Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

kotaku.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 834 posts

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

#131

Post by Jare »

wronglebowski wrote: post #94
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.…

There was recently an article about Stadia where a developer from a decent sized studio claimed they were approached by Google for Stadia. What did Google offer for the developer to bring the game to Stadia? Almost nothing. The figure was in the tens of thousands. For reference when Microsoft/Epic approaches the studios for games on their platforms they front the entire development cost. Sometimes millions of dollars…

> when Microsoft/Epic approaches the studios for games on their platforms they front the entire development cost

We once had a Microsoft rep come visit us to get us to publish our upcoming mobile games for Windows Mobile Tablet notreallysurewhatwasthatanymore. When we asked what kind of support they were ready to provide, they offered to lend us a device for a few weeks.

Of course it's not representative of how things should happen, but for every big partnership or exclusive you read about, there's a dozen dumb wastes of time.

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

#132

Post by eecks »

breakfastduck wrote: post #118
liaukovv wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine buying health insurance from someone for whom it's a hobby.

I get the point you're trying to make, but actually your example is one where I wouldn't mind. I'd rather my bad health not be the central profit driver for someone...

Aren't health insurance companies losing money by paying out? It's in their interest that their paying customers stay in good health.

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

#133

Post by mywittyname »

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.

PS Now is great. It has most (all?) Sony exclusives and they run great on your desktop or laptop. The only issue is that I don't think it is available for OSX/iOS.

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

#134

Post by causality0 »

ljm wrote: post #117
causality0 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. They didn't even bother to include Stadia support in the latest Chromecast. To me that says nobody high up at Google cares about Stadia in a meaningful way. At this point I'm taking bets on how much Play Store credit Stadia subscribers are going to receive when the service shuts down and all their purchased games evaporate. The saddest part is, the technology works well. Really well. If Stadia had launched as…

Google basically sounds like a large scale startup incubator where every successful project is doomed to fail.

There's only two outcomes: Either Google gets bored and kills it because it doesn't generate ten billion dollars a year in profit or it becomes so ingrained in our society killing it might cause an angry mob to attack Google HQ with torches and pitchforks.

Why it can't spin these side projects off into their own companies to survive or die on their own merits I don't know.

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

#135

Post by rodgerd »

wronglebowski wrote: post #94
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.…

There was recently an article about Stadia where a developer from a decent sized studio claimed they were approached by Google for Stadia. What did Google offer for the developer to bring the game to Stadia? Almost nothing. The figure was in the tens of thousands. For reference when Microsoft/Epic approaches the studios for games on their platforms they front the entire development cost. Sometimes millions of dollars…

Its remarkable to contrast with, say, GamePass; while there's not a lot of disclosure around what that entails precisely, a few small developers have suggested it pretty much floats their studio financially (and doesn't require a re-write, as Stadia does).

From a customer perspective, it gets the game on streaming, Xbox, and Windows PC.

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

#136

Post by Lammy »

LegitShady wrote: post #64
offtop5 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 )

> I never understood why Amazon rolled another engine. For the same synergistic effects as Epic and their game store + their engine. If you use epic's engine, they charge you less to sell your games. It's basically trying to incentivize selling on their platform and using their platform tools at the same time.

> If you use epic's engine, they charge you less to sell your games.

Unless you have a contract dispute with them, in which case they bankrupt you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Human#Unreal_Engine_disput...

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

#137

Post by jayd16 »

czhiddy wrote: post #24

I was looking forward to seeing some of the games that would have only been possible on Stadia's architecture. Imagine a Battlefield-style game with a larger map and over 500+ simultaneous players. Hopefully the games that SG&E do finish showcase what's possible when a developer targets Stadia's strengths.

Why is that sort of game only possible with cloud rendering vs some dedicated server architecture?

I think you'd need to go much higher in terms of how many unpredictable, latency dependent objects are needed on screen before you'd start hitting issues with client side rendering.

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

#138

Post by adrr »

Exmoor wrote: post #89
scep12 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Cynical answer: Because at big tech companies culture leads them to believe they have to have a competing product in every new market rather than letting their "competitors" go unopposed. Occasionally it works out, but often you just get a ton of also-rans. The companies are so big a profitable that even complete failure barely moves the stock price. Nobody is incentivized to point out the proverbial emperor has no c…

How do you increase revenue/stock price in meaningful way without expanding into other markets?

Google does these half ass attempts with minimal risk. They could be a major player in cloud computing, IoT etc. Amazon is dominating these areas with Ring and AWS.

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

#139

Post by LegitShady »

wlesieutre wrote: post #115
LegitShady wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never understood why Amazon rolled another engine. For the same synergistic effects as Epic and their game store + their engine. If you use epic's engine, they charge you less to sell your games. It's basically trying to incentivize selling on their platform and using their platform tools at the same time.

In Lumberyard's case, the engine is free but you're locked in to AWS for any cloud services

and I'm sure there would be an incentive (financial) to using all amazon services/storefront etc.

The reason they started with lumberyard was because amazon does platform thinking. Unlike open source they can't just take it, so they bought cryengine to start with.

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

#140

Post by p1necone »

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.…

Not enough people have consistently fast internet without data caps for this to work. Can you imagine the backlash when everyones tv with "included game console" turns out to be a stuttery laggy mess?
Post reply on HN