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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

#471

Post by corrral »

robotnikman wrote: post #430
hatware wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch? In todays economy that kind of title inflation can get you places. You might run everything you touch into the ground, but hey who cares?

Sometimes I wish I had the shamelessness some people have, it seems to be a great way to advance your career.

I wish I could figure out the secret handshake that gets you hired to one prominent, presumably high-paid, spitballin' and chattin' and "idea person" role after another, despite a track record of apparent mediocrity in actual results. Seems like it'd be really fun and—plainly—not very hard work.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#472

Post by alasdair_ »

The stadia tech is remarkably good but I still don’t understand what their target market is.

They seem to be targeting people who don’t want the expense of buying a gaming pc or a console but, for some reason, also have extremely good high bandwidth, low-latency broadband.

The intersection of these two groups seems remarkably small.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#473

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

fariszr wrote: post #268
mywittyname wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

After their Linux move, Vlave really want to have nothing to do with Microsoft.

I don't think that's true so much as Valve really doesn't trust Microsoft, which is a very reasonable position given the company's history.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#474

Post by Macha »

bones-jones wrote: post #398
jfim wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd phrase it differently. Google got lucky in the sense that they set out to build a search engine, someone said "hey why don't we do text ads," it made money, and they've been riding that ever since. They're the kind of company that drilled a few holes, found oil once, and is now drilling holes everywhere without understanding where oil comes from.

Nobody understands where oil comes from. Anyone who did would have drilled there already and would be a new letter in FAANG (maybe MANGA instead now that FB -> Meta?). Since no one knows where oil comes from, the best way to find it is to drill everywhere (for which you’ll need lots of resources) and hope you strike. This is pretty much just Darwinian capitalism; companies in the market compete on whatever they think…

Hindsight is not all it is though. Plenty of people here, myself included, were calling that the need to rebuy games (compared to MS's all in one sub model, or nvidia letting you use your existing licenses), combined with Google's track record with lacking commitment to its services were fatal flaws to Google's value proposition.

The reply was that Spotify and Netflix worked, but all music streaming services have basically the same selection these days, and movies are deemed more disposable than games as seen by the rise of people rotating subscriptions as movie video streaming fragments, so they were never perfect indicators. The one worry was that Google would buy its way in with exclusives and introductory pricing a la Epic, but Google's pride probably prevented that.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#475

Post by ineedasername »

bushbaba wrote: post #366
Workaccount2 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stoppe…

Sundar is doing what the shareholders want. Grow ads revenue while distracting regulators from a google anti trust lawsuit.

I don't know, I'm not sure that's sustainable in the long term. They need to branch out, even if it's just to find new places to put ads-- like in streaming games. But they never fully commit. Strong hyped launch, not follow through. Google has more than enough resources that they should have been able to get major game publishers to sign on to allow owners of their games on l, say, Steam to freely game access on Stadia. Heck even a very minor player like GOG was able to do this in a limited way! Linked my steam account to GOG and was able to get free Gog copies of about a dozen games I already owned on steam that way.

But it seems like Google put practically zero effort into growing Stadia into having a respectable library at all. It looks like they gave up almost immediately and the last few years have been the inevitable stagnation into the graveyard.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#476

Post by bparsons »

I recently logged onto Stadia to check it out.

I was surprised at how well the entire thing worked. As a proof of concept, it showed me that this type of technology will replace consoles and gaming rigs in the very near future. Every game ran perfectly on full settings. Loading time was fast, no glitches or noticeable delay in control response.

That however, does not mean that Stadia will be the platform that mainstreams the technology. It will probably have to be Steam, Microsoft or Sony to finally do that.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#477

Post by chrisseaton »

greenthrow wrote: post #349
chrisseaton wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It lasted less than three years and will leave players with nothing to show. Well they got to play the games? Not sure what you'd want to show? Like high-scores?

Are you serious? They bought the game, now they don't have the game. They didn't rent it. Google still exists, and has plenty of money to make all Stadia customers whole by buying them a retail copy of all of the games. But they choose not to because they are greedy. Note: I am not a Stadia customer because I figured this would happen.

> They didn't rent it.

It's a service isn't it? You play it online. You got to play it. Not sure what makes you think I can't be serious about that? If I want to play a game I don't care if I 'buy' it or rent it - I care about the playing.

They asked what they got from it - they got to play the game. Wasn't that the point?

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#479

Post by jldugger »

Ekaros wrote: post #343
cptskippy wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not wrong. All my games are in the cloud and it is great; it's just not Google's cloud.

You know why I keep buying stuff on Steam? This is why... It is putting all the eggs in single basket, but at least it is the sturdiest and oldest basket.

I saw something the other day that really struck home on this: for any given software technology you encounter, your best estimate is that it's halfway through its useful lifetime.

I know some TED level influencer had some story about basically everything in mail order catalogs from 100 year ago is still for sale somewhere today, so maybe it's wrong, or maybe software is just more prone to vanishing.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#480

Post by ineedasername »

lenova wrote: post #289
jsnell wrote: post #75

This is an anonymous source (not even verified by the original publicizer of the rumor) reporting second hand on what their "regional manager" friend heard in a "seminar". Why give any credence to this? This is about as close as it gets to "my friend has an uncle working at Nintendo" level of sourcing, but it's being taken as absolute fact by basically everyone in this thread. Mr. Killedbygoogle doesn't seem to be al…

Goolge Stadia twitter account is saying the rumour is false: https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656

Google's denial takes nothing away from the credibility of this rumor. Google isn't going to deviate from their own preplanned PR campaign on any product's demise just because a rumor leaked. That doesn't mean this rumor is true, only that the denial has no informational content for evaluating the rumor.

Yet on the other hand, if Google really wanted to refute the rumor, they'd say "It's not true, we have a firm roadmap for improvements and expansions etc." And actually have a published roadmap they could point to. Instead they claim they're working on getting new games but from what I can piece together we're about 60% through 2022 and Google has only released 37 of the promised 100+ new games that would come to the platform this year. They could make up some ground but they're not on pace for it.

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