned about VDSL2, so perhaps this is a naive take, but wouldn't VDSL2 be tenable with FTTC?

 

[trparky]

I was today years old when I learned about VDSL2, so perhaps this is a naive take, but wouldn't VDSL2 be tenable with FTTC?

VDSL2 was meant to be used in a FTTC type setup but AT&T stupidly used it in a FTTN type setup where they were using it on loops as long as four thousand feet. I don't think I need to tell you how that idea worked out. Hint... it didn't work well at all.

Back when I had VDSL2 service from AT&T I had a loop length of less than eight hundred feet where I was able to get 100/20 service quite easily. Now, I have FTTH service with 500 Mbps symmetrical speeds that (due to overprovisioning) acts like anywhere from 600 to 650 Mbps symmetrical.