Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus • Hacker News Board

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

#591

Post by Osiris » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

h0l0cube wrote: post #390

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…

It seems in recent times, Google product development is always backwards. They never fully commit to anything, with the mind that if they see an up-tick in adoption, they'll invest in it. But maybe if they put more than a cursory effort into anything new, they might provide something valuable and generate another revenue stream. But perhaps they're just too comfortable with the loads of cash coming from ads?

And on the other hand, Microsoft lost billions on Xbox (I can't find a citation, so I'm going from memory) and Xbox 360.

They stuck with it for decades and have turned it into a great product.

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

#592

Post by dunreith » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:06 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #586

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…

How is it a bad idea? I want to play PC games but I don’t want to buy a desktop PC just for that. I’m currently travelling but I’m planning to get it once I settle. I had playstation Now before that and it was pretty dope.

It's honestly not a bad idea, just a bad implementation. I use shadow.tech to achieve this and they do it well - instead of giving you game-specific VMs (or whatever Stadia is), they just give you a gaming VM with Windows and you install your own Steam / Epic / GOG / XBLive whatever on it.

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

#593

Post by coldtea » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

Of course it does... What kind of Google project would it be if it didn't shut down?

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

#594

Post by coldtea » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

rnotaro wrote: post #555

h0l0cube wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not so bad actually. Glass for business is a thing.

It's a thing, but it's barely a product (i.e. a market).

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

#595

Post by coldtea » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:14 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #585

cush wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried stadia? It's incredible 99.9% of the time. But that 0.1%... I thought I could put up with a few frame drops in Metro, but it just sucks you out of the game.

Like when your own computer starts lagging?

Yes, but more frequently and unpredictably, at whatever resolution...

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

#596

Post by canibal57 » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:17 AM UTC

My experience with this platform seems to be completely antithetical to most people's and this article's proposal. They just released Madden, meaning they've made a deal with EA. Clearly no one cared about exclusive games. Everyone in the sphere wants this to be a console without a console. Which it is, and better, because any screen. If the gaming media anti-hype is the downfall of this product, I and others, will be sorely disappointed. I hadn't gamed in years, because, being an adult, I couldn't justify a purchase of over $150 on a console purely for gaming, this was a no-brainer, especially during quarantine. And coming from catching up on Steam on a 5yr old Linux box with a mildly upgraded video card, it was easily worth it to play mainstream titles with no compatibility concerns. I was super skeptical at first, but have been won over by any-browser playability, and server-grade performance, with only mild bugs.

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

#597

Post by themacguffinman » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:21 AM UTC

riversflow wrote: post #534

ilikehurdles wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Valve fully backed cloud gaming, that would have downstream effects on publishers and PC gaming as a platform. Who would sign on to publish a competitive, reaction driven game if the market is segmented between the high-latency cloud where anyone can play, and physical hardware only purchased by a relatively diminishing market? The audience for tactical precise shooters, MOBAs, RTSs, etc would deteriorate and with…

> The audience for tactical precise shooters, MOBAs, RTSs, etc would deteriorate Maybe, but I tend to think that it wouldn’t diminish, and that this idea that very many will just “get over” latency is something VPs and PMs have convinced themselves of and not something that would bare out in the data. The first time I gamed on a 120hz display was life changing in a way, I was never totally satisfied playing any sort…

Most people won't have to "get over" latency because they're not used to or sensitive to low latency in the first place. I'm not saying their eyes aren't good enough or something, but the fact is that a majority of them either can't or won't spend on gear necessary for the performance you're claiming. Steam's own hardware survey indicates that the most basic, cheap monitors are the norm with 1080p or lower being the most common resolution; refresh rate isn't explicitly shown but I'd be surprised if 120+hz is even above single digits of marketshare. Many gamers don't even play on PCs, they play on consoles running games as low as 30fps with cheap TVs that often don't have "Game Mode" turned on which alone can eliminate more than 8ms of latency.

Tactical shooters and MOBAs are still immensely popular despite the fact that most consumers likely experience a fairly high level of latency. People play games like Fortnite because they're fun, not because they're so competitive & fast paced that 8ms of latency makes a difference. Even competitive games nowadays try to soften the direct correlation between player skill and wins using matchmaking and RNG mechanics so everyone gets a reasonably consistent rate of winning. Want to play a really competitive and fast paced game where 8ms probably does matter? Play Quake Live against the 100 or so people that still tolerate that level of competition.

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

#598

Post by hcurtiss » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

alasano wrote: post #348

enos_feedler wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least they are winding things down faster. Google announced the studio in mid 2019 and shutting it down in early 2021. Microsoft decided retail stores were a good idea in 2011, and only closed them off last year. My bet is that Google is learning this mistake faster, no doubt with MSFT as an example.

Perhaps we will reach some sort of google launch singularity where projects are launched and abandoned instantly.

Imagine the money they'd save!

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

#599

Post by cwyers » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:29 AM UTC

015a wrote: post #538

cwyers wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve also has shipped exactly one first-party game since Dota 2 in 2013, outside of VR stuff, and it's a card game. I don't think they're tops on the list of studios that could give Google a big hit game to put on their new cloud console.

No, the point I and I think the OP are making is not Valve as a developer, its Steam as the storefront. Steam has tremendous power in moving developers toward, say, the cloud; if Valve just made it a checkbox on the publisher's page (or something to that effect), any cloud streaming service that integrated with Steam would be tier 1 overnight. But I'm also happy they haven't. These cloud streaming ecosystems are the…

The value prop for Stadia is console-class gaming without hardware. Most devices where Stadia is able to run could run a port of a decade-old PC game. Similarly, most Steam games that could run unmodified on Stadia's custom server hardware (running Linux, not Windows) would be games that don't tax the hardware. Maybe that's a better service than what Google rolled out? (GeForce Now seems to be doing better than Stadia, anecdotally.) But it's not what Stadia is, and if they wanted some more recent console-class games, Valve as either a storefront or a game developer was not going to help them much. They would still have to deal with getting Ubisoft/EA/Activision/whoever to do the ports.

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

#600

Post by exikyut » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 4:29 AM UTC

zestyping wrote: post #559

ruined wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A few random very curious and potentially-rhetorical questions:

- what was the situation around the shutdown? Was the whole thing knowingly on life support and just waiting for the right excuse, or...?

- was the shutdown effectively coincidental, in the sense of "ok everyone's making a scene about $random_thing, kill it" (where $random_thing just happened to be what the internet interpreted as a data leak)

- did the data get purged from the very last backup, or does it still get used to finetune improve AI models etc?

- does G+ still exist in its original form anymore? Trying to visit https://plus.google.com/apps/activities still works, but only in the form of Google Currents, and visiting via an old Google Apps (yep :D) account that's somehow still eking along (for how long???) also works, but that's Currents too. It looks/feels just about identical to G+ though (https://imgur.com/a/rqvF03t).

Is it being used for education or something?