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Google is shutting down Stadia

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#691

Post by Baeocystin »

tshaddox wrote: post #478
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"

Funny story. Two years ago they gave away "Stadia Premiere Edition" kits for free, which was a Chromecast Ultra and a Stadia controller which I believe retailed for USD 100. I wasn't particularly interested, but I figured it would be worth a try. But when I got the hardware I tried signing up and realized that apparently I had signed up for the Stadia free trial 6 months earlier. I vaguely remember trying for literal…

It's been a while, but I seem to remember using my OnLive controller for a good while after system shutdown as a Bluetooth media controller. I'll bet someone will figure something out.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#693

Post by autoexec »

Everybody is talking about how terrible Google and their culture is, so I'll just put it out there that this is great news for gamers. Cloud-based gaming services are a terrible deal for gamers.

Gamers shouldn't cede so much control to some 3rd party who will be watching over their shoulder and collecting every scrap of data on them and their friends while they play. We don't need our performance in games being used to determine our physical and mental capabilities, our online chats being mined, or our social networks being graphed. When I fire up a single player PC game nobody is logging the days I play, or how many hours that I play to draw inferences about my life and responsibilities.

With very few exceptions, the games I play on my computer can't be remotely censored or modified against my will. Neither can the games on my shelf, and I can resell those too. Instead I retain the ability to mod games and alter their settings to my liking without anybody's approval even when the creators or publishers would disapprove.

All the benefits of Games-as-a-Service came with massive trade offs and provide far more benefit for the 3rd parties who would insert themselves between gamers and the games they want to play than they provide for gamers themselves.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#694

Post by saurik »

nemanja wrote: post #434

Really grateful for the major contribution Google made to the WebRTC over the years, driven by the Stadia effort. They relatively quickly turned it into a viable, production worthy, real-time protocol. Brought up the state of the art in browser-based streaming and reduced complexity in a big way. There were things you simply couldn't do in the browser before WebRTC (e.g. UDP streaming) and many other things were sign…

While Stadia did cause them to do more work on WebRTC (AFAIK mostly with latency), their WebRTC efforts--and you are referencing high-level stuff, not low-level Stadia-specific details--was mostly driven by Google Hangouts, not Stadia.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#695

Post by causi »

endtime wrote: post #418
solardev wrote: post #223

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.

but also disrespectful to the people who spent years working on it.

Something being tragic doesn't make it not a waste of time. The writing was on the wall since day one. Nobody was going to pay full price for games that evaporate the moment the servers shut down being offered by the most ADHD company in existence. If you chose to spend your time and energy working on that and expected to accomplish anything other than being paid you were a fool.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#696

Post by appleflaxen »

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…

Can an argument be made that antitrust action a decade ago could have saved them billions on now-shut-down projects? If I were an investor I would want brutal focus from the top on search search search and nothing that didn't directly create value in search.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#697

Post by jraph »

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…

> Google needs to restructure their incentives before it wrecks the company

No no, please don't restructure, wreck the company, that's fine.

Or more realistically, the worst offenders are not going anywhere and Google is going to be okay (Search, Maps, Play, Ads, Analytics, Fonts, Chrome, YouTube, ReCAPTCHA…).

Stadia, I don't care either way.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#698

Post by appleflaxen »

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 is incredibly funny, and incredibly apt.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#699

Post by [deleted] »

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"

[deleted]

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#700

Post by zerocrates »

bornfreddy wrote: post #675
Xeoncross wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first reply to that tweet: "When you inevitably do shut down in a couple of months could you please just release Bluetooth drivers for the controller first? It's a good controller and I'd like to be able to use it." - https://twitter.com/josh_ross/status/1553465786634604544

I am guessing they didn't release the drivers?

My understanding is that it uses Bluetooth just for pairing, so I'd assume that it's not so much an issue of "drivers" but more of controller firmware to get it to send inputs over Bluetooth at all.
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