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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

#601

Post by anjbe »

tokai wrote: post #135
NikolaNovak wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how GoG works. That's not how steam works on its own. Steam explicitly a service where you buy a defined and limited license for permission to execute the files through proprietary framework that might one day disappear. Don't get me wrong, steam is my preferred digital delivery platform and where I play majority of my games. But I am under no illusion that gives me any sort of permanence (without potential ha…

>Steam explicitly a service where you buy a defined and limited license for permission Simply not true. There is really no arguments here. You can run most games directly from the game files without steam. In the cases were you can't you would have issues with DRM in all other venues of purchase.

Runtime DRM is sometimes optional with Steam, but install‐time DRM never is.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#602

Post by anjbe »

toastercat wrote: post #510
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.

I've already resolved that if this were to ever happen, I would go back to my teenage ways of pirating every video game I want to play. I already make an effort to buy games on GOG or itch.io before Steam in order to have DRM-Free copies when I can.

> I already make an effort to buy games on GOG or itch.io before Steam in order to have DRM-Free copies when I can.

It’s important to save the offline installers too. I keep a rather large external for my GOG library.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#603

Post by kbelder »

kernal wrote: post #595
ineedasername wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 roa…

>Google's denial takes nothing away from the credibility of this rumor. Let this comment sink in for a while. An official comment from Stadia "takes nothing away" from an anonymous source with no track record or credibility whatsoever. >Yet on the other hand, if Google really wanted to refute the rumor They did something worse - they mocked it and exposed it for the ridiculous rumour it was.

>Let this comment sink in for a while. An official comment from Stadia "takes nothing away" from an anonymous source with no track record or credibility whatsoever.

Yeah, let it sink in. Doesn't it say something terrible about Google that their official denial carries no more weight than an anonymous, possibly troll source?

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#604

Post by ineedasername »

CryZe wrote: post #563
ineedasername wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 roa…

According to this comment on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/wb4jl6/comment/ii5d... : - Stadia signed multimillion deal with EA for Fifa23 and is taking preorders for this game. - Stadia takes preorders for another game releasing in Autumn. - Stadia announced expansion to Mexico later this year. - they are recruiting new staff.

I don't see sources for those claims, but even taking them at face value means very little. Agreements mean nothing if the service goes away, and Google can very well be on the verge of cancelling it but still operating otherwise in case they don't. Ditto for preorders and ditto Google's claim they'll expand to Mexico "later this year".

Whatever plans they had aren't going to stop until the decision to kill it is near final, meaning a rumor thay Google is likely to cancel it can be completely consistent with these other activities.

It may even depend on these other activities: if there aren't enough preorders for one of the most popular sports games in the world (Fifa) and if attempts to expand to Mexico fail or at lackluster-- those may be the final criteria google is using to decide on Stadia's future.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#605

Post by rightbyte »

tempest_ wrote: post #118
fatjokes wrote: post #25

It was a perfectly sensible strategic bet. 5G = easy streaming everything everywhere Their mistake was assuming the American telecoms would actually deliver real 5G in any reasonable amount of time. Maybe they should've tested it in the Korean market.

Which was a stupid bet given the problems things like OnLive had. They also had that bald dude out there doing tone def interviews talking like everyone has internet like the bay area and if they didn't then those customers didn't matter.

> has internet like the bay area

Like, expensive and bad? I had better internet in my paremts' summer hut than in Palo Alto.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#606

Post by rightbyte »

simiones wrote: post #266
dtx1 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If money was no object, what would technologically be possible right now in terms of latency?

Google could install a Stadia data center in every block of every city and town on Earth, at least any where there is a Stadia customer. Some version of this is the only way to reduce latency significantly. In a more realistic version, it is exactly what Netflix does - they pay to have Netflix streaming servers running in local ISP centers in much of the world where there are Netflix customers.

Netflix does not need low latency - only bandwidth. They can buffer client side.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#607

Post by ChildOfChaos »

finiteseries wrote: post #554
ChildOfChaos wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is performance better now? I was in the beta when there wasn't a limited selection of games and my friend used the free version once it came out of beta about a year and a half ago.

Its performance is unparalleled among cloud gaming services at the moment with the updates over the past year or so, Stadia is now a blurry, poorly upscaled mess in comparison, often locked at 30-45fps for certain titles while GFN is pushing real 4K at 120FPS with full ray tracing etc without breaking a sweat. https://youtu.be/B1bIGi1yjC8 It will routinely outperform a local series x (nevermind a PS5) given the right…

It was their streaming tech though that wasn't as good, rather than their rending of graphics as it was just a blurry mess and laggy.

Will give it another try.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#608

Post by sithadmin »

josefx wrote: post #279
sithadmin wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's auto-ban/content moderation issues are a separate issue from the tech, which is fine. I never noticed issues with resolution or rendering, and haven't heard complaints about it from friends who tried it. We all ended up abandoning Stadia due to there being better options elsewhere, not because Stadia itself (aside from game selection perhaps) was bad.

> and haven't heard complaints about it from friends who tried it. You mean the same friends that "just stopped using it"? There is something weird about the combination of purely positive feedback and everyone you know dropping it.

There's nothing weird about it all, and I'm confused as to why you chose to nitpick at that statement in particular.

That particular statement was with regard to suggested technical issues surrounding graphics. My friends and I generally found the play experience to be unobjectionable. My very statement explains that we all abandoned the product in favor of alternatives that provided a superior experience in one way or the other, not necessarily related to play experience. I for one prefer the versatility that a general low-latency desktop session via Parsec provides. Another friend that's deeply invested in the Xbox ecosystem preferred to use Microsoft's competing game streaming offering.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#609

Post by SkyMarshal »

ratherbefuddled wrote: post #486
SkyMarshal wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t even realize Stadia required you to actually buy games. I assumed the whole point of streaming is you pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to content. The business gets a cashflow it can securitize and sell on Wall St., and the customer gets unlimited content access, everyone’s happy. Really weird that Stadia required you to (also?) buy each game you wanted to play. If not for that, they never would have h…

The monthly fee is optional, you don't have to pay it to be able to stream games you have paid for. It gives you access to a library of additional games you don't have to buy.

Interesting. I wonder why not just have a monthly fee for unlimited streaming, and no other costs to play. No purchasing of games or anything like that.

And if they need more market segmentation, then offer an additional premium monthly fee that gets you early access to upcoming AAA games or some other similar value add like that.

It's just weird they decided to make some games unlimited and some for purchase. Maybe that was the best deal they could negotiate with the publishers, who knows.

Re: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

#610

Post by jfim »

vineyardmike wrote: post #574
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.

The other issue is that search makes A LOT of money. Even if they find oil, it’s such a small amount compared to search that it doesn’t seem to move the needle internally. If you look at the opportunity cost of supporting a small side business va building a bigger business.. you drop the small thing. Google engineering is expensive and they have a somewhat polished brand that they don’t want to muddle with a bunch of…

Right, that's why for example it made sense from Google's perspective to kill things like Google reader because that doesn't really move the needle.

The biggest issue with that approach is that they're burning customer goodwill, and that affects their odds down the line of getting customer acceptance. Stadia is just another project in a long line of cancelled projects that leaves customers screwed over and less willing to use Google products in the future.

Your point about Amazon is pretty interesting, IMHO I think that's why in the long term Amazon will keep on beating GCP in the cloud space. Amazon having such a large set of offerings is that it makes their cloud offering particularly compelling, especially considering they seem to keep old services alive and have relatively stable interfaces. Their offerings might not be as polished as GCP's, and some of them are laughably awful, but at least I feel confident that Amazon won't change the API or deprecate/retire the service.

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