Google is shutting down Stadia • Hacker News Board

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#351

Post by wjnc » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

awill wrote: post #96

They should have promised these refunds at launch: "We're launching Stadia. if it were to shut down in less than X years, you will get a refund" Ironically, had they done this, they would have seen more adoption from the skeptics, and maybe not even had to shut down. Typical Google, completely ignoring all the totally rational fears people had about their shutdown. In pretty much all Stadia HN threads, the top questi…

I’ll chime in with a somewhat positive and opposite note. I bought 77 + Stadia + Chromecast under the legal impression that under EU-law I would always get a refund. They give refunds and I’ve played on a pretty well working platform. This went pretty well considering Google being Google. (Note: have not heard anything from Google directly yet.)

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#352

Post by switch007 » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #173

yellow_lead wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that was a lie

Yes. Stadia execs lied to their own employees. It's a pattern for the company. This call was followed by a contentious Q&A where the Stadia boss was confronted about his email from just the week before which suggested anything but a wholesale shutdown of the studios. Harrison expressed his regret over the misleading statements made in his previous email, according to four sources with knowledge of the call. When aske…

I found much more peace as an employee by accepting that all executives lie to some degree

In their circles it’s called “controlling the message”, “not causing panic”, “simplifying” etc. They often simply do not believe it’s lying

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#353

Post by dangerlibrary » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

kinakomochidayo wrote: post #320

shadowgovt wrote: post #61

I actually got Cyberpunk 2077 specifically on Stadia so I could play the meta-game of "Can I win Cyberpunk before the unaccountable mega-corpo revokes my access to Cyberpunk?" I will be losing that game.

One of those rare instances where I think NFTs and having digital copies available for all to download might make infinitely more sense than buying into centralized gaming platforms with their own licenses.

Oh you sweet, summer child. That is not how gaming NFTs are going to work. They are not going to be consumer-friendly transferable assets.

They are going to be vendor-locked, and they will only get invested in if they increase the bottom line of the walled garden that produces them.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#354

Post by waltbosz » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

rocky1138 wrote: post #51

snthd wrote: post #29

Google need to open source and unlock the controllers - otherwise they just created a mountain of e-waste.

They aren't just regular old Bluetooth?

A friend gave me a Amazon Luna controller he didn't want.

I was pleasantly surprised that the controller synced via BT. I was able to play non-Luna FireTV games with no problems.

It even worked without the Luna software installed on my FireTV Stick (I don't recommend you buy a FireTV stick, nor any FireTV product really).

The concept of the Luna software is interesting: Cloud streamed HD gaming on low-end hardware. Game play was really responsive. Very little video artifacts. But like all other FireTV products, the UX was geared towards sales, not user ergonomics.

I plan to uninstall the Luna app and just play the few FireTV games that I have. Sadly Alto's Adventure is too resource intense for my FireTV Stick.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#355

Post by dqpb » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

Google is like an abusive partner. You keep hoping this time will be different, they'll try harder, they'll really commit to something good, they won't lie to your face, etc.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#356

Post by loudmax » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

This is entirely a failure of management rather than engineering.

The kind of single player AAA titles they were promoting are always going to look better and be more responsive on local hardware. They should have leaned into Stadia as a backend for massively multiplayer online games, where they would have the advantage of cheat protection and a subscription revenue model. Instead they pushed for a purchase model that exacerbated all of online gaming's shortcomings while minimizing the advantages.

The Stadia infrastructure may yet succeed, but never under Phil Harrison. He should have been sacked years ago.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#357

Post by zeruch » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

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…

"fear of failure and intolerance for anything less than instant success...focused on short-term dipshit Wall Street investors"

A nice distillation of most of SV these days.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#358

Post by cainxinth » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #291

Story time. I left Google in 2017 after Fiber (which I worked on) was unceremoniously mothballed. I mean it still exists bu tall expansion palns stopped and it went into maintenance mode. Before leaving one of the teams some of us considered joining was the then unlaunched Stadia team. This was an effort out of Cloud I guess to create value added GCP services. Ultimately it never went anywhere because the team didn't…

They knew game streaming wasn't ready for prime time. The strategy, I imagine, was to get in early and suffer some growing pains to cement a toehold that positions Google as a major player if/when game streaming goes mass market. I guess the bean counters at Alphabet decided the juice is no longer worth the squeeze.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#359

Post by stiltzkin » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

TillE wrote: 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.

Highly disagree. Seems you have not tested current game streaming as Gamepass or GeForce Now.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#360

Post by phao » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

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.

Super sincere question.

> Google's reputation for not supporting things long term

I didn't know Google had such a reputation. I mostly use drive and gmail, so it was fine to me.

Does google really have such a reputation? Any place I can read more on this?