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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

#651

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

ridaj wrote: post #642
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first heard of Google developing Stadia I thought it's for targeting Asia where mobile gaming is huge and since for majority of users from there smartphones are their first computer; Any 'AAA' game on mobile would be a new experience; But my assumption was proven wrong after seeing Stadia getting released only in North America & Europe where gamers are particular about their games.

Arguably, Google already had a strong and successful platform in mobile gaming (Google Play Games). It's even present on TV these days, with game controllers too (Google TV Chromecast takes bluetooth game controllers with which one can play a range of made-for-TV-screen Android games). I'm not sure why they didn't grow that to support server side rendering instead of starting a platform from scratch for which they we…

Perhaps because to avoid confusion between mobile games & their PC counterparts; Say 'Call of Duty Mobile' vs 'Call of Duty' if both were on Google Play Games it would be very confusing and of course licensing headache.

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

#652

Post by pjmlp »

depressedpanda wrote: post #647
pjmlp wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not forcing studios to rewrite their games from scratch to a snowflake platform.

Porting a game to Linux and Vulkan does not require rewriting it from scratch.

It does because 99% of the game studios don't care about Linux, nor are that much into Vulkan, unless they are targeting Android or Switch.

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

#653

Post by chillfox »

rco8786 wrote: post #307
FridgeSeal wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously you need a strong, steady internet connection for Stadia to shine, but I'd guess that the HN crowd skews towards that. Sad Australian internet noises. > don't want to drop $1k+ on a gaming rig, check out Stadia. Or, or, do buy the gaming rig, because it will still work and you’ll still have the games 3 years after Google inevitably shuts down stadia and you’re left with nothing.

The amount of times in my life that I've gone back to play an old game I've already played is like...three. I'm not a curator or collector, I just want to play some games here and there. If owning games forever is important for you, then buy the hardcopy. For me, being able to play games now on the devices I already own is a huge win.

You don't need to be a collector to keep old games around. You just need to get some favorites.

I keep going back to these games:

- Knights of the Old Republic (2003)

- Jade Empire (2005)

- Shadow of the Colossus (2005)

- Game Dev Tycoon (2012)

- Long Live The Queen (2012)

- Banished (2014)

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

#654

Post by comex »

themacguffinman wrote: post #597
riversflow wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The problem is that the 8ms figure is wrong.

If it were really 8ms of added end-to-end latency compared to local, then it would be a complete non-issue – even in the twitchiest fighting games and shooters, unless you’re a literal pro-level player, as you mentioned. Most people would not be able to tell the difference even if they were specifically looking for it. It would even be tolerable for VR.

Unfortunately, the reality is more like 80-120ms, at least in one benchmark:

https://www.pcgamer.com/geforce-now-beats-stadia-in-our-inpu...

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

#655

Post by meheleventyone »

ketzo wrote: post #412
meheleventyone wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud native is another concept that’s grossly oversold. It’s just GaaS with an extra step.

I dunno. Cloud gaming (theoretically) means that anyone could play from anywhere at any time. Surely such a powerful idea enables some cool new experiences out there in the infinite realm of human creativity?

We already have that with mobile gaming.

Cloud native (and streaming) offers a couple of advantages over installed games. Cheating becomes much harder, although not impossible. And people can launch the game easily without an install.

It has some real trade offs as well. Increasing felt latency is the one people love to talk about. But a huge increase in compute and bandwidth cost for the game operator is the other. Both in terms of the wiz bang features people imagine which are also possible with an installed game. And because for each player at peak CCU you have to run the game for them, encode video and transmit that to them. That’s quite the ops cost increase over a traditional game.

The bandwidth consumption and compute cost hurt the play anywhere at anytime idea. Firstly because places where bandwidth and latency are acceptable for play are not ubiquitous and there is no clear roadmap for that to happen. Secondly because the hike in compute cost per user free accounts are considerably more expensive to allow. Adding subscriptions removes ubiquitousness, allowing free players will bring dark patterns to convert that would make Zynga blush. Platform subscriptions will result in a chase for ‘engagement’ and more of the latter. All without anyone able to offer more than vague affirmations that there is anything creatively interesting.

Cloud native is really good for one thing though. Getting investor money.

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

#656

Post by smt88 »

Epskampie wrote: post #649
rco8786 wrote: post #198

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…

This is the problem for Stadia, it’s target audience is gamers who don’t have a lot of time to game. That is not a fruitful market.

> That is not a fruitful market.

Source?

I know a lot of people, some with children, who have enough income to drop $60 on a game every month without batting an eyelash. Busy people are often a great target market.

These people are mostly Switch players, so Stadia is a perfect upgrade for them.

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

#657

Post by [deleted] »

toephu2 wrote: post #636
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 does anyone who greenlit this on any level still have a job? Have you ever worked for a tech company? They don't just fire PMs/leads because their project failed. We are all human, we all make mistakes, in fact I bet 90% of the projects Google works on fail (public and private). It's the 10% that succeed that the company is going after (but you don't know that until after the fact of course). The PMs that drove…

[deleted]

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

#658

Post by sidibe »

chrisseaton wrote: post #318
clavalle wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to people that don't want to buy a gaming PC. Or can't, these days, considering how strangled the GPU market is.

If Valve wanted to do that why wouldn't they build it themselves instead? They have the server expertise.

If you want to make a cloud gaming service that isn't expensive and a good experience, you need it to be huge scale because more locations is essential for less latency, and you need a varied workload instead of just people playing games to amortize the costs of the servers. I don't know what other stuff Nvidia or Valve does that would keep these machines productively busy during the work day, but the big cloud companies probably have all kinds of things to justify over-provisioning machines so it seems like they have a limitless supply at peak gaming times while being cost-effective

I think Amazon, Google, and Microsoft will dominate cloud gaming eventually.

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

#659

Post by pfortuny »

readams wrote: post #383
cryptoquick wrote: post #197

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?

Google isn't cancelling Stadia; they're just not making their own games.

So they are going to compete with Valve?

Good luck with that.

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

#660

Post by aylmao »

ridaj wrote: post #642
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first heard of Google developing Stadia I thought it's for targeting Asia where mobile gaming is huge and since for majority of users from there smartphones are their first computer; Any 'AAA' game on mobile would be a new experience; But my assumption was proven wrong after seeing Stadia getting released only in North America & Europe where gamers are particular about their games.

Arguably, Google already had a strong and successful platform in mobile gaming (Google Play Games). It's even present on TV these days, with game controllers too (Google TV Chromecast takes bluetooth game controllers with which one can play a range of made-for-TV-screen Android games). I'm not sure why they didn't grow that to support server side rendering instead of starting a platform from scratch for which they we…

> I'm not sure why they didn't grow that to support server side rendering instead of starting a platform from scratch...

I'd assume company politics. Steve Jobs described Apple like a "big startup" [1]— it had 0 committees, and instead had one person in charge of each of the things the company needed to do/care about. They all met weekly and talked about everything they were doing, and it yielded great collaboration. That's why everything "makes sense" and grows from the divisions/apps you'd expect.

Google sounds more like Microsoft before it, with different teams doing work that might overlap and compete against one another. On top of that, afaik flashy "new" products play better for promotions than building upon something that exists. Hence Play Music and Youtube Music, Android and Chrome OS, Google Play and Stadia, etc.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5b4nn3ZEVU

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