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Google is shutting down Stadia

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#491

I am more entertained by this than I should be. Back when Stadia launched I was in a Reddit thread saying that the blatant double-dip business model of subscriptions + purchase stunk and that I had no faith in Google to not shut this storefront down shortly. I was immediately roasted by a flock of obvious astroturfers telling me that this was an absolutely serious move by Google to dominate the console games market a…

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#492
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

Google needs to restructure their incentives before it wrecks the company. I have no doubt whoever launched Stadia got promoted and then bounced to a different product and didn't care about whether Stadia was a success long term. Google's ad money printer masks the rot underneath, Google is literally a meme at this point for shutting down products. No serious business or developer is going to trust them. If governmen…

This. I'm surprised how often people try to copy Google practices because Google can't be wrong.

My bet is that Google is one of the worst places to learn anything, be it product, management or programming. You will only learn how to solve problems the Google way, and that is only applicable at Google.

It's like learning to govern from Xi Jinping. Sure, there probably are some interesting experiences to observe. But few will claim that let's say Norway will be better off implementing China's political system.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember every single article when they first announced contained at least a few sentences wondering when Google would shut Stadia down. Because it was a Google project, Stadia was doomed from the start.

Google only knows how to do one business. Ads. Any Google product that isn't ad-supported dies, with very few exceptions. Note that Google Cloud Services lose money. "Google Cloud is now approaching a $16 billion annual revenue run rate, but Google's ad business is likely to subsidize it for the foreseeable future."[1] AWS makes money in that business, but Google does not. So, don't depend on Google Cloud for anythin…

I wouldn't touch GCP even with a 3 meter stick. And using it in any project is just out of the question. No.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#494
post #317

Anyone here use Stadia? Not much of a gamer but very interested in the tech of cloud gaming.

Yes. I only tried Destiny 2 because no other game (that was available without extra purchase) was of interest to me. It worked very well and I _really_ liked the experience. Just open the website in Chrome, click on the game you want to play and it launches in seconds. Certainly faster than launching Destiny 2 on my own PC, which is also a gaming rig. For comparison, I also subscribed to GeForce Now. Technologically,…

I like GFN and I agree the experience is not seamless. It still takes a long time to launch the game VM, and you feel it; but a lot of these other issues are much better or nonexistent now. In particular having to re-auth to Steam is much rarer now; launching the VM for a newly-purchased game often used to take a long time, with you waiting for the Steam launcher go through some kind of "Preparing" state for a long time (you don't have to be in-session for this), but this hasn't happened for me in some time. I haven't had a problem with any settings like language, resolution or video, and I think performance, while highly dependent on your own network and ISP, is much improved and hasn't been a problem in a while. So I do think, while the "remote desktop" approach is inevitably going to have some clunkiness, it has improved quite a bit and continues to do so.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#496

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.

No post body was provided.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :-/

Dart is pretty much 'done' as a language though. They are adding code generation and other nice things, but it's stable. Flutter on the other hand needs to be kept up to date as Android and iOS change, so it's very vulnerable.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#498

Google's product strategy.. Google: We're going to launch a fancy new product in an already-crowded field, not market it at all, and everyone will jump on board and love it! Everyone else: No way, it's a PITA to port to, and knowing Google, they're going to sunset it soon. Google: No we won't, we're fully dedicated to this thing Everyone else: No way, they haven't added meaningful features in years and they're going…

I mostly agree with you, but I downvoted your comment because > We devoted an entire month of resources to this project and thought that was enough! ...is not just wildly inaccurate, but also disrespectful to the people who spent years working on it.

Imagine you go to work at Baby Mulching LLC. This company has existed for two decades, and is dedicated to dropping infants into industrial shredders. Everyone hates Baby Mulching LLC, and they're an enormous black stain on your resume, because there is one single thing they do, and it's grind up children.

On your first day, you're asked to design a big toothed wheel. You ask your boss, will this be used to mulch babies? No no no, he says. It will be used to chop up entirely unrelated organic material. You spend three years on it, and once finished, it's immediately incorporated into the Baby Mulcher 3000, the next generation baby mulcher, which can puree one hundred toddlers per hour.

Everyone starts yelling at you for building a baby mulcher. But it wasn't your decision! You spent years working on it! This is so unfair!

Unfair, maybe. But was it unpredictable?

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#499
post #227

I was expecting there to be some satisfaction at this news as I (and many others clearly from the comments) predicted this would happen. But honestly it just feels kind of sad at this point. Google used to be, at least from an outside perspective, one of the most innovative and forward thinking companies, constantly releasing new and interesting products. Not everything was good, of course, but I was always eager to…

I was done feeling sad many years ago. It has been absolutely ages since there was anything interesting from them. I can’t even recall the last product that seemed like a real innovation. Possibly the first chromecast in 2013? That’s 10 years without a hit. At this point they are covered in cobwebs.

AppleTV had already existed for years by then, including with Airplay.

I would say 2005 with Google Maps.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#500
post #472
post #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.

How could you know? It only became apparent it would fail after it launched. The technology is great and not the reason it was doomed.

> It only became apparent it would fail after it launched. The technology is great and not the reason it was doomed so you didn't call anything.

The technology isn't why it failed, Google is. Google was Google before it launched, and after it launched. So anyone familiar with Google could have predicted this failure before the actual launch.

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