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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

#282
post #271

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…

> partnered with Valve and shipped something mind-blowing I tend to agree. In these cloud game streaming wars, Steam is a reservoir of totally untapped crude oil. Its the largest and most active western game platform, period, its beloved by its users, and Valve hasn't even remotely signaled an intention to compete. Companies and products like Steam are one in a million; Stadia, Luna, GeForce Now, xCloud, PSNow, are n…

Valve can do this stuff because they are a private company.

Gabe has publicly stated that he does not believe in game streaming services, because he thinks computation is best done at the edge.

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

#283

This is totally the right move. I am a (very happy) user of Stadia. If you haven't tried it, you really should...it's an amazing piece of tech. I can find myself with 20-30 minutes worth of downtime during the day, fire up Cyberpunk 2077 or Hitman or Assassin's Creed in moments from my browser *on a macbook* and play at high settings with no noticeable lag. Obviously you need a strong, steady internet connection for…

It's not in my country so as far as I'm concerned it doesn't exist. I expect Google will kill the product entirely before it ever gets here.

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google glass and game streaming are two very different projects with different motivations/incentives etc for partnering. Game streaming is on the cusp of becoming mainstream. The technology works (playable latency), and the overall product is simpler than competing products (pcs, consoles) for the job we hire gaming hardware for. It is clear the future is in the controllers and displays, not in math boxes. The bigge…

Game Streaming also needs typical home internet connections to get better before it can really go mainstream. Not everyone has low latency, high reliability fibre in their home, yet. If you have some crappy DSL or whatever then the experience isn’t great. Likewise if your WiFi signal is anything less than perfect! And the people who do pay for the best internet connections are often those who don’t need Stadia, becau…

That's a great point. I did say the technology is proven but did not specify the market this is ready for. It is sort of like Tesla adoption 10 years ago. It will take time for the investments in technology and infrastructure to cover more of the market. Hopefully Verizon can accelerate their mmWave 5g deploys.

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

#286
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great that it works where you are, I assume the US. Here in New Zealand of course it's not launched. So while I can pick one of any other consoles/devices to play games on, Stadia isn't one of them. If you can't reach more than one country, why would anyone want to develop for it?

Stadia is supported in 21 countries though. A majority of NA and EU. Totally feel for you, but similar to anything that requires a decent internet connection, NZ and AUS get left in the dust

NZ has excellent internet speeds.

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

#287
post #271

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…

> partnered with Valve and shipped something mind-blowing I tend to agree. In these cloud game streaming wars, Steam is a reservoir of totally untapped crude oil. Its the largest and most active western game platform, period, its beloved by its users, and Valve hasn't even remotely signaled an intention to compete. Companies and products like Steam are one in a million; Stadia, Luna, GeForce Now, xCloud, PSNow, are n…

Valve did build out a lot of features like Remote Play and streaming on Steam, but just to a level of ok functionality. It's just clearly not their main interest.

So I agree with your point, but it's not like Valve as a company is totally unaware of the opportunities. They are just... uninterested.

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

#289
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Valve is not in the hardware business.

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

Are you talking about Half Life: Alyx? It works on basically any VR headset as far as I know. I think they just need to be SteamVR compatible which basically everything is.

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

#290
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people still so surprised when Google makes a thing and then two years later cuts apart the thing into oblivion? How many more times are they expecting their users to be Charlie Brown to their Lucy?

I think this has pretty well cemented that perception.

I thought the same about reader.
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