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"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

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Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#601

Post by xg15 »

ativzzz wrote: post #578
suby wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure a lot of people feel the same as you, but I very much disagree. If games aren't art worth preserving, then neither is television, movies, music, etc. I don't see how one can claim those mediums are art but games are somehow not.

> If games aren't art worth preserving, then neither is television, movies, music, etc They're not, unless you're willing to pay extra for them to be. Netflix is not preservable, DVDs are. Spotify is not preservable, CDs/MP3s are. Most of the stuff we watch/listen to is on non-preservable media, and for the most part, we don't care. If you really love a certain movie or song/album, you will buy it separately. Why not…

You're aware that DVDs are older than Netflix and MP3s are older than Spotify?

They absolutely used to be preservable until an enormous technological effort was made to make them non-preservable. The amount of people curating their CD (or later MP3) collections showed they cared very much.

> If you really love a certain movie or song/album, you will buy it separately. Why not the same with games?

Because it's not clear at all that this option would still exist. From a publisher's perspective, it's vastly preferable to just sell access to your game and keep the actual binary under wraps. So if there is a way how they could realistically do that, I don't think there will be much motivation to also offer the game as standalone software.

Or, to be more precise, you'll able to "buy" the game alright, but what you're buying is just access to the game on a streaming service, not an actual copy.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#602

Post by dlp211 »

dawg- wrote: post #268
OedipusRex wrote: post #89

I said this in another thread about Stadia, the market for Stadia is vanishingly small. The people who have high enough internet speeds that either can't or won't get a "traditional" console or PC is extremely small. Too small to signal to Google that this is worth maintaining ( https://killedbygoogle.com/ ). For Stadia to survive, Google needs to bring in new "gamers", because existing "gamers" already have their ow…

I think they are probably betting that for $10 a month, people who already have a playstation or xbox would check it out and subscribe from pure curiosity. When the next generation of consoles come out in a couple years, here's the choice users will be looking at: $500 for a new playstation/xbox? Or just keep paying that $10 a month subscription that I forgot about two years ago? Imagine you are a parent and your 13…

This is a very naive point of view. The whole reason to buy a console is exclusives. I'm not buying a PS5 to play the next crossplatform game, and 13 year old will want many of those same exclusives.

Also, the next gen of consoles is slated to drop next year.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#603

Post by jillesvangurp »

Crinus wrote: post #113
ArmandGrillet wrote: post #36

I want Stadia. I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. If Google doesn't drop the ball (which is a huge if knowing the company's history), Stadia makes a lot of sense. I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2, the cheapest way to do that as I don't have a console nor an expensive computer is Stadia. And when I will want to play Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia will be the ch…

> the lack of a long term vision How about this for a long term vision: any game you buy now will be totally lost in the future ("long term") when Google decides to shut down the service (which happens all the time) or deactivate your account (which also happens all the time) while developers will have moved on and/or closed and wont give a second thought about. In the meanwhile, while Stadia exists, any games will b…

I pay for Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime. I have no illusions about content being there long term. Something similar for games is missing though arguably it is content that you consume and then discard.

Maybe, consider that it's not about you but about everyone else. I don't have a water cooled led blinking monstrosity hiding under my desk pretending it's a industrial vacuum cleaner. So, any game I play, I'm dealing with lousy framerates, and endless tweaking, etc. I never really invested in owning consoles. And I stopped buying games years ago. But I'd probably play Red Redemption and similar games out of curiosity if only I had something to play it on at a reasonable price.

In other words, Stadia potentially solves a problem for casual gamers like me already used to subscribing to content that might like to try out a few high end games but are not willing to spend gazillions on the latest gear.

Of course Google's execution here is worth criticizing. It looks like they got a giant meh from the gaming industry and are showing off another empty room problem. They need a catalogue and a marketing story around it. Neither is something Google has ever done well. They just don't do the content game very well. Youtube premium/red/or whatever it is called is pretty much dead in the water for the same reason. It's the same failed strategy: build it and they will come.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#604

Post by dlp211 »

SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #56
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If bandwidth is good enough to handle 4K 60 FPS game streaming, downloading or patching a 150 GB game will be breezy enough it won't bother you much anyways. Bear in mind, the Washington Post reviewer who was showing how bad Stadia was on the office's gigabit connection was speedtesting at 291 Mbps down at the time.

That still doesn't cover the cost of a high-end gaming machine. GPU alone can be north of $1k. Imagine not having to re-buy all those components every 2-3 years.

Stadia is like a 960 GTX equivalent quality for the free tier and a 1080 GTX for the 4k tier. Let's not kid ourselves about the level of hardware power that one gets from this service.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#605

Post by ksec »

I disagree with the reasons that this article put forward.

>I think the answer's obvious. Because they designed the product backward. They didn't think "what do people want?", or even go Apple and think "what COULD people want, if we showed them why they wanted it?". Sun started with: "What can we build?"

Both the case study with Solaris and Stadia failure has nothing to do with wants or needs. I actually want Solaris features of Thin Client, and the magic it describe where its state lives on Big Computer. Along with Stadia's idea of streaming games. Both of them are perfect in concept, I want them!

The problem is the experience. Apple didn't start if it could or not, they ask if the User Experience will be great. And I cant think of a product or services where latency is not part of the User Experience. Both Solaris and Stadia's experience so far is simply not good enough, and for me it might never be good enough. Solaris might have nailed the Thin Client Desktop technology, but its UI along with no quality apps, no one wants it. These apps and ecosystem are all part of the experience.

Stadia are also good in concept, in practice the latency and graphics quality just put people off. And the trend is in Mobile Gaming, when was the last time you heard Mobile Network Operators said they have abundant of bandwidth?

And it is the same with VR Gaming. If VR Gaming failed now it is not because the build or want problem. We WANT VR Gaming, the problem is the technology we have right now doesn't bring the experience we want just yet. It is like Pre iPhone era Smartphone.

If the experience were good, people will buy it, if it is not, they wont. It will all sort itself out.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#606

Post by fsloth »

hayleox wrote: post #597
fsloth wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still need to have a big ass corp to maintain the film library. Movies don't just remain watchable automatically. Without fairly large capital investment to storage they would rot away. Actually the analogue to movies is pretty good in this sense - if we had a 'universal game binary' that would 'just work' on the generic 'cloud based game platform' of the future. But anyway, our future entertainment might be comple…

Even if we imagine some 'universal game binary', games are never going to be portable the way other media is. A movie is basically just a rectangle with some moving pictures accompanying some audio -- it's really easy to create a standard format that any movie can be shoved into. Video games, however, are much more dynamic. Video games require all sorts of complicated input devices – gamepads, joysticks, touchscreens…

"will you be able to find a good proxy for a Wiimote?"

I'm betting I could print it and hack something together from some hobby electronics kit if I really wanted to.

But you are absolutely correct. There is a category of games for which the complete experience is unseparably attached to the original substrate.

On the other hand, keyboard and mouse driven games are fairly maintainable accross platform generations.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#607

Post by krzyk »

jasonkester wrote: post #95

This is the sort of product that the Big Tech Companies build because they happen to live in the one place on earth where it will work. There is evidently a small area centered around the San Francisco Bay Area where internet connectivity is ubiquitous and perfect. You get unlimited 5G coverage with 2ms ping times and hundred gigabit fibre into every habitable structure. And Google, Apple, etc. all have their offices…

It depends on the country, I can compare when I was in SF 4 years ago and LTE/3G coverage in city was pretty poor in comparison with my 1+ thousand people village in Eastern Europe.

In the same village I have a 1Gbit up / 300 Mbit down fiber, I'm not sure if that is popular in homes in Bay Area.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#608

Post by on_and_off »

catalogia wrote: post #534
on_and_off wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dualshock 4 = 66 dollars (I know you can find it for cheaper, but that's the price on playstation.com) chromecast ultra = 70 dollars so I am going to stand by my original comment ;)

I think most people would just buy it at walmart who's selling it for $44, or amazon where it's also being sold for $44 ("by Playstation".) 3rd gen chromecast (is that not sufficient to stream video?) is $35. So $79 vs $130/136. That's quite a lot to many people. You can pick the more expensive options to make a point I guess, though I'm not sure what that point would be.

except that stadia requires an ultra

You can pick the options that won't work to make a point I guess, though I'm not sure what that point would be.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#609

Post by odessacubbage »

duskwuff wrote: post #304
ssully wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on this comment? I really don't understand what you are trying to say

Fighting games are highly latency-sensitive, to the extent that many fighting game tournaments are played on CRTs (because image processing on flatscreen TVs introduces additional frames of latency). They're practically a worst case for a streaming video game service.

not only that, but the audience for fighting games and in particular one as niche as a legacy snk title, are people who will buy a 200 dollar arcade stick just to have slightly more consistent inputs & execution. this is not exactly a group of people that will accept latency that ranges from okayish to semi-unplayable. the samsho community is fucking livid right now that snk went through with this deal before releasing a proper pc port.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#610

Post by odessacubbage »

ssully wrote: post #295
odessacubbage wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the fact that google is trying to to use a fighting game to showcase their product should tell you everything you need to know about their understanding of the market.

Can you elaborate on this comment? I really don't understand what you are trying to say

because this is the kind of game samsho is >https://twitter.com/hc0519/status/1100632434217934848?lang=e...
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