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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

#261

Post by enos_feedler »

jeremyjh wrote: post #230
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 like NVidia's model. Basically its bring your own game to their cloud hardware, but they integrate Steam, Epic store and one or two other distributors really well so that it is easy for someone to move to their platform rather than replace an aging gaming PC. I'm not sure who Stadia is for or how it competes with that and PS Now, which has a ton of popular games as well as Playstation exclusives (more of a rental m…

The NVidia model sounds like more hassle than it's worth. Might as well continue buying PCs. If you could afford them before you can probably still afford them. Latency will be lower and experience will be better (no waiting in a queue).

The benefit of Stadia is actually it's simplicity. It's about bringing in new gamers who may have come from console world, but don't have the Steam libraries, etc.

I wrote this in another post, but I think Stadia right now is for the game console user who only play 1 or 2 games. This makes for a lot of extra hardware and subscriptions just to play a game you like. Why not just rent the game as a service for as long as you want to play it? When hockey season starts every year I buy the new NHL for $60. Thats $5/mo. Why should i also buy PLaystation plus, and a hardware console just to play the game? it takes 10 minutes from turining on the tv, navigating the menus, getting into the game, finding someone to play online, etc. Chatting with people is really bad UX. Google can make all of this slicker. But the value prop needs to focus on the job at hand: playing a _specific_ game which happens to be your favorite game you play mostly. Thinking of it as some kind of a gaming platform is not the way.

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

#264

Post by enos_feedler »

pkage wrote: post #244
jeremyjh wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like NVidia's model. Basically its bring your own game to their cloud hardware, but they integrate Steam, Epic store and one or two other distributors really well so that it is easy for someone to move to their platform rather than replace an aging gaming PC. I'm not sure who Stadia is for or how it competes with that and PS Now, which has a ton of popular games as well as Playstation exclusives (more of a rental m…

I signed up for GeForce Now, and truly the killer feature is bringing the games you already own. On Stadia, you have to buy the games separately on top of the streaming subscription, and Luna (Amazon's offering) is similar in that you can sign up for game "channels" (iirc). With GeForce Now, you can just play the stuff you already own without sinking money into games that play on a platform that might not even exist…

Stadia supports the UBISoft+ channel just as Luna does. It's in beta now.

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

#265

Post by offtop5 »

hobofan wrote: post #257
offtop5 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, that would be the low-tech way to achieve this, but if you want to scale that up to Twitch subscriber level of users, you would certainly want engine support for such a feature. That CryEngine was a bad choice is a valid point, though I guess there weren't that many public engines to choose from at the time that were that desperate for money.

Yes and no, if Amazon really wanted to do this they could have bought a source license from Unity and made whatever modifications they needed. It feels like an absurdly niche feature to focus on though.

The way I would personally do it I would maybe create a multiplayer game and for each ten cameras spin up a game client instance.

According to the other comments here it looks like Amazon wanted to create some type of bizarro system where if you use their engine you had to use AWS as your cloud back end. Which does sound pretty horrible, like I can't even do a HTTP request to get weather data unless it goes through AWS ?

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

#266

Post by FridgeSeal »

Clewza313 wrote: post #227
_zamorano_ wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they had the slightest chance of Valve partering with them

Why not? Valve is not in the hardware business.

Valve’s customer base is almost entirely semi-serious to hardcore gamers: then people with the most to lose and the least incentive to adopt stadia.

Partnering with Google on stadia would generate a sizeable backlash.

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

#267

Post by hobofan »

kenhwang wrote: post #243
Clewza313 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Valve is not in the hardware business.

Valve has the Stream Link and VIVE. Steam Link is pretty much Stadia using your computer instead of the cloud. They're very much in the hardware business.

With Steam Link requiring you to own a beefy computer it's not really a competitor to what Stadia offers (and I don't know anybody who was able to get good performance out of Steam Link).

VIVE is by HTC supporting SteamVR, but Valve has their own first-pary VR headset + controllers with the Index.

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

#268

Post by Wowfunhappy »

bastawhiz wrote: post #258
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knew this was a bad idea, and the truly curious thing is, how does anyone who greenlit this on any level still have a job? Stadia had a narrow set of interesting use cases around features deeply integrated with Google products: Zero of them were ready for launch, and I think all but one are still unavailable today. The value for gamers is debateable at best, but exclusive titles would be the only serious way…

It's only been a failure because of the lack of games. The tech (at least to me) feels fine. Which is honestly the worst part—it _could_ be a success but the business side is broken.

Right... I thought as an idea, it was perfectly sound. The types of technology required to make cloud gaming work seemed to play to Google's strengths.

They just really screwed up on the content side. And, well, anecdotally I've heard the tech isn't so great either compared to Google's peers—no idea how that happened, really.

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

#269

Post by adamc »

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…

To sell me on buying a stadia game -- at full price -- you have to convince me that this is the platform of the future, that Google is committed. Google starts with a handicap there because of prior behavior.

This effectively kills Stadia as a service. If they were only willing to try for a couple of years... let's just say people were right to doubt that Google can be counted on for a service.

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

#270

Post by mdoms »

Clewza313 wrote: post #227
_zamorano_ wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they had the slightest chance of Valve partering with them

Why not? Valve is not in the hardware business.

Yes they are? Their latest flagship game literally only works on their hardware.
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