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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

#741

Post by account42 »

pdpi wrote: post #603
bastawhiz wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone is going to compete with Microsoft , of all companies, I'd expect it to be Google.

Except Microsoft is investing heavily in first party games, buying loads of studios and letting them retain a lot of independence. They’re approaching the streaming service as an extension of the Xbox experience. It’s a much more robust strategy all around

> and letting them retain a lot of independence

Except they misteriously stop releasing Linux versions of their games.

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

#742

Post by ddnb »

v7p1Qbt1im wrote: post #689
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geforce Now library kinda sucks to me, not all that much better than Stadia but that's my opinion. Stadia has a few names (e.g. Red Dead Redemption) that GFN doesn't and vice versa.

This is probably what prevented the Stadia team from doing the same thing. Lot‘s of people saying: „why not partner with valve/steam for their library“. Because it‘s not Valves library to begin with. This was inevitable. No publisher cared about GFN playing their games in the cloud in the beginning. Just like studios sold off their content to Netflix for pennies in the beginning. It was free money and they didn‘t hav…

So, I'm wondering, why doesn't google supply us with a desktop in the cloud, you can do whatever you want with it, but it has a nice graphics card so you can install steam on it if you want or origin or whatever. You download the game there and play that way. Publishers can't stop that can they?

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

#743

Post by macspoofing »

detaro wrote: post #738
macspoofing wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So as a third-party developer, apart from getting big subsidies, why should I publish on Stadia? Especially after Google has signaled they have no faith in their platform.

Same as for any other platform: because it's one place more you can sell your games.

But that's not what happens. That's why publishers are not porting games to Linux. That's why many console games aren't released on PC. That's why most publishers didn't bother with Stadia to begin with.

There are real costs to supporting yet another platform and if you don't believe the platform will generate sales for you, you're not going to expand the effort.

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

#744

Post by account42 »

pjmlp wrote: post #652
depressedpanda wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The graphics backend is really not such a big cost for most games, especially with existing cross-platform engines. Also the grahics APIs are really not that different as they all model the same GPUs. DirectX vs. OpenGL had some annoying things but most of them are only a problem when you have to translate and can't modify the calling code at all. DirectX 12 vs. Vulkan is even less of a difference.

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

#745

Post by detaro »

macspoofing wrote: post #743
detaro wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same as for any other platform: because it's one place more you can sell your games.

But that's not what happens. That's why publishers are not porting games to Linux. That's why many console games aren't released on PC. That's why most publishers didn't bother with Stadia to begin with. There are real costs to supporting yet another platform and if you don't believe the platform will generate sales for you, you're not going to expand the effort.

But in the context of this discussion, I'm fairly sure "Google has a game studio and is making games for Stadia" was never an important part in the decision of game makers to port to Stadia or not, because zero customers got Stadia because of some hypothetical Google games that might come out for it at some point in the future. (Certainly wasn't for any of the Stadia users I know)

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

#746

Post by pjmlp »

account42 wrote: post #744
pjmlp wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The graphics backend is really not such a big cost for most games, especially with existing cross-platform engines. Also the grahics APIs are really not that different as they all model the same GPUs. DirectX vs. OpenGL had some annoying things but most of them are only a problem when you have to translate and can't modify the calling code at all. DirectX 12 vs. Vulkan is even less of a difference.

How many Android and Switch games get published on GNU/Linux? Yep, it boils down to it.

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

#747

Post by pjmlp »

throwaways885 wrote: post #721
pjmlp wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What's the alternative? Run Stadia on Windows?

That is exactly what Microsoft is doing.

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

#748

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

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…

There are TVs with more than 100ms of latency, and there are strategies using state rollback and replay that can further reduce the impact of the latency besides. Latency isn't Stadia's hardest problem.

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

#749

Post by macspoofing »

detaro wrote: post #745
macspoofing wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not what happens. That's why publishers are not porting games to Linux. That's why many console games aren't released on PC. That's why most publishers didn't bother with Stadia to begin with. There are real costs to supporting yet another platform and if you don't believe the platform will generate sales for you, you're not going to expand the effort.

But in the context of this discussion, I'm fairly sure "Google has a game studio and is making games for Stadia" was never an important part in the decision of game makers to port to Stadia or not, because zero customers got Stadia because of some hypothetical Google games that might come out for it at some point in the future. (Certainly wasn't for any of the Stadia users I know)

>I'm fairly sure "Google has a game studio and is making games for Stadia" was never an important part in the decision of game makers to port to Stadia or not

... and most publishers didn't even bother with Stadia, so what does that tell you about how publishers view Stadia?

>because zero customers got Stadia because of some hypothetical Google games that might come out for it at some point in the future.

And how many customers does Stadia actually have? It seems like Stadia was ignored by customers as well.

Third-party publishers don't care about sales of First-party games. They care about sales of their titles. This means they care about the viability of the platform. So First-party games are ultimately there to drive platform adoption. They do so, by 1) demonstrating the strengths of the platform to consumers and publishers (think WiiSport showing off how Wii controllers can be used), and 2) Providing a reason for consumers to actually adopt the platform. The audience for Stadia are gamers who probably have a console or are into PC gaming. If you're only offering a (tiny) library of games that are already out on other platforms, there isn't really an incentive to get Stadia and play the games you already own or can get ... but this time from the cloud! On the other hand, if I like Mario or Zelda, I have to get the Switch.

And by the way, for all the talk about all those partnerships Stadia will form - how is it that Microsoft was able to secure rights to hundreds of titles for their subscription-based Netflix-type gaming service (GamePass), and Stadia couldn't even muster more than a handful of games you have to buy individually? And speaking of Netflix, it's not surprise they have pivoted to creating original content to supplement their licensed library - care to guess why?

Stadia is a full fail.

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

#750

Post by v7p1Qbt1im »

ddnb wrote: post #742
v7p1Qbt1im wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably what prevented the Stadia team from doing the same thing. Lot‘s of people saying: „why not partner with valve/steam for their library“. Because it‘s not Valves library to begin with. This was inevitable. No publisher cared about GFN playing their games in the cloud in the beginning. Just like studios sold off their content to Netflix for pennies in the beginning. It was free money and they didn‘t hav…

So, I'm wondering, why doesn't google supply us with a desktop in the cloud, you can do whatever you want with it, but it has a nice graphics card so you can install steam on it if you want or origin or whatever. You download the game there and play that way. Publishers can't stop that can they?

Well, it would still be linux presumably. MS would likely not allow them to use Windows that way. Or they‘d make it prohibitively expensive. In any case there‘d be even less differentiation from xcloud.

Shadow does offer Windows VM‘s. It works pretty well, but it‘s also quite expensive and not really generally available.

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