Live data from Hacker News

Google is shutting down Stadia

theverge.com

531–540 of 1001 posts

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#531

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.

It's exaggeration for rhetorical effect, an extremely common stylistic device.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#533
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…

There is literally only one service I use from google and I’m actively sunsetting that use : Gmail.

I never go there for search and I can’t think of another tool of theirs I use…

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#534

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…

They should probably try implementing OKRs at Google. I heard it helps with transparency.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing that baffles me is that this has been a known issue for a long time, and yet there doesn't seem to be any significant moves to improve this. Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals as a CEO are? That's a genuine question. He doesn't seem to be solving existing issues related to culture and incentives. And the company hasn't landed any big wins recently. I mostly see increased monetization…

The goal of a CEO is to bring value to shareholders. There's a lot of wiggle room as long as you're doing that. I doubt Stadia was more then a proving ground for a lot of related product verticals, and Stadia's legacy will continue to drive value to those.

If you cant understand the incentives to a thing, the incentives were never for you in the first place.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#536

Absolutely devastated about this. I love Stadia. I bought it for a friend last Christmas and we have been using it this year to play games together, she has a Macbook which cannot play a lot of PC games and the Stadia model works a lot better for us. Despite the lack of AAA titles, it had everything we wanted to play, we just started playing overcooked on it. Now I do not know what we will do. Geforce now will requir…

Though it does need a subscription, Xbox Game Pass plus their cloud gaming works very well, plus gives you a huge library of games to choose from.

i'm going to look into it, but I'm not sure my friends connection holds out very well somtimes, geforce now didn't work too well (although this was about 2 years ago), but Stadia was perfect.

Plus it's a bit expensive, particularly when you are not an xbox user, 2x subscriptions could be pricey when all we want to do is play a handful of games. Might even work out cheaper to buy a Switch or something in the long term.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#537
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, because for 99% of gamers not trying to play competitive games, it’s virtually unnoticeable. I like to play Spiritfarer and some other family games with my partner on Stadia, and we’ve never noticed any significant problems - even when using non-stadia controllers. Overall I’m bullish on cloud gaming, because I don’t want to invest hundreds of dollars regularly to update my PC or console hardware just to…

It's absolutely noticeable. The question is whether it's tolerable, and people do seem to tolerate increasing latency both from networks and their TV.

But, personally, I find the experience much less enjoyable as the latency goes up. It's not about being competitive either. (I don't play games online.) It just feels sticky and sluggish and I don't enjoy it. I miss the crisp responsiveness of older consoles. :(

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#538
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

So that was a lie

If we collectively stopped believing non-binding statements with no skin in the game, these bullshitters would stop bullshitting.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing that baffles me is that this has been a known issue for a long time, and yet there doesn't seem to be any significant moves to improve this. Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals as a CEO are? That's a genuine question. He doesn't seem to be solving existing issues related to culture and incentives. And the company hasn't landed any big wins recently. I mostly see increased monetization…

The actual big goals appear to be to get GCP out of third place and to do something nebulously magic with AI. Both of these have made progress, but not in a way that actually makes the company money. Other than that I agree with you, there doesn't seem to be any sort of coherent product vision other than "ads in search/youtube" and "keep building the handful of actually popular products we've had for ages."

It is definitely hard as hell to develop another business the size of ads alongside it, but it really doesn't seem like there's a clear idea here.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Google needs to restructure their incentives before it wrecks the company. People build monopolies for the perceived benefits but this is the price you must always pay. You're no longer competing in a marketplace of customers, as you've flagged, your managers are now just competing in a marketplace of capital expenditure.

You can’t blame this on Google’s size. Neither Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, or Amazon (Disclaimer: I work at AWS) have this problem.

Google has never struggled as a company. Amazon barely survived the dot com bust, Apple almost went bankrupt and even Microsoft had to pivot or become the next IBM after Balmer and missing out on mobile.

Facebook being still founder led and having the advantage of knowing how fleeting social media networks have been in the past, keeps Zuckerburg paranoid.

Google’s ad revenue is covering up a lot of project/program mismanagement.

Post reply on HN