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Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

kotaku.com

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Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#31

Post by jtchang »

This is a fantastic move by Google. The war for gaming as a service will be on the platform level and something that Google is well positioned to win in. Not saying that Steam, Nintendo, Nvidia won't be some serious contenders as well but the outlook for gamers is quite positive.

I expect to see what the web went through in the early 90s as far as turmoil goes. Lots of platforms with all their quirks and developers getting behind various ones. Eventually (hopefully?) some standards enabling cross platform development of stream gaming. Bandwidth/latency still needs to play catch up but 5G is getting there. Cellular connections are getting more and more stable while landline methods are lagging.

I expect to see each platform playing to their strengths with Google pushing their expertise in infrastructure and Nvidia with their hardware. Also expect to see the space get even more crowded as traditional players join the market.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#32

Post by dharmab »

sneak wrote: post #10

Is there anywhere one can gamble on the month and year that Google shuts down services?

The service isn't shutting down; they're closing their internal game dev studio that never released a game.

You might get a kick out of https://killedbygoogle.com/

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#33

Post by riku_iki »

minimaxir wrote: post #14

> Said one source familiar with Stadia’s first-party operations, citing another tech giant’s widely publicized failure to create video games: “Google was a terrible place to make games. Imagine Amazon, but under-resourced.” "Google" and "under-resourced" in the same blurb is very funny.

By looking at how many projects/products they run, some individual niche team can be under-resourced.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#34

Post by mattlondon »

Until you can play your Steam game library (and perhaps Epic and Unisoft and GOG) on Stadia, I think they'll struggle.

I have paid for Geforce Now which does let you play Steam et al games (although not everything is available which is annoying) - it is about £4 a month currently (or free if you can spend time waiting to play) and the experience feels largely the same to Stadia to me in terms of latency and quality. Many happy hours playing high-end PC games on a super cheap and lightweight Chromebook that starts up instantly and runs silently compared to my weighty, expensive, and noisy gaming laptop that needs to boot into windows (although that only takes 5-10s these days to be fair)

Feels like nVidia (...and Xbox? Not tried that) have eaten Google's own lunch in the stream-to-chromebook context.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#36

Post by [deleted] »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #30
ketzo wrote: post #7

I think this might get the “oh, Google shuts down another area after a few years, color me surprised” crowd going, but for me this is totally the right move. There are a LOT of videogame developers out there. Many of them are quite good at what they do. The cloud gaming space, while much better than it used to be, has plenty of room for improvement — it’s not remotely mainstream yet, and there’s still time yet to min…

As a gamer, I'll buy a console for the exclusives that I can't experience elsewhere. Having solid AAA content that's exclusive seems to come from having solid first party development studios.

[deleted]

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#37

Post by offtop5 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #20
tmpz22 wrote: post #4

For context, Amazon is also struggling to make first party games [1]. I think it was hubris that these large companies didn't start with smaller scoped games and instead jumped head first into building their own engines and ips. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-ga...

They didn't really build their own engine, they bought a re-licensable license to CryEngine, rebranded it to Lumberyard, and started their engine work from that. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160209005740/en/Ama... This sale is speculated to have saved Crytek from bankruptcy, as they were failing to pay their employees at the time. Lucky for Crytek, and Amazon was probably thinking "man, we got a great dea…

I never understood why Amazon rolled another engine.

Unreal and Unity are both fantastic. Let your dev teams pick from one of those two and be done with it.

Unless your doing something really special theirs no reason to build an engine( if your goal is shipping games )

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#38

Post by sneak »

dharmab wrote: post #32
sneak wrote: post #10

Is there anywhere one can gamble on the month and year that Google shuts down services?

The service isn't shutting down; they're closing their internal game dev studio that never released a game. You might get a kick out of https://killedbygoogle.com/

I read the article. I'll bet real money that Stadia is cancelled within five years.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#39

Post by andrewclunn »

What's cheaper and more easily distributed:

reliable high speed connections

or

Computing devices with dedicated graphical processors

Survey says... nobody wants what you're selling Google, and nobody with half a brain trusts you to maintain services long term anyways. Stadia is doomed and riddance.

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