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Google is shutting down Stadia

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#681

Post by Sakos »

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'm Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Also, there's this tidbit:

> Harrison says Google sees opportunities to apply Stadia’s technology to other parts of Google, like YouTube, Google Play, and its AR efforts, and the company also plans to “make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed,” he wrote.

I assumed they'd do a pivot towards offering it as a service for game publishers to build on, something like GCS just for game streaming. I wonder when we'll see an announcement for that.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#682

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dilap wrote: post #229
Rebelgecko wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I bet if that Stadia would've done much better if it had launched with the promise of "if we do shut it down, we'll refund all your purchases"

That's a promise you can only keep if almost no one buys anything, though. :-)

Surely is down to licensing 'only'? Google presumably didn't develop those games, the games still needed to connect to servers, etc. Arguably, it's a benefit to get a new person on your gaming service so Steam, for example, should adopt all those users is the licensing that Google arranged.

If the terms Google had were "we'll sell licenses for your games, but if we shoot down then you have to accept those users as native users", then uses would have been insured against shut-down. I can't see how those terms are worse than if Google were a retailer of those games?

A lot of AAA games are freemium with IAP, surely the acquisition is Cannondale enough that game companies would go for such a deal?

I suppose there wasn't enough upside for Google as people still bought Stadia without any such promise.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#684

Post by yencabulator »

intrasight wrote: post #630
Rebelgecko wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I bet if that Stadia would've done much better if it had launched with the promise of "if we do shut it down, we'll refund all your purchases"

"Google Stadia is a cloud gaming service whereby games can be purchased and played, but don't have to be downloaded to a console or PC." This was a doomed business model because it blurred subscription and purchase. If it was subscription, there should have been no purchases (hardware or software) necessary. There are millions of people - myself included - who would pay for a subscription game service. Stadia was not…

Stadia had both. Stadia Pro was a subscription that gave you access to a few new games every month, and you could buy (licenses to play) games.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#685

Post by nimbius »

enumjorge wrote: post #507
ren_engineer wrote: post #411

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…

>Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals as a CEO are?

Fighting a growing wave of calls from all political sides to regulate Alphabet and Google in the US, and paying an endless stack of compliance fines to the EU who already regulate Google and Alphabet.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#686

Post by matrix_overload »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #139
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.

Ironically, I bet if that Stadia would've done much better if it had launched with the promise of "if we do shut it down, we'll refund all your purchases"

That could have put them to unlimited risk. Let's assume they currently got $1M in revenue and spent $500K on maintenance. They can either refund everyone (buying goodwill for $500K) or book a $500K profit and piss people off. Currently, the estimated value of the goodwill is above $500K, so they are proceeding with a refund.

But it could have been different. They could have got $10M in revenue, then most users would have moved to competing platforms, while still playing previously purchased games on Stadia. This could have left them with a choice between $1M/year running costs to keep the lights on vs. $10M to purchase goodwill that is only worth $1M.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#687

Post by crazygringo »

I'm honestly astonished at full refunds for everything purchased via Google -- not just software but hardware too.

I know most of the comments here are focusing on "Google shuts down yet another thing as everybody expected" but this is really doing right by consumers.

I think they deserve a lot of credit here. With so many (usually valid) warnings about how you don't really own digital content in the cloud or hardware you can't root... the fact they're giving everyone all their money back even when they're probably not contractually obligated to, that's pretty huge.

If Stadia were a startup that ran out of money/funding, that would never happen because there wouldn't be any money left in the first place. So even if Google cancels a lot of things, this is a nice (if occasional) bright spot of news, that Google has the ability to do full refunds and actually does it.

It also makes you wonder what future gaming plans they have, especially since they're spending the cash to preserve as much goodwill here as possible.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#688

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

ren_engineer wrote: post #411
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

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…

People have this idea that Google hasn't ever done anything successful beside search.

Google experiments constantly and shuts down bad experiments.

Experiments that probably aren't going anywhere for a long time:

1. Gmail

2. Maps (acquisition, but did not have a web interface and was not remotely popular prior)

3. Android (literally bought before the first launched devices)

4. Play Store

5. Cloud

6. Google Pay / Wallet

Most of these businesses are larger than most public companies in the world...

Google will likely continue to experiment. People should think of Google's new products as startups - because that's exactly how Google thinks of them.

Enterprises don't want to rely on some startup like Snowflake when their 1-2 years old.

Google does a very good job of distancing the Google and Android brands from things like Stadia.

All of us on here know Google owned Stadia. We're also all smart enough to know that we can keep using Gmail & YouTube without worrying about Google shutting them down.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#689

Post by kevingadd »

s3r3nity wrote: post #106
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.

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…

Splatoon 3 is already one of the best-selling Switch games ever released - a competitive online shooter on a console most popular with casual gamers. Games like Fortnite and Overwatch are massively popular. 99% is a real over-estimation.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#690

Post by Sakos »

noirbot wrote: post #10
kikki wrote: post #2

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

I'm really curious the calculation here. That's a lot of money, and I'm certainly glad they're doing it, but feels both out of character for Google, and I'm surprised they have the budget allocated to just "doing the right thing". What goodwill is this saving that they aren't burning by shutting down Stadia?

The simple answer is that it's legal hedging. They don't want anything related to this closure of Stadia to lead to a lawsuit that might impact the concept of software licensing, particularly in the EU. This is a move out of pure self-interest (not that I see anything particularly wrong with that).
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