When will Google shut down Stadia? • Hacker News Board

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#221

Post by mbell » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #174

I understand the cynicism of this community to Stadia but implore you all to think a little broader. Stadia is different, with this product Google is trying something really innovative. For one, the fact that Stadia actually costs money should be a signal of Google's long term ambition here. Yes, Fiber also cost money but was bogged down by the hell that is infrastructure development. Stadia will require a substantia…

> Stadia is different, with this product Google is trying something really innovative.

Genuine question: What is innovative here? There are at least a dozen attempts at 'cloud gaming' that I'm aware of dating back about a decade.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#222

Post by LeifCarrotson » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

131012 wrote: post #184

I feel that we are a little bit too hard on the big G on this one. They simply have their own inner startups, which they kill if product gains no traction. We should look at how many startups from YC die within 4 years and make the comparison. I might be wrong, but the ratio could be very similar. Still, Stadia will fail for sure ^^

"No traction" for a Google product just means it's not the next Search or Gmail.

It doesn't mean that zero people use it. Thousands or millions of people used Hangouts, Google Reader, Google Code, or Picasa - they'd have been considered big YC successes.

If big YC companies all got shut down if they failed to turn into another letter in the FAANG acronym, maybe people would become reluctant to use services from YC companies.

I still use some Google services, but I check out my data on a regular basis, I'm not buying a Fitbit, and I'm not subscribing to Stadia because I want those things to last longer than I think Google will keep them around.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#223

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #199

40acres wrote: post #174

I understand the cynicism of this community to Stadia but implore you all to think a little broader. Stadia is different, with this product Google is trying something really innovative. For one, the fact that Stadia actually costs money should be a signal of Google's long term ambition here. Yes, Fiber also cost money but was bogged down by the hell that is infrastructure development. Stadia will require a substantia…

> Google is trying something really innovative This kind of thing has been around for nearly 10 years.

Where? Who else is doing this type of cloud gaming?

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#224

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #146

perlgeek wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think good had (and maybe still) good product teams. For example I'm regularly amazed at small features in Maps that make my life easier. What's missing is the company-level portfolio management.

> For example I'm regularly amazed at small features in Maps that make my life easier. While I generally agree that Maps is a great and amazing product, I really feel that it is now suffering "peak product" syndrome like MS Word circa late 90s/early 00s. That is, I think Maps was probably "optimal" about 2 or 3 years ago, but since then there has been so much organizational pressure to do something new and add featur…

Agreed entirely. I struggle at times to figure out how to get directions between two places in the new Maps UI in a way I never used to.

Same thing with Gmail - what was once zippy and performant-feeling now feels like swimming through molasses.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#225

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

NegatioN wrote: post #124

ryanmercer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And another solitary tear from the other eye for Google Inbox :,( To be fair, Gmail has been my primary email since early 2009 and I'd never even heard of Inbox until people on Leo Laporte's podcast started whining it was going away.

How is that being fair? Does you not having heard about it define what is a great product, and what is not? Google Inbox was great. Intuitive, modern, snappy, a testbed for new features, and on the surface it seemed less monetized and ad-ridden than gmail. I switched away from Google's email-clients as soon as Inbox died, also having used Gmail since as soon as I got an invite when it was more closed than today.

>How is that being fair? Does you not having heard about it define what is a great product, and what is not?

It's fair because MANY people had never heard of it. I even heard on those same Leo Laporte podcasts people going "what's inbox", people who report on tech for a living. I imagine, compared to people just using the gmail app or the web interface, it had terrible adoption rates which made it not worth supporting. From all I could gather is it was almost exclusively used by those in tech and then only by a small subset.

I imagine reader had a small user base. RSS feeds are a pretty obscure thing and always were.

The only hangouts messages I've ever received have been group spam and likely has a relatively small user base.

Google Circles was largely spam and garbage content created for SEO in my experience and probably had a very small real user base.

Etc etc. If you your user base is a small percentage, or a fraction of your percentage, of your overall user base it's perfectly fair to go "well, let's shelf that".

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#226

Post by summerlight » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

Most of those products killed without any transition path are actually consumer products without revenue. So my rule of thumb: if Stadia manages a chunk of other Google business to depend on itself (which makes it much harder to be deprecated), then probably it's okay to use it. Integration into Youtube or Ads would be a good sign of their commitment.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#227

Post by zerocrates » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #137

irrational wrote: post #4

Honestly, as soon as Google announces a new product, my first thought is to wonder how long until it is shut down. Google has completely lost my trust in relying on any of their products. Even when they come out and claim that this product will not be cancelled, for reals this time, pinky promise, etc. I simply can't believe them.

How much trust in longevity do you need to be willing to play a rented video game? > Even when they come out and claim that this product will not be cancelled, When has this happened? Has Google broken its contracts?

You "buy" games for Stadia, you don't rent them.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#228

Post by _ah » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

throwaway35784 wrote: post #116

irrational wrote: post #4

Honestly, as soon as Google announces a new product, my first thought is to wonder how long until it is shut down. Google has completely lost my trust in relying on any of their products. Even when they come out and claim that this product will not be cancelled, for reals this time, pinky promise, etc. I simply can't believe them.

Aside: Costumers, er prospects rather, love my products until the end when they ask, "so... how many people work there?" As though that would indicate how likely it is that the product will have a long life. They are telling me with that question they want my software for a long time. But when they hear the answer they bail. I still don't know how to get over that hump.

"Most companies are bloated and would require a huge staff of N to maintain this product, but I'm able to do it with N/10 because we've invested heavily in the very best intelligent automation. I've staked my entire life on this project so I cannot afford to let it fail."

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#229

Post by ddtaylor » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #199

40acres wrote: post #174

I understand the cynicism of this community to Stadia but implore you all to think a little broader. Stadia is different, with this product Google is trying something really innovative. For one, the fact that Stadia actually costs money should be a signal of Google's long term ambition here. Yes, Fiber also cost money but was bogged down by the hell that is infrastructure development. Stadia will require a substantia…

> Google is trying something really innovative This kind of thing has been around for nearly 10 years.

Yup. OnLive tried it with similar results. There are many markets where 10ms - 20ms latency doesn't matter that much, but realtime gaming isn't one of them. It's extremely disorienting to play a game with even the slightest framebuffer lag.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#230

Post by kleer001 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

tempsy wrote: post #38

What is going on with Google? I used to think Google had the best product team in the world. In some ways I thought they defined what modern product management is/was. Now I have no clue what they are thinking with their product launches as of late. All of their products (and marketing) invoke this conservative, risk-adverse blandness that tries to appeal to everyone and in turn appeals to no one.

My first thought is their obsession with their own culture as opposed productivity. Seems like something that could merge well with the Peter principle and put incompetents in important positions.