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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

#451
1) Non (PC) gamers had little reason to adopt it, if they were gamers at all they probably had consoles with most Stadia games available.

2) PC gamers are on average very particular about frame rate, quality, and lag and these things weren't great with Stadia.

3) The convenience of not being tied to a specific device was nice but for both #1 & #2 above the convenience came nowhere close to overcoming the biggest flaw: lack of library portability. I certainly wasn't willing to repurchase games on Stadia. We see this in reverse with Stadia users about to loose everything they purchased.

If Google really wanted to do something in this space they'd repurpose the cloud GPU resources dedicated to it towards compute instances w/ Windows and/or a partnership with SteamOS that would allow users to install whatever they wanted: Epic, GOG, Steam, etc. Leave it up to the user. And leverage their streaming technology for the same convenience Stadia had provided, complete with love streaming to YouTube Twitch etc. Niche services like this exist but they're expensive. Google's scale would help solve that.

Of course even that game may be lost with the arrival of the Steam Deck. I can play nearly every game I've tried in it, including many unsupported, and the experience is great. In a hotel I can connect it to a TV, or I can stream it to a larger screened but low end laptop right next to me, and many games play perfectly well even on the small screen. The advent of relatively inexpensive portable hardware like this may in another year or two render the cloud streaming game concept completely moot.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#452
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part is how he just completely avoided actually answering the question. They simply refused to ever give a clear answer. Because they know the answer, and we know the answer, and it's all bad for them. Rather than engineer a system where the answer could be more positive, they stick their fingers in their ears (the most charitable interpretation).

I don’t understand why he didn’t just respond that your games will be gone. Or at least “in the worst case, your games might be gone”. People aren’t stupid, they know exactly what the evasive answer means, so why evade at all?

Because then no one has an exact quote they can point at where he says your games will be gone. It's obvious to most readers, but you can't simply say "he said X" and link to it/screenshot it, only say that he was evasive.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#453
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part is how he just completely avoided actually answering the question. They simply refused to ever give a clear answer. Because they know the answer, and we know the answer, and it's all bad for them. Rather than engineer a system where the answer could be more positive, they stick their fingers in their ears (the most charitable interpretation).

I don’t understand why he didn’t just respond that your games will be gone. Or at least “in the worst case, your games might be gone”. People aren’t stupid, they know exactly what the evasive answer means, so why evade at all?

PR guys aren't paid to tell the truth, they're paid to say whatever is convenient for the company. Lying straight to your face is one of their core skills.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#454

I absolutely hope not. Stadia has provided an excellent game night for me and my remote friend (who is on a Mac) this year and we've had a blast, we mostly play little party games as nither of us our big gamers, but it makes for an excellent night,i've bought a couple of games on it that i've yet to even get too and plan to buy some more and enjoy the odd hour or two in the evenings. Stadia removes all fraction and m…

> we mostly play little party games as nither of us our big gamers

unfortunately there's not enough of you guys, Stadia was targeting the latter crowd but as you can see, they've failed.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anonymous sources providing nothing but a statement are baseless. Stadia will exist by the end of the summer. You don’t have to believe me. Like I said feel free to come back to this thread in October.

>Anonymous sources providing nothing but a statement are baseless. To the parent commenter's point, you said, "This is absolutely false". Do you have actual evidence otherwise, or are you making baseless conjecture based on, well... baseless conjecture?

Me not having evidence doesn’t mean it’s not true. Indeed my statement is equally dubious as the Twitter one. However you’ll see that I’m correct by just coming back to this thread in October.

Proving a negative is generally difficult to begin with.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#456

"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.

I've been saying this is exactly and the only sort of thing blockchain might be able to solve. Absolutely prove you bought a thing. Only question is how to get another service to care to respect that.

Maybe prove Y% of your X purchase went to the rights holder. So you can only be charged for Z-Y to get that same thing from another service.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#457
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part is how he just completely avoided actually answering the question. They simply refused to ever give a clear answer. Because they know the answer, and we know the answer, and it's all bad for them. Rather than engineer a system where the answer could be more positive, they stick their fingers in their ears (the most charitable interpretation).

I don’t understand why he didn’t just respond that your games will be gone. Or at least “in the worst case, your games might be gone”. People aren’t stupid, they know exactly what the evasive answer means, so why evade at all?

Not being explicit gives wiggle room for people to let their hopes override their logic when interpreting how it will work.

Some number of people will read that and say "it's safe, I knew they would assuage my concerns" that wouldn't otherwise if they just said "well, you might lose you games in that case.". Those are the people being targeted.

And by those people I include you and me, but for different things. It's impossible to be completely objective and rational all the time, and I'm sure you can come up with just as many instances as I where hope overrode reason for a while. Statements like these are specifically to keep us around when we fall into that category.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#458
post #356

False rumor or not, Stadia has very little market fit. It's no solution for budget gamers. You still need to pay for the services, the individual games and need to have an excellent network connection to make it usable. It's not exactly a solution for the "poor". It's not really a solution for most casual/infrequent gamers either. Most high-end games are not casual games, they require a time investment. Plus, in this…

You only need to pay for the games (at full price because there's never a sale!) and your internet connection. You can play at 1080p for free. You need to subscribe to Stadia for 4k and some free games. In the end, I agree with you, it's just not quite as bad as you painted it.

I buy all my Stadia games on sale, I just don't value the newest games that much. The issue is the Stadia selection not the price, there are good deals to be had.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#459
Game Pass is a massive success, and PlayStation Now was just revamped to be more like it. How Stadia managed to be so close, yet so completely miss the biggest trend in gaming is frankly quite astonishing.

I remember Google was talking up how you'd be able to watch a game stream on YouTube, then with a single click "fork" the game into your own instance and continue playing. Or even just basic things like watching a game trailer and being able to jump into a playable demo. But they didn't realize any of that, instead they went with the most conservative possible approach of selling games for $60, which is a non-starter in a world of constant sales and where Game Pass already exists. It's like if YouTube was a platform where every video was $1 to watch, how successful would that have been?

I also think if Google shuts down Stadia instead of pivoting into a Game Pass like service, the reputational damage to GCP alone will be more than whatever the cost of Stadia is.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#460
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, this strategy works for google. Google enters these markets and then kills it for any possible future competitors. In the short run, it's a loss, in the long run, you nullify new possible competitors. They're no longer in the market. Now others are also slow to enter the market, in this case video game streaming as a service, and it's good for Google? This new product market isn't a core competency for Go…

What? The streaming games market started way before Google (OnLive, Sony, etc.) and now it's mostly Nvidia and Microsoft. Google entered late, never invested much in it, never advertised much... they just totally botched the execution and their competitors got all the players. Nvidia's service is getting better all the time.

Not sure where I said Google was first in this space?
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