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

701–710 of 834 posts

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

#701

Post by mulmen »

eitland wrote: post #664
mulmen wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Yeah, when you explain it that makes sense. But it was never clear to me how that related to circles or whatever. Also that identifies were even a thing. Plus even back then I didn’t trust Google to retain the functionality. How do I know they won’t merge those identities later to “streamline the experience” or something.

I never used Google+ because it never made sense to me. There were probably a lot of great ideas that were just not obvious.

In hindsight it really looks like Yahoo all over again.

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

#702

Post by akhilcacharya »

ehsankia wrote: post #453
pkage wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I signed up for GeForce Now, and truly the killer feature is bringing the games you already own. On Stadia, you have to buy the games separately on top of the streaming subscription, and Luna (Amazon's offering) is similar in that you can sign up for game "channels" (iirc). With GeForce Now, you can just play the stuff you already own without sinking money into games that play on a platform that might not even exist…

Nvidia and Luna both took the shortcut of just running a windows VM and running the game as is. Stadia is the only one that actually requires games to integrate with its API, similar to Steam with Steamworks, and this allows them to provide a far more integrated experience, with friend lists, friend invites, voice chat, achievements, and so on. None of the other services can provide that. Well GFN does but that's jus…

>Nvidia and Luna both took the shortcut of just running a windows VM and running the game as is

The customer value add of anything on top of that is proving to be extremely thin. I used Now extensively in 2017, Luna extensively this year and Stadia briefly for Destiny 2 - Luna's experience isn't worse enough to provide any benefit to the Stadia lock-in model.

Stadia PM's should really consider focusing more on "Customer Obsession".

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

#703

Post by ThatPlayer »

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?

Stadia is also an upgrade to a last-gen dedicated games console, a PS4 or an Xbox One. Just look at the recent Cyberpunk 2077 release which ran fine in Stadia, but struggled on those consoles. With the current-gen just releases, plenty of people have not yet upgraded.

Strictly console-wise Stadia is an upgrade to those last-gen consoles. But they really need to get more games on the service because that's what people are there for.

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

#704

Post by akhilcacharya »

mdoms wrote: post #270
Clewza313 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Valve is not in the hardware business.

Yes they are? Their latest flagship game literally only works on their hardware.

I've played Alyx three times on two different VR headsets by two manufacturers and this is definitely not true.

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

#705

Post by hamilyon2 »

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…

Do you people realise the there are whole generes of games,where beautiful graphics is a serious advantage, but low latency is not?

Like, 600 ms latency is still 100% acceptable and enjoyable.

And not only graphics. Turn-based strategy genre can also benefit from gigantic ram and cpu resources - all to make ai smarter, more enjoyable to beat the ever.

I think stadia and cloud gaming in general is a gold mine. But it is a different platform, games should be optimized for it.

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

#706

Post by turbinerneiter »

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.

If you accept failure that easily, you will never try hard to turn anything around.

You need some sort of balance between the two.

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

#707

Post by habosa »

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…

The lack of search or pagination on the games list shocked me. I really have to scroll past every single Destiny pack to get down to NBA 2K1?

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

#708

Post by arianvanp »

habosa wrote: post #707
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…

The lack of search or pagination on the games list shocked me. I really have to scroll past every single Destiny pack to get down to NBA 2K1?

The games page also takes around 35 seconds to load on my pixel 5.

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

#709

Post by heavenlyblue »

arkitaip wrote: post #671
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.

So how do you prevent mediocricy because every employee is afraid of failing because of the draconian consequences?

How do you prevent mediocrity when every employee is nice, accepting of failure of others but absolutely useless?

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

#710

Post by throwawayzRUU6f »

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…

The engineering side did a great job on a complex technical task. It's satisfactory, kind of works, not great, not terrible.

What boggles the mind is that nobody is able to formulate who is Stadia even meant for. Who are the target customers?

Draw a Venn diagram of people who:

  - care about gaming
  - are OK paying full price for their games
  - are OK paying 10 euros a month subscription
  - are OK buying an extra controller
  - have top-notch, 100% reliable internet connection
  - are willing to accept occasional technical glitches
  - are OK with Google's mercurial approach to product lifecycles
but do not:

  - have a computer
  - have a console
  - have a Steam library
  - mod their games
  - subscribe to Nvidia's cloud gaming service
Just giving some off-hand estimates, my estimate is 0.00015% of the world's population meets these criteria. The only reasonable business model must be "people will want to try it out and then forget to cancel their subscription".
Post reply on HN