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Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

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

#141

Post by madrox »

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…

Having been approached by Google for these kinds of projects, I 100% believe this. I was leading a team approached by them to do something similar for Google Glass. There was no real incentive there except the privilege of being an early glass partner. The entire process of working with them was a nightmare and we decided to bow out.

I'm short on any attempt Google makes at being a media company.

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

#142

Post by Negitivefrags »

Fundamentally these big tech companies just don’t understand game development.

AAA games cost a lot of money, so these companies think that if you come with a bunch of money, you will end up with a AAA game.

My company was pitched by both Google (for stadia) and Amazon to create games for them and it was totally clear they had no idea what they were doing, and no idea what they were even trying to achieve.

The funny thing is that in both cases we felt that their attitude was also “These guys have no idea what they are doing” about us too.

It’s just a total ideological mismatch.

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

#144

Post by danellis »

BurningFrog wrote: post #129
crucifiction wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google is like a rich guy who switches hobbies. He may have real musical talent, but he'll never put in the blood, sweat & tears for the band to make it big.

Google has ADHD.

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

#145

Post by jonathannorris »

drusepth wrote: post #125

I know it's cool to hate on Stadia still (but less so than it used to be, now that everyone seems to just use it as a Cyberpunk console...) but this move makes sense to me. 1. First-party AAA games are a huge investment (in time and money), especially for a company without any experience in building them. Starting a first-party game studio is a huge risk (financial and planning) that I'm not surprised didn't pan out.…

I get all the doom and gloom about this announcement, but it's exactly what I would be doing if I ran Stadia. Don't waste money trying to build first-party games when you don't have scale, spend all your money on scaling. Specifically:

- Spend budget on getting more AAA titles released on Stadia on launch day. (like they did with Cyberpunk)

- Spend budget giving huge discounts on AAA titles to attract more users.

- Spend the money to get integrated into every Smart TV platform (Roku, Google TV, LG Web OS, Tizen, Apple TV, ect.). TV Boxes should include a Stadia controller in their box and a few months free.

- Advertise that you can play AAA console games on the TV / Streaming box you already own.

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

#146

Post by Invictus0 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #41
AlotOfReading wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMO, it would be better to take the Nintendo approach and build out a couple generic games that highlight the best features of the system. Wii tennis and wii bowling ended up being my favorite Wii games.

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

#147

Post by washadjeffmad »

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.…

I don't know if this is a consideration, but the reason Sony's PlayStation 3 included "OtherOS" feature was so that it would be classified as a computer instead of a gaming console to avoid a stiff import tax.

I wonder if there's a difference between making Stadia available via an app store and having it pre-installed or advertised as a core function of the device?

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

#148

Post by aabhay »

causality0 wrote: post #134
ljm wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The second one should read “or it becomes a large scale ad data gathering opportunity”. That’s the value of Maps and Gmail IMO.

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

#149

Post by danbolt »

eulers_secret wrote: post #48
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 "…

I think a lot about Treasure, a quirky game developer that tended to make a bunch of strange games in the past. I think their studio director and founder, Masato Maegawa, understood the value in being more hands-off in a leadership role. [1] [2] Part of me feels like Amazon and Google thought their super-direct top-down style would be successful in a creative project involving larger team, unaware of the lessons previous game developers had learned.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker, on the other hand had a unqiue idea and was a critical success, and in a retrospective the developers were very explicit not to impose a top-down attitude to development. [3] (disclaimer: I work at Blackbird Interactive, but not on Hardspace: Shipbreaker)

[1] http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/sinandpunishm...

[2] http://shmuplations.com/aliensoldier/

[3] https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1026825/Forging-Hardspace-Ship...

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

#150

Post by ketzo »

hn8788 wrote: post #72
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 think the reason this is a big deal is that one of the selling points of Stadia was that "cloud gaming" would enable things that consoles and PCs didn't, like huge persistent worlds with a ton a players in a single area. With no first party support, Stadia is just going to be a way to stream ports of games designed for consoles and PCs. Imagine if Valve released the Index, then announced that they aren't making VR…

That's a pretty interesting thought, I hadn't at all considered the "cloud native game" angle.

Based purely on my own experience with games, I tend to think that for the best results, you'd need a really good game studio to learn how to make a cloud game; I'm not sure you want a really good cloud company to learn how to make a game.

But it's still a really good point. Was the Stadia studio explicitly for these kind of cloud-gaming-enabled games?

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