Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

kotaku.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 834 posts

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

#551

Post by lmm »

sergiotapia wrote: post #501
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 not confusing when you realize the owner of this product has his badge of releasing a "major google product" and probably a bonus. Who cares if it's successful or not, google certainly doesn't seem to care.

It gets Google's name in the tech news for something that isn't advertising/invasion of privacy. It's a success for Google-the-business even if it "fails".

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

#552

Post by zhynn »

FredFS456 wrote: post #304
015a wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

GeForce Now can be used with Steam quite seamlessly. In fact, GeForce Now's value is to play the games you already own on various platforms on their hardware. They're not trying to be another games store.

To clarify the other commenter's point, I am a founders edition of geforceNow and it used to have just everything. Like if it was in my Steam library, I could play it. Early editions just basically launched a slimmed down RDP session with Steam being started. It was awesome.

Now, they put you in a weird virtual zone where your library is restricted to only the game you are currently playing. And if that game is not allowed by the publisher, you can't play it. So I can't play Slime Rancher. I can't play Shadows of Mordor. And it seems like over time there is less and less there.

It sucks, because it was basically my dream gaming service. Kind of like Google Play Music was my dream music service. :(

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

#553

Post by mehlmao »

enos_feedler wrote: post #345
gsich wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xcloud or Geforcenow offer the best of both worlds. You "own" (in whatever sense you can "own" the game) the game and you have the choice where you want to play it. Not at home/cheap notebook? No problem. With Stadia you can only stream the game.

The question for me is if it works on a cheap notebook or on the road, why wouldn't you just want to play it this way even when you are at home? Why do I want to own anything? I just want to play the games I bought.

> Why do I want to own anything?

Because Stadia offers an inferior experience to local rendering. In particular, the way the video compression crushes all dark colors into a single shade of black. Plus, when Google kills Stadia in a year, you'll have lost the games you purchased and paid a subscription fee for.

I was excited to see Google make a game that would only be possible on Stadia, be it an MMO, races with hundreds of cars, or something more creative their designers could imagine. With their internal developers shut down, all that's left is more expensive, inferior quality versions of games I could play elsewhere.

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

#554

Post by kn8a »

dfgdghdf wrote: post #282
015a wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I accidentally realised I could stream from Steam the other day which is interesting that they can technically do it.

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

#555

Post by rnotaro »

h0l0cube wrote: post #525
mckeed wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because the last product they put full commitment into was Google Plus.

Well now I'm curious to know how Glass is doing.

Not so bad actually.

Glass for business is a thing.

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

#556

Post by vadym909 »

apozem wrote: post #366
lumost wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the really confusing part to me. For most of the major metro's of the world cloud gaming is completely feasible on today's internet. Playing on servers in NYC from Boston works flawlessly as a casual gamer, and really opened up the possibility for me to enjoy AAA titles. Most studios have to target a variety of hardware, stadia exclusives could have allowed studios to focus exclusively on top end experiences…

The dream of cloud gaming, for me, is everyone gets an amazing gaming PC. I just bought a new PC, and it’s great, but it sits under my TV, unused, for 90-whatever percent of its life. If you can deliver cloud gaming as a complete product that actually offers value, the potential efficiency is staggering.

Opposite. My kid built a gaming PC and uses it for school from home and gaming from 7am-9pm or 90% of his waking hours

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

#557

Post by mehlmao »

enos_feedler wrote: post #303
m00x wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually way cheaper to buy the console if you're just gonna play one game. You get a PS5 for $550 these days, so that's $330 total for a AAA game ($630). Then instead of $10/m, you have a console for 10 years ($120*10 = $1200). Even cheaper if you go for the PS4.

You aren't including the network service to play games online. Factor in another $60 * 10 years. That nearly squares things up. Then you have to think about intangibles. Stadia is a live platform that continuously improves. The $630 you paid for that ps5 and AAA game is frozen in time. You've bought no future value. You can also play anywhere without having to carry around a 4.5kg box that computes math.

>Stadia is a live platform that continuously improves.

Has Stadia improved since launch? The PS5 and Xbox Series X are both more powerful than Stadia instances, not to mention modern PCs. Has Google announced any timeframe for powering up their instances to match? Will I have to pay more to access instances with the power of next-generation consoles? Will those be available for all the games I purchased, or on a title-by-title basis?

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

#558

Post by dralley »

adrr wrote: post #138
Exmoor wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynical answer: Because at big tech companies culture leads them to believe they have to have a competing product in every new market rather than letting their "competitors" go unopposed. Occasionally it works out, but often you just get a ton of also-rans. The companies are so big a profitable that even complete failure barely moves the stock price. Nobody is incentivized to point out the proverbial emperor has no c…

How do you increase revenue/stock price in meaningful way without expanding into other markets? Google does these half ass attempts with minimal risk. They could be a major player in cloud computing, IoT etc. Amazon is dominating these areas with Ring and AWS.

You can do a few things well, or many things poorly. Google used to be the former but they've shifted towards the latter over time.

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

#559

Post by zestyping »

ruined wrote: post #550
mckeed wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because the last product they put full commitment into was Google Plus.

no they didn't. google plus was half-assed, underhanded, and self-destructive. profiles were automatically created if you had another google profile, pissing everyone off. they provided essentially no feature advantage over other social networks, which means they had no weapon to fight against network effect. they enforced a real name policy even as facebook became notorious for doing the same. they aggressively bann…

I was there. I'd say they did fully commit, and that included committing other teams by force. Everything was going to be integrated with Google Plus come hell or high water.

Unfortunately, the evident intensity of their commitment did not correlate with the wisdom of their decisions. Perhaps it was inversely correlated, because boy were there a lot of terrible decisions in that product.

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

#560

Post by ramphastidae »

rossjudson wrote: post #541
ramphastidae wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: does Google operate a single profitable business besides AdWords?

You should look into that Google Cloud thing.

Profit figures have never been released for Google Cloud.
Post reply on HN