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Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

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Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#181

Post by krisoft »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #108
OrangeMonkey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technical side was initially plagued by lag in games that were ill suited for it but this has consistently approved. I think the real failing is what you stated - biz dev and brand reputation. Read the other replies and you will see folks say "There were no games" or "The selection was limited." Why in the world would a major game company hesitate to invest in google and google services? Well, if you have a reput…

> Google can fix their reputation but its going to take a lot of work. To regain trust with enterprise customers (that's where the money is) it would take at least a decade of cleaning up their act very thoroughly. I remember a poster proudly announcing that they will announce one year in advance when they plan to shut down a service on GCS. Maybe they should look what happens when a company like HP announces end of…

> To regain trust with enterprise customers (that's where the money is) it would take at least a decade of cleaning up their act very thoroughly.

I disagree. It is much easier to regain trust with enterprise customers than with end users.

Enterprise costumers have contracts and lawyers on retainer. Google can draft a contract which binds them to performing a service. They can write in penalties with bite which shows to their enterprise customers that they mean it.

That is assuming that they really want to.

On the other hand this trick doesn't work with end users. They don't have lawyers to evaluate such an offer, and they have lot less of a chance of successfully suing google even if they would have favourable contracts.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#182

Post by jsnell »

macspoofing wrote: post #143
SilverBirch wrote: post #66

You would really hope there would be some far reaching repercussions for senior leadership at Google on this one. There are lots of projects that Google has tried and failed on, and sure, that happens. But this one is probably the clearest, obvious failure of execution. There is an absolutely crystal clear playbook of a Tech company forcing its way into the Gaming business. So how Google has managed to enter, complet…

>But this one is probably the clearest, obvious failure of execution ... There is an absolutely crystal clear playbook of a Tech company forcing its way into the Gaming business. I'm not sure this was an 'obvious failure of execution'. They wanted to build a gaming cloud-streaming-only service, and they built one. I don't think you can build a better one because the problems with cloud-streamed gaming are with the co…

Oh, there definitely were obvious failures of execution. Not on the core streaming tech side, but on the business and product aspects. The product should have been quite compelling: a way of playing current gen console games with basically no up front hardware investment and no ongoing subscription. That's what the "free" version of Stadia was.

But then they muddied things up with Stadia Pro, making people think it was actually supposed to a "Netflix for games" subscription service, and crucially making Stadia Pro the only SKU for a very long time. So rather than the really appealing entry point to console gaming that people could have easily tried, they ended up targeting the exact people for whom Stadia was the worst fit (hardcore gamers with existing console owners and large game libraries).

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#185

Post by mywittyname »

FVYPblNGl7R9ZAc wrote: post #63
Ken_At_EM wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is highly unethical to take away copies of the game that players had to pay full price for. Stadia owes them a retail copy of the games they purchased.

That is how all of this works. If Valve went out of business then you wouldn't have any legal right or way to get the games you purchased on Steam. If Amazon shut down Prime Video then you couldn't watch the movies you purchased on it. This is not a unique problem to Google Stadia.

I believe Valve has promised to unlock all games purchased through their platform in the event that they go out of business. Whether they stick to that is another story, but it should happen for at least some games.

They've been operating Steam for 20 years now. So the company has staying power.

Plus, the most likely thing to happen to Valve is a MS acquisition.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#186

Post by flohofwoe »

tokai wrote: post #151
Ken_At_EM wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but if Steam shut down you’d have no way to get to the installers again and you’d be left crossing your fingers the machine you installed them on doesn’t die.

Think it through. Of cause you cant get the games files if the provider goes offline. You can make a backup of any of your games in steam, which will make it possible to install it again offline on other machines.

The game won't run on another machine, at best you have a two weeks time window before the DRM checks start to fail.

There's this family sharing thing though, where you can share your Steam library between 5 accounts and up to 10 computers:

https://store.steampowered.com/promotion/familysharing

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#187

Post by Havoc »

endisneigh wrote: post #88

This is absolutely false. Feel free to quote this post in October. HN has a pretty high caliber of commenter compared to other forums. People believing a baseless rumor so easily is sad.

>People believing a baseless rumor so easily is sad.

There is an incredibly long list of precedents:

https://killedbygoogle.com

Scroll through that and once you get to the bottom tell me people are still being unreasonable...

I am glad to hear (anonymous) confirmation that it isn't getting killed though.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#188

Post by egormakarov »

unpopularopp wrote: post #113
falcolas wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stadia works quite well if you live in a big city adjacent to their data centers. It’s pretty ass otherwise.

Did you try Xbox Cloud gaming? Cause I live in a pretty small town in Eastern Europe and it works flawlessly. Does Microsoft doing something better or Stadia was just that bad?

Because even small towns in eastern Europe still have better internet than most part of US or Germany

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#189

Post by horsawlarway »

Ken_At_EM wrote: post #96
FVYPblNGl7R9ZAc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how all of this works. If Valve went out of business then you wouldn't have any legal right or way to get the games you purchased on Steam. If Amazon shut down Prime Video then you couldn't watch the movies you purchased on it. This is not a unique problem to Google Stadia.

You’re of course entirely correct. Valve feels different because you can install the games and play them on a machine of your choosing. Maybe if Stadia allowed you to play the games on your machine OR Stadia, the would have been a more compelling offering. Personally, I would have loved a service like that. There are so many games that my machine can play and I don’t want to deal with even the slightest lag, but I’ve…

Gaming rigs don't cost 3k.

You can get a great machine for under the price of the latest iPhone.

And at least for most games - I'd MUCH rather deal with lower graphics than latency. Latency makes games not fun. And I'm not even talking about intense actions games... I mean any game that's not turn-based (and sometimes - even those are not fun if latency starts hitting ~200-500ms).

Assuming your rig lasts 5 years, you're almost certainly better off just buying it outright at $800, than paying google $10 dollars a month for 5 years for vaporware. Plus at the end of it, you likely still have a perfectly functional computer, more than capable of handling basic mail/web/videos, or serving content (I have machines going back 18 years sitting on the dirt in my basement serving content).

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#190

Post by Workaccount2 »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #15

"there'd be no license transfer of any sort, which means that any purchases made on Stadia would effectively be nullified as the service closes down." It lasted less than three years and will leave players with nothing to show. This is what people were predicting when Stadia lauched and part of the reason why it had poor adoption.

This is why I don't sign on to anything new google does for a few years now. It's going to be buggy but promising initially, then be poorly supported, and then be cancelled leaving you high and dry.

If I was a large shareholder I'd be yelling to ditch Sundar everyday. The guy is a total idiot just floating by on ads dollars. Google could be so much more if they reorganized into conventional dedicated teams and stopped trying to cover their shortcomings with political virtue signalling.

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