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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

#661

Post by ramblerman »

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…

Google has more money than they know what to do with.

I don't know if the quality of their hires has been dropping, but it feels like they just can't execute new ideas. They throw money at problems, and mostly they are really all over the place.

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

#662

Post by nr2x »

sp332 wrote: post #489
apozem wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been using GeForce Now, the main advantage being that I will still own my games if they ever cancel the service. For now it's only $5/month and includes ray-tracing capable hardware, but I doubt it will be that price for long.

On the flip side games I bought to play on GFN got pulled with no warning.

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

#663

Post by tsimionescu »

maest wrote: post #425
mey wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare to https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/ and https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass/cloud-gaming Both have their own quirks, but they don't suffer from lack of games.

Man, I'm so salty about GFN - they have a great product and an economic model that makes sense but, for whatever reason, they gave in to publishers' pressure to remove some games from their service. This is doubly upsetting, as publishers should have no say on where I play the games I've already purchased - whether it's on a computer I physically own or on a computer I rent in the cloud.

Sadly, you generally don't purchase a game, but a license to play one in some form. I think the exact limits of their control have not yet been tested in court, but I don't think NVIDIA wants to be the one testing it.

And any way, NVIDIA is in no position to challenge the games industry on such things - they are very much in bed with them and would lose enormously if games suddenly all went for a big 'best on AMD' logo.

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

#664

Post by eitland »

mulmen wrote: post #631
CaptainZapp wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Towards the end it had a lot of advantages like one login account but still true pseudonymity How is that compatible with their enforced (and disastrous) real name policy?

Privacy from other users, not privacy from big G. I don’t recall the specifics but I remember the whole thing being very confusing as a user. It was definitely when I started losing trust in Google because there was never a clear benefit to me as a user.

> like one login account but still true pseudonymity wrt to other users

Exactly.

FWIW: That's what I tried to explain above: "like one login account but still true pseudonymity wrt to other users"

> I don’t recall the specifics but I remember the whole thing being very confusing as a user. It was definitely when I started losing trust in Google because there was never a clear benefit to me as a user.

On Google+ the social network it became really simple: You logged in using your main account.

Then in the upper right corner of the desktop (and probably in the hamburger menu on mobile) you could choose which connected identity you would like to post as.

Meaning one identity to answer serious questions about programming on the backend and another identity in a support group for front end developers etc ;-)

Google of course knew but back then we trusted Google.

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

#665

Post by bashwizard »

cush wrote: post #407
apozem wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I tried Stadia this christmas and while I'm not surprised, I'm disappointed. Everyone says that it runs well, no input lag, great picture quality and so on. But that was a lie.

While playing Destiny 2 and Hitman on a laptop running Ubuntu and over wifi with a controller, it felt ok-ish. Almost on par with playing on a Xbox Series X but not quite there.

However, when I tried the same games on my gaming rig, on a 1 Gbit fiber connection with a mouse and keyboard it was completely unplayable for me. The input lag is just too high for me to enjoy the experience. On top of that the picture quality is pretty bad compared to running the same game on your own machine at 4K.

My conclusion is that Stadia will not replace a high end gaming rig for the type of gamer with higher demands. I even doubt it will replace xbox or playstation for the console players.

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

#666

Post by Marsymars »

enos_feedler wrote: post #507
p1necone wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because playing with video compression, a max of 60fps and added latency is not ideal.

That's a fair point. I take this as being similar to reading a book on an iPad vs a kindle. Sure I can read a book on an iPad, but a kindle gives me a better "book experience". Streaming games is like reading a book on an iPad. Owning a PC or console is like reading the book on a device that is better suited for the format.

That analogy probably lands differently for different people. I haven’t used Stadia and don’t have a strong opinion of it. (But I’m open to it - my normal gaming approach is along the lines of XKCD 606 - I’m currently working through my PS3 library.) However, I find reading books on an iPad to be viscerally unpleasant, even though an iPad is my primary mobile computing device.

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

#667

Post by simonh »

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…

The problem with that is that it creates a culture of complacency. If failure is acceptable and even expected to be the norm, then don't be surprised when lots of projects you thought would be sure-fire hits or are executed successfully by competitors end up failing.

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

#668

Post by echelon »

hexadec wrote: post #475
echelon wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am curious what the next evolution of this model will look like. Marketplace.

Don't we have a marketplace already? If we take the game example we have Steam, Origin, Epic, and other stores competing to sell games. There are differences in offerings but they all still do a healthy business. On the streaming video side it is even harder since we never license or pay for videos, just the ability to watch as long as the service persists.

The cost of production will come down dramatically.

Big name directors like Villeneuve and Nolan are already yelling at the studios, but the days of their massive tent poles are over.

I think we'll probably wind up subscribing to our favorite creators directly.

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

#669

Post by Reason077 »

GlennS wrote: post #617
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…

It's not that long ago people were playing with 300+ ms delays on 56k modems. If you design lag-prediction into the game it isn't so bad. People even used enjoy working the "lag shield" (be erratic, change direction frequently). It's the dropped packets and consequent stuttering that is really frustrating.

> ”It's the dropped packets and consequent stuttering that is really frustrating.”

I agree. As a casual gamer, lag/latency has never been a problem on Stadia. Visual glitching and stuttering has. But have you noticed it only happens in certain titles?

Some games seem to suffer from periodic stutters (ahem, PUBG) no matter how good your connection is. While others are always butter smooth and crystal clear. This has lead me to suspect that it’s not entirely a connection issue, but maybe an issue with the ports/hardware at Stadia’s end?

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

#670

Post by blueblisters »

p1necone wrote: post #459
enos_feedler wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am struggling to find an analogy but here goes. I think it's like the difference between a console in the cloud v/s a gaming pc in the cloud. For casual gamers, a console in the cloud with minimal configuration - switch it on and start playing - makes the most sense. If GeForce Now is a hosted gaming PC, I assume running a Windows O/S, it likely has the same configuration overhead of PC games, which most casual gamers don't want to deal with.
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