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Google is shutting down Stadia

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#72
post #2

While inevitable, I am impressed they are refunding all purchases, including hardware. That can't be cheap.

Does anyone have sales numbers on hardware and software?

If the actual sales were low (and that's part of why they shut down) then it might actually be (relatively) cheap, and perhaps buy them goodwill towards their next experiment. Maybe next time more people will try it, with the hopes that if it fails, they'll get refunds. And maybe it'll build momentum for them.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#74
When I rejoined Google (working in the hardware division), my managers tried to get me to work on stadia and I refused (this was shortly before it launched). I looked at it, said "this won't be successful, and google will eventually get rid of it". My managers simply couldn't understand that. They said "the leadership thinks this will be successful and we should build it" and then I realized they were sheeple.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#75
post #2

While inevitable, I am impressed they are refunding all purchases, including hardware. That can't be cheap.

I’m surprised, but I’m also glad they are doing this. It could be to avoid class action lawsuits. I used mine for a total of 5 minutes before throwing it in trash. It is a very unfinished product they shipped thinking they’ll solve it. But the reality is, even with the best internet in the country, the games were barely playable. I’m talking 600mbps download and a 100mbps upload speed.

Bandwidth isn't that important with game streaming after ~40-70 Mbps, latency and jitter (essentially latency consistency) is.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#76
post #17

You know it's gonna be bad news when you see a title like that. I've always been bearish on game streaming because it's just not practically, physically possible to solve the problem of input lag. Even an extra 10ms is going to be noticeable and unacceptable for many games.

I disagree. The fastest human reaction time is something around 100ms. ( https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime ). I've just measured, and mine is 230ms. As such 10ms lag wouldn't make any difference. I've used Shadow Tech PC for a while during pandemic. With good upstream and downstream bandwidth it was a fairly decent experience, even for playing something like competitive Overwatch. I noticed the difference…

100ms times are cheaters; 200ms is probably closer to the absolute lower bound of human reaction time.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#78

This is a great example of why you can never trust PR statements. They outright lie. We're not working on X. We won't shut down Y. Bald faced lies. Edit: Missed that they're doing refunds. That part's good. EDIT2: Why I'm calling it a lie: These decisions are not made on a whim. They're made months if not years in advance. A public company making public statements about how you're not shutting something down while yo…

Or the PR teams are just misinformed?

Some intern doing customer support on twitter isn’t going to be invited to long term strategy/budget meetings

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#79
The reality is streaming is the future of gaming for a huge number of gamers. Stadia's business model would have never worked out but the tech does works. Stadia was always going to run into the problem Netflix is going through now, the big IP holders will create their own streaming platforms rather then sharing the revenue with a third party.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#80
post #2

While inevitable, I am impressed they are refunding all purchases, including hardware. That can't be cheap.

I think it begins to address mistrust of new Google products. Which is worth a lot to Google.

If they consistently take this approach for other cancellations, it could change the the common view from:

"why use this? They're just going to shut it down in a few years anyway"

to:

"oh neat, Google's experimenting with something new. Let me try it out. If it doesn't work out, they'll take care of me."

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