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

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

#691

Post by mrweasel » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

de6u99er wrote: post #504

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…

If Google didn't make tons of money with ads through it's search engine, the comoany would IMO already be bankrupt. It's almost as if Google product development stops a v0.8. Maybe time to have the company run by engineers instead of PhD's.

Well, ads does afford them the luxury of trying new things, develop new products and revenue sources. Google is just pretty poor at developing new products.

It is actually pretty fascinating, short of cloud computing, and Gsuite, Google doesn't appear to be able to produce products that people will actually pay for. It's not that Google doesn't have success stories, they do, Android for instance. They just don't seem to be able to sell anything.

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

#692

Post by teddyh » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:08 AM UTC

bostik wrote: post #684

simonh wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This reads like a classic Dilbert strip. Sure, we all know 9 out of 10 projects fail. Let's make sure we only ever begin the 1 that doesn't.

Found it: https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-03-08

“One out of ten research and development projects will succeed. I recommend cancelling the other nine.”

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

#693

Post by blacklight » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:12 AM UTC

I'm wondering why they didn't think of this from the very beginning.

The idea of running a game on the cloud and letting users play it from any device as long as they have an internet connection is surely interesting. But if you want to convince gamers who have already spent lots of money for their beefy gaming machines to switch, you'd better provide them with content - especially exclusive titles.

And, let's be honest, the content was extremely scarce, and in many cases it wasn't anything that you wouldn't already find for standard PC.

Google tried to play both the part of the platform developer and game producer without having any experience on the latter, and it expectedly failed.

When Stadia was announced I remember that my first reaction was "why don't they just provide the platform to gaming companies and let them develop their titles, instead of trying to do everything in-house?" Now, more than one year later, it seems that they've reached the exact same conclusion.

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

#694

Post by fsloth » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:12 AM UTC

Xelbair wrote: post #685

arkitaip wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because grand parents mentioned firing people...

Well to be fair Stadia was an idiotic project that was doomed to fail due to physical constraints(getting sub 80ms latency, and that's VERY generous for input latency that people are used to), which are unsolvable. No ML does not fix that, because if game predicts your inputs are you even playing it, not to mention the frustration when it mispredicts. That's the sort of thing you have engineers for - so you don't sin…

Disagree very strongly that it would be idiotic.

Nvidia's GeForce go is under the same physical constraints and Cyberpunk 2077 is very playable there (so I can play it on my IPad Pro using XBox bluetooth controller...) . There are lot's games where brief latency is not a problem. I agree for some games latency is a dealbreaker but hardly for all.

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

#695

Post by fsloth » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:16 AM UTC

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…

"how does anyone who greenlit this on any level still have a job?"

Failures should be celebrated and not shunned. Presuming charitably everyone is doing their best etc.

What happens for companies where no-one dares to start new projects? Yeah.

So what is the correct number of new projects per risk? Everyone would like to choose only those that succeed. But the whole point of new development is that the information and experience to build such a product does not exist and needs to be learned as the project progresses.

Should companies take too many new risky projects or too few? If the reward for successful project is high, then it's obvious a company should take a few too many risky projects, rather than too few (and risk cancelling some hit in it's infancy).

In aggregate if every new project fails and business is starting to look like Kodak or Xerox then that's bad. Failing one new project is just a large company trying to innovate and cutting it's losses when a project is not a success.

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

#696

Post by smt88 » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:18 AM UTC

vasachi wrote: post #679

smt88 wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How is stadia an upgrade to Switch? Stadia is an upgrade to nothing, as in having Stadia is better than having no way to play games. But an upgrade to a dedicated games console?

Playing hi-res, current-gen games on a smartphone is a technical upgrade to playing Switch games.

It's also more convenient to just use the screen in front of me (TV, phone, tablet, laptop) than to find my Switch and boot it up.

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

#697

Post by ThatPlayer » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:18 AM UTC

Duralias wrote: post #672

ThatPlayer wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stadia doesn't have a $10/mo cost or $75 upfront cost though. Stadia Pro is optional, and the client runs in Chrome on almost any device (not sure about iOS yet). I can go on the store and buy Cyberpunk 2077 and start playing on my phone if I wanted to.

If we want to compare Stadia to current generation consoles then I think we need to include the 10$/mo, 1080p on stadia looks terrible on any somewhat large screen, "4k" is much better. And the 75$ upfront cost does exist, you need a controller. You could get a controller for cheaper, but it wouldn't be as easy to use or be usable with the chromecast ultra, which seems to be where the best experience is. Nonetheless…

But if we're comparing to a current gen console then do you include the subscription the console requires for online play? Stadia Pro also gives 'free games' the same way Playstation Plus and Xbox Gold Live do too.

Especially in the 'casual/occasional' gamer market, where they don't care enough about the difference between 1080p and 4K. Most are probably just interested in being able to play the latest hot game. That's exactly the same market Microsoft is targeting with the Xbox Series S.

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

#698

Post by flohofwoe » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:31 AM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #695

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?" Failures should be celebrated and not shunned. Presuming charitably everyone is doing their best etc. What happens for companies where no-one dares to start new projects? Yeah. So what is the correct number of new projects per risk? Everyone would like to choose only those that succeed. But the whole point of new development is that the information an…

> Failures should be celebrated and not shunned.

If it's something completely new, then yeah, celebrate failure, because at least you learned something. But game streaming had been tried and failed spectacularly before (remember OnLive?). Stadia didn't add anything new except "this time it's Google, they know their network stuff". Turns out that isn't enough if the business model makes no sense.

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

#699

Post by v7p1Qbt1im » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

mattlondon wrote: post #34

Until you can play your Steam game library (and perhaps Epic and Unisoft and GOG) on Stadia, I think they'll struggle. I have paid for Geforce Now which does let you play Steam et al games (although not everything is available which is annoying) - it is about £4 a month currently (or free if you can spend time waiting to play) and the experience feels largely the same to Stadia to me in terms of latency and quality.…

Szenario: Stadia partners with Steam.

Next day: Publishers start crying and all change their TOS to exclude cloud gaming like they did for GFN.

Look what happened to Netflix. Publishers and rights-owners love to collect exorbitant royalties (and not pass them on to devs/creators).

In the end, if you‘re consumer-facing, you have to create your own content. Or be extremely entrenched.

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

#700

Post by akhilcacharya » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:39 AM UTC

ThatPlayer wrote: post #611

riversflow wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Stadia is truly an MVP. It’s a Google MVP, it doesn’t have to be truly viable, only viable to google middle management looking for a promotion. That’s what people are lamenting, you can’t role out a competitive gaming platform with such a small catalog of titles. >I bought an Xbox to play Red Dead Redemption 2 . . . lots of people falling into the “who this is for” camp Those people appear to be “casual…

Stadia doesn't have a $10/mo cost or $75 upfront cost though. Stadia Pro is optional, and the client runs in Chrome on almost any device (not sure about iOS yet). I can go on the store and buy Cyberpunk 2077 and start playing on my phone if I wanted to.

> Stadia Pro is optional

Last time I signed up the Stadia Pro upsell was mandatory (you had to provide a CC). This was annoying because I was interested just in Destiny 2, which is free.