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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

#451

Post by whywhywhywhy »

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…

> partnered with Valve and shipped something mind-blowing

Why would Valve partner with anyone? They don’t even need to make games anymore. They could fire the majority of their company and run on a skeleton crew and still be making a fortune years later.

Literally don’t think Google can afford them. The offer would be “hey wanna go from doing almost zero work and making a fortune to making a little more and having to work a lot harder and give up autonomy“

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

#452

Post by offtop5 »

Thaxll wrote: post #310
offtop5 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HDRP begs to differ https://youtu.be/cQvW0SdprQE I'm currently building a game in HDRP and it's easily looks just as good as anything I could do in Unreal. I'm only limited by my own time at this point .

Name a single AAA game in Unity? Everyone can do a shiny scene with good lighting, making a $50M game with it is another story.

https://www.escapefromtarkov.com/

HDRP is still new, give it a few years.

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

#453

Post by ehsankia »

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…

Nvidia and Luna both took the shortcut of just running a windows VM and running the game as is. Stadia is the only one that actually requires games to integrate with its API, similar to Steam with Steamworks, and this allows them to provide a far more integrated experience, with friend lists, friend invites, voice chat, achievements, and so on. None of the other services can provide that. Well GFN does but that's just running Steam. In the short term it will slow down adoption, but in the long term the experience is night and day, imo. Being thrown into a VM instance where you have to login to Steam is nothing like pressing one button and being thrown right into a game.

Also, yes if you already have a huge Steam collection, the thought of buying games on a different store is not great, but I don't think Stadia is aimed at people with a PC gaming rig and 1000 steam games, it's aimed at people who don't have a gaming PC or console, and want to play the latest EA Sports or AAA game. Having to just pay 60$ is far better than paying 60$ + 500$ fo a console + waiting for shipping and installation.

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

#454

Post by chillfox »

Honestly, As someone who lives 3000+ km from the closest cloud data centre (cable length is closer to 4000 km) I hope that this technology fails. It would really suck if a significant amount of games ended up being exclusively available through streaming.

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

#455

Post by enos_feedler »

akmarinov wrote: post #420
enos_feedler wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think would happen? You wake up one day and everything is gone? As much as I am not selling Google vs. MSFT, give Goog some credit. They would make customers whole financially and find a home for the platform.

More like it’s going to drag its feet being dead for 2-3 years past the point that anyone cares about the platform. Then when usage plummets enough, it’ll get killed during some big event to mask it.

I find it funny this spun out of a contrast from Google vs. Microsoft and what you are describing is literally how Microsoft Stores died. It got dragged past the point of anyone caring. Covid happened (big event) and then it got killed fairly quietly. This is how all things get killed. Not unique to Google here. My point with Google is they are learning faster what works and what doesn't. In the limit, maybe they will stop starting things that get killed to begin with.

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

#456

Post by throwaway3699 »

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.

Uhh, Valve definitely IS in the hardware business. They make streaming boxes, controllers, VR headsets/base stations and BCI tech.

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

#458

Post by Jochim »

hobofan wrote: post #267
kenhwang wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was able to get latency down to 10-20ms using steam link over ethernet, it works great for pretty much everything. It might give you problems if you're playing at a very high level in csgo/fighting games, but for most people it's pretty solid.

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

#459

Post by p1necone »

enos_feedler wrote: post #380
oivey wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam and Epic are literally app stores. I guess you have to link an extra account to use it with GeForce Now? For that minuscule amount of extra friction you get access to a much larger set of games on stores that won’t shut down when Google gets bored in a year or two. edit: in what way does Steam or Epic expect you to understand how to use a “gaming PC”?

In the way that those are apps that gamers install on their gaming pc.

You're not making any sense to me. Steam is just an app store. A "gaming PC" is just a regular PC with more powerful hardware in it, using software on it does not take any special skills specific to gaming PCs.

And as the other commenter points out, playing steam games via geforce now doesn't even require installing the steam app anyway, it's just an account link.

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

#460

Post by pavel_lishin »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #195
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…

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…

If it helps, apparently the exec in charge of Stadia has left. Whether this is a "you're fired, but you can resign if you want" or a "ship's going down, why would I ride it to the bottom" situation, I don't know.
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