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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

#231

Post by joe_91 »

Why doesn't good spin off these amazing projects into their own companies and have 3,5,10 year goals associated with these projects.

Like I get the need to shut something down if there's no product market fit but at least when you've got pretty much unlimited free money give it a good shot.

The way projects such as Stadia are structured now just shows how only incentivising the launching of a new product/project is not the right way to go about things. You also need, people with a long term vision willing to see a project through and enough resources given to a project.

If this was spun off into its own entity it could easily raise money and become a proper competitor to Sony/Microsoft...

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

#232

Post by ocdtrekkie »

nikolay wrote: post #215

Microsoft shutdown Invoke - I got a $50 voucher and I still can use the device as a bluetooth speaker. What happens with my Stadio investment in hardware when they shut it down soon?! How many times we need to say: "Not again!" investing any time with a new product/service from Google?! My daughter got a Pixel 3a - it has so many issues and Google won't fix saying it has to do with my carrier. Their forums are floode…

> What happens with my Stadio investment in hardware when they shut it down soon?!

My guess: Hardware, they say "it's still a Bluetooth game controller and a Chromecast, they can be used as those things". Software: They give you some Steam codes for the games you bought on Stadia.

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

#234

Post by ece »

jonathannorris wrote: post #145
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. - S…

These are all things that consoles and existing game stores do extremely well already, and the last two are net deficits for Stadia if you have an ISP or router that's not up to the job.

Amazon Luna, GeForce Now, Shadow, running Parsec in the cloud and paying by the minute, xCloud, and PS Now all better Stadia by offering game subscriptions or more features or are more sustainable by being cheaper in the case of GeForce Now for 4K.

If Amazon Luna/GeForce Now can succeed as upstarts, it says Google should've likely focused on a game subscription service or offering a standalone game streaming platform. They're closer to being the later with this announcement, but not until I can play my Steam/GoG/Itch/Epic libraries on it.

I have a few hours in AC:Odyssey and BL3 on Stadia, it's a good service that has improved a lot too. It's still tough to recommend if you're not the most occasional gamer.

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

#235

Post by offtop5 »

hobofan wrote: post #228
offtop5 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why. Twitch plays Pokemon worked fine .

What does that have to do with anything? TPP was a bog standard Twitch stream, with no ability for custom per-viewer spectator cameras.

I mean, I could probably figure out how to do that in Unity in about a week.

You would basically just need to stream the cameras output texture to a web app, and then read inputs from from said web app. Regardless there's no reason to try and create a whole new engine for this, CryTek has always been known as one of the worst engines to work in, just because it's not supported very well.

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

#236

Post by BoorishBears »

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…

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

This is so painfully misleading.

You're either describing situations where Microsoft or Epic have become the publisher for the game, or you're describing situations where extremely large titles are paid to exclusively release on a platform where they will then recoup costs from as the sales have to go through their platform.

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

#237

Post by hobofan »

arduinomancer wrote: post #190
senkora wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a Twitch livestream with tens of thousands of viewers, and each one is able to independently move a live camera to get the view they want. The complexity comes from scale.

Yeah that sounds like a really expensive feature. Seems like you’d need an instance of the game with its own GPU for every viewer.

You could very well tie that to a high-tier subscription to any Twitch channel. Depending on the game (e.g. Fortnite) you could easily server a bunch of viewers from the same GPU.

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

#238

Post by dragonwriter »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #232
nikolay wrote: post #215

Microsoft shutdown Invoke - I got a $50 voucher and I still can use the device as a bluetooth speaker. What happens with my Stadio investment in hardware when they shut it down soon?! How many times we need to say: "Not again!" investing any time with a new product/service from Google?! My daughter got a Pixel 3a - it has so many issues and Google won't fix saying it has to do with my carrier. Their forums are floode…

> What happens with my Stadio investment in hardware when they shut it down soon?! My guess: Hardware, they say "it's still a Bluetooth game controller and a Chromecast, they can be used as those things". Software: They give you some Steam codes for the games you bought on Stadia.

> Hardware, they say "it's still a Bluetooth game controller and a Chromecast, they can be used as those things".

IIRC, it only works as a bluetooth controller with Stadia (either supported Chromecast or Chrome web app); otherwise, it is only a wired USB controller.

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

#240

Post by partiallypro »

bastawhiz wrote: post #185

I'm dumbfounded at Google's lack of planning on this. I tried Stadia, and they had (have?) so few games that they seem to have neither search nor pagination on the list that you can play. None of the games are ones that I care about. It feels like they could have—at the cost of short-term profit and pride—partnered with Valve and shipped something mind-blowing. But instead we're left with a bunch of AAA games that fe…

> I'm dumbfounded at Google's lack of planning on this.

Yes, but apply this to 90% of their new products. Google's planning in the current age is about as bad as Microsoft's in the 2004-2012 era.

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