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When will Google shut down Stadia?

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Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#481

Post by sprashanth »

Twirrim wrote: post #423
uncletaco wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard that Facebook and Google collect engineers and let them do whatever because its better than them being productive at a competitor.

One of the most senior engineers here (someone with his name on many research and whitepapers from his tenures at Amazon, Microsoft et al), left Google for precisely this reason. He was bored of working on stuff that would never reach the light of day. It happened multiple times to him in his time there.

any pointers of who you might be referring to?

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#482

Post by Mo_da_Vinci »

thebokehwokeh2 wrote: post #352
pm90 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Textbook anti competitive behavior. Google needs to be broken up.

When people say this, what exactly does this mean? If you break Google up into Gmail, Search, Calendar, etc... what stops those from within, who have intimate knowledge of the innerworkings and HR related matters within Alphabet as a whole, from simply secretly colluding and sharing resources off the books?

Simply, that's an extremely difficult criminal enterprise to pull of especially on an ongoing basis and for what gains? I would only see to do so for spite and active defiance of the law. Is that worth hefty fines, investigations, possible charges and jail time?

A break up usually means many of these people are laid off or move on. Every separate company would have its own books that would either need to be public if they remain public entities or have audited financials that match expenses to revenue and investments. Not an easy thing to hide QTR over QTR. Furthermore, depending on how the companies are broken up, they will be acquired by other companies or PE rather than be stand-alone enterprises. Lastly, whistleblowers.

TL;DR It's not worth it for spite and any significant gains or advantages that are imagined, are probably significant enough to be noticed by the government or some enterprising analyst.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#483

Post by EpicEng »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #472
EpicEng wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Can I short stadia specifically? I'm pretty sure you understood what I was saying.

I honestly thought you meant what you said - that you wanted to short Google.

Fair enough. That's why I threw the "on this" bit in.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#484

Post by teekert »

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.

I think that it's just your (our) bubble's way of seeing Google, most people don't even know what Google Reader was, or Google+. Google doesn't care if a couple of nerds on a forum whine about their killed products. But hey, we can whine if we want to, right?

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#485

Post by WorldMaker »

macspoofing wrote: post #469
nvrspyx wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a huge fan of it either and I agree with some of your points, but: 1. They are investing in first-party studios, but I’m not sure about second-party 2. Most of the launch games available to Founders are up to 50% off and included 2 free games (although that’s just like Free Games with Gold so I wouldn’t necessarily say it sets them apart) 3. They’ve worked with other studios getting their games on Stadia. For…

Good arguments. We'll have to see how serious they are about Stadia. I don't have a lot of faith in them. But I hope to be proven wrong. The launch was a disaster in that there is no excitement about the platform. I like their statements on first-party development, but quality first-party games should have been at launch and ideally platform sellers. Though I referenced Microsoft, Microsoft isn't doing a great job ei…

> They have bungled the XboxOne launch and somehow ended up with almost no first-party games.

Two very different issues, and both of which are arguably "solved" at this point.

1. Long tail sales is on par for Xbox One with where they should be at, at this point in the generation.

2. Microsoft divested several studios prior to the Xbox One. Such as the aforementioned Bungie which was a first party developer for the Xbox 360, and Epic which was a strong "second party" developer. It's taken them a bit for the spin-ups of their replacements to match their former brethren's output levels (343 and The Coalition, respectively), and Microsoft has also invested heavily into acquisitions in recent years, adding a bunch of interesting heavy hitters (such as Obsidian, inXile), and some interesting oddballs (such as Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Compulsion). It will take a short while for those new first parties' power to be felt in the Xbox space, but no other console manufacturer has invested as much in the first and second party development as Microsoft has recently. The only thing watering that down is that Microsoft (for very good reason) still believes the PC to be their first and oldest console, and "first party exclusives" are getting released to Windows 10 and now (again) Steam simultaneously with Xbox releases.

(I think it says a lot that Microsoft let Bungie go. They didn't try to kill the golden goose. It's made the Xbox One a bit slower to catch up to some of the highs that the 360 saw with Halo 1 and Halo 2, but maybe it's so much the better for the industry as a whole that Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 haven't been Xbox Exclusives.)

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#486

Post by maest »

saynay wrote: post #346
mbell wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

AFAIK, there is a big difference in the backend. Something like the Playstation 'cloud gaming' gave you remote access to a playstation console. Others gave you access to a VM running the game. I think Microsoft was talking about giving you access to your own XBox running at home? The games were not re-engineered / ported specifically to run 'in the cloud' as Stadia is attempting. There are some interesting things tha…

My mental model is that Stadia is just like owning a PS/Xbox, but the hardware is in Google's datacentres.

You pay the one-off cost to buy the console, you then maybe pay for the Pro subscription, but you have to buy your games and those games are locked to that platform - just like with PS/Xbox.

All the other stuff about having games that deliver something unseen before because of "the cloud" are mostly promises and theoretical features at this stage, so I wouldn't bank too much on that.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#487

Post by maest »

heywoods wrote: post #303
mbell wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think I can help answer your question, but just watching the keynote will be best. https://youtu.be/hl-Y1QVhmcM . The tl;dr of the whole keynote is what's different about Google's attempt at 'Cloud Gaming' is their ability to leverage their infrastructure. Outside of Amazon and Microsoft I don't know of another company that will be able to match the latency and computation requirements to make this all work as mark…

All that compute and network power and yet GeForceNow performs better for me than Stadia.

I'm just one datapoint, I know, but that's also just a keynote.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#488

Post by pavel_lishin »

ogre_codes wrote: post #207
dopamean wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm crazy but I've never thought google had a good product team. Has there ever been a coherent vision for their collection of products? Edit: just to be clear. I'm not saying google doesnt have good products. I use and enjoy lots of them but for a long time it has seemed like even google isn't sure how all their products fit together. Perhaps that leads to weird forays into territories that don't fit which the…

Google has a few products which were stellar and singularly awesome at the time of launch: Search, Maps, and Gmail. In the years since I'm not even sure I love those products anymore. Search has nearly become pay-to-play, a model which the original search killed. Maps is not nearly as stand-out as it used to be (mostly because products like Apple Maps have improved massively over the years). And Gmail is a bit of a m…

> YouTube and Android in particular seem plagued with privacy and ethical flaws.

Ethical and privacy issues aside, they're also fucking riddled with UX nightmares.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#489

Post by kingosticks »

monocasa wrote: post #446
pavel_lishin wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can; you have to buy the games on Stadia. _Hopefully_, there will be a way to export those licenses out of Stadia.

Can you think of any other system like that which allows you to export licenses to games? AFAIK, that's unprecedented in the industry, and explicitly against the contracts I've seen. Edit: Steam will let you _import_ a CD key, but that's the closest I can think of, and there's no way to export once it's in steam.

When the Ultraviolet movie service shutdown they had some mechanism to prevent users losing their purchased content. I don't know how it worked exactly but ultimately it must have been some kind of license transfer. I don't think it's a huge stretch to imagine something similar being applied to video games.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#490

Post by maest »

quantdev wrote: post #475
endorphone wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the original rumors about Stadia I did think Google was going to revolutionize the industry, particularly in social/massively-multiple games. Starting with the development stack that would leverage a coherent, synchronized world that is massively malleable -- huge banks of systems connected in the microsecond latency range with virtually unlimited throughput, massive neural engines, etc. Destructables, enormous pl…

So what? Products improve. This one will too. Imagine seeing an ad on Youtube and immediately being able to play the game on your chromebook. I don't know that's what is going to happen and it can't work today, but maybe in a few years.

That's such a slippery argument. You can always underdeliver as long as you promise that 'products improve. This one will too'.

How about I don't pay the monthly subscription/for the controller and tell Google that "payments improve. Mine will too"?

I'm obviously salty because I preordered Stadia (against my better judgement) and it's terrible.

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