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Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

kotaku.com

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

#711

Post by MaxBarraclough »

ehsankia wrote: post #461
oivey wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m unsure how Nvidia’s approach is worse. On GeForce now you can play games from Steam or Epic, right? Isn’t Stadia the same except you are locked into only Google’s store? That’s pretty significantly worse.

Nvidia literally throws you in a VM, where you have to log into Steam and use it as a computer. You & I may be gamers or computer users, but normal people don't want to deal with that shit. It also again assumed you have a Steam/Epic account to begin, or else that's another layer you have to deal with. With Stadia, you press one button and you're in the game 5s later. It also has deep integration, allowing friends li…

> you have to log into Steam and use it as a computer

If I recall correctly, you have to do this once, and it can save your log-in details for next time.

> You & I may be gamers or computer users, but normal people don't want to deal with that shit.

Gamers are their target audience.

> By having games integrate with Stadia's API, they can do other kinds of optimizations, like having simple optimized options, compares to Nvidia where you have to mess around with the settings like on PC.

That's true. I've found it's sometimes necessary to change the settings, as the default graphical settings are far below what the hardware is capable of handling.

I'm sure nVidia could do something about that if they had the will to.

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

#712

Post by meheleventyone »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #705
Xelbair wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don’t need to stream video to run AI in the cloud for a game. Strangely given the existence of server infrastructure based games for decades we’ve never seen it. Maybe the idea isn’t that amazing after all?

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

#713

Post by meheleventyone »

raymond_goo wrote: post #626
pavel_lishin wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it helps, apparently the exec in charge of Stadia has left. Whether this is a "you're fired, but you can resign if you want" or a "ship's going down, why would I ride it to the bottom" situation, I don't know.

Yeah, Jade Raymond.

She ran one of the studios and wasn't in charge of Stadia as a whole.

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

#714

Post by erhk »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #706
bostik wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What ever happened to "fail fast"

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

#715

Post by Bigpet »

baby wrote: post #589
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…

When the PS2 came out there were like 10 games available.

It could also play almost all PS1 games and it was the year 2000.

It is no longer the year 2000

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

#716

Post by kovac »

I'm wondering why a company like Microsoft didn't try this who I feel is far better poised to create something like Stadia. They already have publishers for both Windows and XBox so they could support anyone one of those platforms on cloud infrastructure so that it's no cost to the publishers. Microsoft also has the necessary cloud infrastructure as well as a player base. So, if this product makes sense, what's holding them back?

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

#717

Post by catmanjan »

Osiris wrote: post #591
h0l0cube wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember differently, it didn't do as well as PlayStation but original Xbox wasn't a failure...

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

#718

Post by catmanjan »

h0l0cube wrote: post #638
TheKarateKid wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, G+ was full force UNTIL there was an agreement for Google to back off in exchange for Facebook not competing with certain ads products. All the dirty laundry is coming out in the antitrust suits.

Is there a source you can point to, or is it hearsay?

I want to know this too, I'd love it to be true, very Hollywood

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

#719

Post by nerdponx »

erhk wrote: post #714
turbinerneiter wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you accept failure that easily, you will never try hard to turn anything around. You need some sort of balance between the two.

What ever happened to "fail fast"

But don't fail stupid.

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

#720

Post by Epskampie »

smt88 wrote: post #656
Epskampie wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No source, it just seems like basic logic to me that people who don't spend a lot of time on your product are very prone to cancelling. The linked article seems to confirm that Stadia is not doing so great.

Busy people are a great market if you have a product that can save them time. Stadia is not that.

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