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Google is shutting down Stadia

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#801
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…

> 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.

apparently the product manager was Phill Harrison. He's been active in games for a few decades, so I'm not sure if this is just a pivoting move to focus the product or his exit strategy. Time will tell.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#803

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…

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 / Wall…

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

That is a total strawman. I think most people know Google has done other successful products, especially Gmail and Android.

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

Actually, I think the opposite may be true. A startup like Snowflake has one business, and they are all focused on that business. They will go through hell and highwater to make that business successful. I think the biggest risk with a company like Snowflake is not folks worried that they'll fold, but worried that they'll get acquired and their "goodness" sucked out (see Figma).

With Google, though, basically nearly everything besides ads is an afterthought. Nobody trusts them anymore to keep things around. Which has the ironic effect of making some of their "experiments" invalid, because if all potential customers know it's an experiment that may get killed at the whim of whomever got promoted, they'll be less likely to try it in the first place.

I'm not a Google hater. I'm a big fan of GCP, and also a big fan of Firebase. I do get nervous, though, when I see some simple, straightforward problems that languish for literally years because apparently they're not "sexy" enough to fix. Case in point, Firebase Auth (an Auth as a Service platform) still only supports SMS as a second factor for login, despite the fact that Google itself recommends against using SMS as a second factor. People have been complaining about this for literally years, yet it's crickets from Google/Firebase teams.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#804
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.

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 started learning dart/flutter a few days ago. Now I'm having second thoughts.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#805
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

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

Lol, I like his other response to someone praising his prediction abilities:

> It's not hard to predict the Google future. Yet another rebranding of whatever chat product will come soon enough also.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#806
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…

I wonder if Google even realises, like at Pichai level, how much this hurts them. I’m fairly sure it’s at least one important piece as to why GCP is struggling to gain market share. Who in their right mind would depend on a Google product for critical business functions at this point.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#807
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 is NOT in trouble. Our perception that Google is not an ad company is in trouble.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#808
IMO Stadia was born dead because of the lag built into its design. Most googlers I talked to when it was announced did not think about it at all, it was all about how cool the stack behind it was, but from a gamer's perspective I was just terrified about the idea.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#809

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…

In that sense Google is the Anti-Microsoft. Microsoft makes the scrappiest products but as long as they are not total failures MS is committed to them in a way that is borderline ridiculous. Google makes good products but seems to have the attention span of three year old toddler.

And it's that property that means Microsoft always has an edge with its b2b customers.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#810
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.

Developers didn't onboard because it was Vulkan-only. You can release for GOG as an afterthought, but you had to build for Stadia as Another Separate Platform, and they somehow managed to make their SDK requirements more onerous than Xbox's. They might still of joined if there were any customers, but customers didn't join because of the prospect of needing to buy their existing games again, then pay for a subscriptio…

Yeah, if it was truly a cheap port that was just putting the game on another store and plugging in some API calls, devs would have flocked to it. But it involved a pretty involved linux ports instead. Apparently Red Dead Redemption 2 cost tens of millions to get working on Stadia.

sucks to hear as someone who wants linux gaming to get more prominance, but I guess for now the current direction is to WINE it out.

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