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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

#41

Post by JulianMorrison »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #17
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…

I agree that they didn't need this in the first place, but this is the venture they started last March [1]. What changed for them in those 10 months that wasn't an obvious trend before? [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/4/21164801/google-stadia-sha...

I presume that they came out of the gate with the sensible perspective that if you build it, and there aren't any games on it, the players won't come. My guess is what changed is that the infrastructure is now viable as infrastructure, they don't need to prop it up with their own game releases.

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

#42

Post by anxman »

sneak wrote: post #38
dharmab wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same here and I worked on Stadia

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

#43

Post by paxys »

Forbo wrote: post #40

I'm having a hard time finding any info on what "SG&E" is despite a lot of searching. Can anyone provide some context?

Yeah it's weird that they would put that in a public blog post without any explanation. I'm guessing it's their game development division.

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

#44

Post by temp667 »

Initially I thought some straightforward fun first party games would be great. Make them cheap / free with platform, do some of the standards (a runner, a platformer, etc etc). Keep them pretty simple. That would have been nice - show off a bit what the platform can do, but be a fast follower for some popular genres.

What engine was SGE using? When I heard AWS wasn't just going to do something like license Epic I thought - uh oh... here we go!

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

#45

Post by crucifiction »

guardiangod wrote: post #22

I know Google/Stadia recently partnered with LG to bundle the Stadia app with LG TVs, but I wonder why Google doesn't do this with every TV manufacturers (save Sony.) If I were Stadia's marketing chief, I'd 1. Bribe the TV manufacturers to include the Stadia app 2. Advertise that the TV includes _a game console_ during TV commercials. 3. Allow the TV users to pay a bit extra ($20?) to buy a basic game controller. 4.…

The reason they don’t push this is because Stadia, like a lot of things, is just a side project at google. It does nothing to drive significant new ad revenue, so it’s never going to get this kind of deep pocket investment.

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

#46

Post by narrator »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #12
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...

Perhaps hubris. But it could also be the same thing that plagues every developer that tries to build games: procrastinating the impossible part (building games, especially games worth a damn) by the doing the easy part (building tools). And the delusion that you're doing anything of value because it feels productive. And the allure of generalization.

What's funny is a friend of mine who is a talented developer and started a game studio surprised me when he started blogging about his experience and he was solely focused on the characters, story development, animation, etc. Instead of technology. Reading about the problems Amazon has been having, this seems like the only way to go.

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

#47

Post by Andrex »

From Kotaku[0]:

> "The service’s best moments may have been when its third-party ports showed off the strength of the cloud gaming model, in which a game can run well on just about any device with a screen and a strong internet connection. Ubisoft games such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey ran well on Stadia. Destiny 2’s Stadia support let players of that game drop in for an extra match or quest from their phone or laptop when they were far from their regular gaming gear. When Cyberpunk 2077 was faltering on everything else in December, it was running quite well on Stadia.

They’re not wrong. If Phil *Harrison is trying to turn Stadia into, say, the "Unreal Engine of cloud gaming” (scare quotes added by me), he’ll likely be much more successful at doing that than trying to make "a traditional console like PS5, but, like, in the cloud."

This shatters my confidence in Stadia as an ongoing consumer platform, though (especially that Stadio Pro sub, and possibly even the hardware/controllers too.)

0. https://kotaku.com/google-stadia-shuts-down-internal-studios...

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

#48

Post by eulers_secret »

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...

Here's an article I read the other day on this: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-just-anything-except-g...

My favorite quotation: (context: Frazzini is director-lvl) "[...]the team cringed as Frazzini struggled to differentiate between hyper-polished conceptual footage and live gameplay[...]". I am awe-struck, my only response is: LOL

My second favorite tidbit was about their game "New World", in which players "colonize a mythical land and murder inhabitants who bear a striking resemblance to Native Americans". Then refused to believe their employees who said this was racist and offensive. Until they hired a tribal consultant who, indeed, found it offensive.

There's other good things in there as well - not listening to other employees, hiring and then wasting talent, chasing trends, not understanding the industry, not scoping correctly (lumberjack). Even AMZN's culture was restrictive and harmful (IMO especially "leaders are right a lot" lmao, not at all in this case!).

Could you imagine working in an industry for a decade, and then being in this position? Where your boss literally cannot differentiate between a rendered video and a pre-release video game - but the culture has an in-built "you're probably wrong, peon" attitude? I'd leave so fast I'd probably forget my desk plants!

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

#49

Post by scep12 »

crucifiction wrote: post #45
guardiangod wrote: post #22

I know Google/Stadia recently partnered with LG to bundle the Stadia app with LG TVs, but I wonder why Google doesn't do this with every TV manufacturers (save Sony.) If I were Stadia's marketing chief, I'd 1. Bribe the TV manufacturers to include the Stadia app 2. Advertise that the TV includes _a game console_ during TV commercials. 3. Allow the TV users to pay a bit extra ($20?) to buy a basic game controller. 4.…

The reason they don’t push this is because Stadia, like a lot of things, is just a side project at google. It does nothing to drive significant new ad revenue, so it’s never going to get this kind of deep pocket investment.

Then why do it at all? What would possibly justify such a large investment of capital if Google didn't believe it to be a potentially nontrivial contributor of future revenue?

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

#50

Post by dleslie »

As a game developer, Stadia does not in any way excite me because of my prior experiences with the Android App Store.

That is to say, if somehow Stadia is successful then I expect a long term outcome where games are nearly all freemium adware or grind-to-win, with a few poorly-performing notable exceptions; mashing out the same three or four proven-successful concepts with new skins ad nauseum. The margins will be so razor-thin that there won't be any room to risk on innovation.

This is because they don't care to improve discovery on their store front. It's always been awful, it will continue to be awful. There will be virtually no quality control to speak of, with sudden and opaque decisions to remove products, and so on...

Recall that in the very early days of the Android app store it was flush with $20 games, and effectively absent of stolen content, adware and spyware. Look at it now.

The two major improvements that it might have over the App Store experience would be an absence of asset-ripped "clones" (read: your APK is ripped, minorly re-branded, and re-uploaded with a similar name), and perhaps far less malicious software, because access to the local device will be limited.

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