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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

#151

Post by _ea1k »

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.

> 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.

They would only do that if the spinoff made them a noticeable amount of money. I suspect that is rarely the case.

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

#153

Post by im3w1l »

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.

My guess would be that disentangling a project from all proprietary dependencies is very expensive.

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

#157

Post by gonehome »

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.

They do sometimes do that, Loon 'graduated' to become its own company that issued its own shares and has since died.

Waymo is another spin off company.

The structure of Alphabet exists for this purpose.

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

#158

Post by williamdclt »

senkora wrote: post #73
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 saw a talk about Lumberyard once. The really special things they wanted to do were integrate it tightly with AWS and Twitch, which enabled some neat features like letting people spectate games and move their own camera around the field to do so.

I know absolutely nothing of game dev, but adding cameras to the scene doesn't sound like it would be the most complex aspect of developping a video game?

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

#159

Post by Andrex »

Hadrianus wrote: post #70
Andrex wrote: post #47

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 lapto…

Phil Spencer is XBOX, Phil Harrison is Google

Harrison was also formerly Xbox, but point taken and post updated!

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

#160

Post by bootlooped »

shadowgovt wrote: post #56
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…

Game development is terribly fickle, and it's very much a space where Google is better positioned to sell pickaxes to miners than to try and seek the motherlode itself. TBH, I'd forgotten that they'd started up an in-house game dev team in the first place.

If for no other reason, having their own first-party studio working on Stadia games demonstrates at least some commitment to the platform.

There is a widespread and well founded suspicion that Google will just get bored and shut it down one day. This exacerbates that fear.

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