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Google is shutting down Stadia

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#281

Post by kabdib »

jedberg wrote: post #40

Google's reputation for not supporting things long term is finally starting to affect them in noticeable ways. Developers didn't onboard because they were afraid it would get shut down. It got shut down because no one onboarded.

Years back, I received quite a few contacts from Google recruiters about interviewing to work on an unannounced gaming product (which was Stadia, of course).

Google's reputation for canceling projects was bad, even back then. Never gave it serious thought. You could see the writing on the wall, even before they built the thing.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#282

Post by josephcsible »

scarmig wrote: post #99
jedberg wrote: post #40

Google's reputation for not supporting things long term is finally starting to affect them in noticeable ways. Developers didn't onboard because they were afraid it would get shut down. It got shut down because no one onboarded.

It's a bit of a conundrum: every company is going to shut down products. What's the best way to launch new, risky things? Startups can simply go all in on the product, and if it fails, the company dissolves, though people rightly are hesitant to go with a fly by night startup for exactly that reason. I'm not even sure that Google has shut down more products than an equivalently sized company. But it's certainly shut…

They should have split Stadia into two conceptual halves: one with the technology to split the processing from the input and output, and one to do the hosting of the processing. Then when they decided to kill Stadia, they could have let other people run the latter, so that the former would still be useful to people who already owned it.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#283

Post by MichaelCollins »

timmg wrote: post #248
vyrotek wrote: post #43

Just a couple of months ago. "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro." https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656

I mean, it was probably a lie. But, also, things may have changed. It's not like Google didn't just go through a big hiring freeze and budget process.

Everybody here knew it wasn't going to play out that way, so surely everybody in Google knew it too. Or should have known. Either they were lying, or were effectively brainwashed by the corporate environment (a real possibility.)

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#284

Post by mosburger »

candiddevmike wrote: post #152
jedberg wrote: post #40

Google's reputation for not supporting things long term is finally starting to affect them in noticeable ways. Developers didn't onboard because they were afraid it would get shut down. It got shut down because no one onboarded.

This is keeping me from looking seriously at Flutter tbh. Go is safe, it has a community and ecosystem outside of Google, Flutter doesn't seem to be there yet.

I feel like it might be a little "safer" if it wasn't tied to Dart. :-/

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#285

Post by outworlder »

Cyberdog wrote: post #174
wnevets wrote: post #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.

"A huge number," maybe, in the sense that the majority of the world's gamers today only play games on their phone, but not the ones spending the most money. People who will pay extra for 144hz 4K monitors or multi-rollover keyboards with obnoxious lighting aren't going to throw the benefit of those things away for a platform that introduces 100-200ms of lag in the game and creates fuzzier graphics than the graphics c…

> People who will pay extra for 144hz 4K monitors

They are pretty cheap nowadays, though. That's no longer a 'gaming' setup. Even cheaper if you make it (144hz NOR 4k) instead.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#286

Post by nemothekid »

jedberg wrote: post #221
scarmig wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of a conundrum: every company is going to shut down products. What's the best way to launch new, risky things? Startups can simply go all in on the product, and if it fails, the company dissolves, though people rightly are hesitant to go with a fly by night startup for exactly that reason. I'm not even sure that Google has shut down more products than an equivalently sized company. But it's certainly shut…

> I'm not even sure that Google has shut down more products than an equivalently sized company. AWS has shut down I believe only one service in its entire existence (SDB). And only when they had a viable alternative (DynamoDB) and helped their biggest users make the move. I can't recall any Apple service that has been shut down without an alternative. They've certainly cancelled hardware programs, but that doesn't br…

Amazon shutdown Drive (their dropbox competitor), there are plenty of consumer services Amazon has shutdown. Google's problem has been their tendency to shutdown perfectly good services because they aren't successful as ads. Reader is the posterboy for this; a service probably used happily by millions (or tens of millions) that had the plug pulled.

The fear with Stadia wasn't that Google may just shut it down, it's that it could have been very successful, with millions of happy users, and Google still would have shut it down. That's what separates Google from other companies.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#287

Post by pkulak »

cbozeman wrote: post #231
n8cpdx wrote: post #25

At what point does working for Google (on anything released after 2008) go from being prestigious to embarrassing?

You're being downvoted, and I have no idea why. It is embarrassing. It's not just embarrassing, it's fucking embarrassing. Google Stadia could have been enormously successful. What killed it? The same thing killing all manner of innovation in this country - poor broadband Internet service. But... oh God, if only... if only Google had something they could use... something they could do to solve this problem!? Oh... wa…

If you're a manager, why the hell are you going to risk your career trying to get the last guy's project to work? There are two incentives in corporate America: start a project to get the praise for something new, and kill a project to get the praise for saving money. Is it any wonder projects keep popping in and out of existence?

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#289

Post by colejohnson66 »

cbozeman wrote: post #231
n8cpdx wrote: post #25

At what point does working for Google (on anything released after 2008) go from being prestigious to embarrassing?

You're being downvoted, and I have no idea why. It is embarrassing. It's not just embarrassing, it's fucking embarrassing. Google Stadia could have been enormously successful. What killed it? The same thing killing all manner of innovation in this country - poor broadband Internet service. But... oh God, if only... if only Google had something they could use... something they could do to solve this problem!? Oh... wa…

> You're being downvoted, and I have no idea why.

Because calling people's job choices "embarrassing", no matter how right you may be, isn't a good starting argument against the people in those jobs. Not to mention that it comes off as pretentious.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#290

Post by gilrain »

kyrra wrote: post #241
yellow_lead wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that was a lie

Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work on Stadia. From what I saw, the Stadia team was working hard on product improvements and adding new games still. So a careful parsing of the sentence is that the Stadia team was still working towards the goals of expanding the service, as the shutdown decision wasn't made yet or told to the team yet.

> When asked what changed from the week prior, Harrison admitted nothing had and told those on the call, “We knew.”

I encourage you to consider looking for work at a company which respects you; you’re worth it.

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