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Google is shutting down Stadia

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#811

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

crazygringo wrote: post #673
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

That tweet was surely from the Stadia team, and teams generally do not plan on shutting down. I think we can assume that was 100% honest at the time, and the team was doing everything it could to keep going. And that upper management (VP/director/etc.) probably finally made the decision to shut it down just a couple of weeks ago or even less. So while ironic... it's highly unlikely Google was lying, as multiple peopl…

I don't think folks really care much if it was an outright lie, or if it was a George Costanza "It's not a lie if YOU believe it" lie.

Just another data point on why people rightfully think PR posts like this are BS.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#812

Post by hbn »

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…

I got the same bundle and had the same issue (already used the trial for like a minute just to see if it worked)

I had a secondary Google account for app publishing, and I was able to switch to that and start another trial there. Not that this information is really any use to you now!

For what it's worth, my experience was pretty bad. Had tons of lag spikes on my 50/5 down/up internet.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#814

Post by drusepth »

neogodless wrote: post #72
kikki wrote: post #2

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

Does anyone have sales numbers on hardware and software? If the actual sales were low (and that's part of why they shut down) then it might actually be (relatively) cheap, and perhaps buy them goodwill towards their next experiment. Maybe next time more people will try it, with the hopes that if it fails, they'll get refunds. And maybe it'll build momentum for them.

Not quite hardware/software sales, but a lot of people pegged Stadia somewhere between 2-3 million users around the beginning of the year. It's also unclear how many of those break down into recurring Pro subscribers versus bought-a-game-once-and-play-it-now users.

Here's one that showed their work: https://allstadia.com/how-many-users-does-google-stadia-have

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#815

Post by avrionov »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #688
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…

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…

Google Chrome the most popular browser in the world. Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets) more than 1B users

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#816

Post by solardev »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #367
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…

> Everyone else: No way, it's a PITA to port to, and knowing Google, they're going to sunset it soon. I’ve seen a few developers (Ryan Gordon, IIRC?) saying that the Stadia SDK was actually great. It was basically just a bog standard Vulkan/Linux environment with much fewer unpleasant surprises than consoles.

VS GeForce Now, where you check a box saying "I want my game to be streamable" and then... you're done.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#817

Post by jesuscript »

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…

They are silo’d and it appears to be so bad that their organizational structure is now appearing in the actual products. Amazon and Apple (obviously more so Apple) don’t do silo’d product releases, they do product releases veiled within the shroud of the “ecosystem”.

What ecosystem is Stadia in? They couldn’t brand it right and veil it through YouTube or Google Play? You’d never shut down YouTube or Google Play, you’d just let that, you know, that “Google Play Live (Stadia)” feature quietly enter maintenance mode.

Apple won’t shut down Apple News. They’d never announce it. It’s just some product that’s interweaved into iOS. If it ain’t a hit, it quietly fades.

Google+, weave that shit in with Gchat. But no, no, it’s … yeah, it’s its own special thing. Special things get their own very special shut down.

I’m not wise like that, but if you want to try stuff to see what sticks, lay low and quietly try things. That way you can quietly cut it short if necessary.

If you enter loud, you exit loud. And if you don’t exit loud, people remember you left quietly and laugh that you entered loud.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#819

Post by pessimizer »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #688
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…

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.

I don't even think that search is very successful. Pagerank was successful, and was also pretty quickly made obsolete. They still own search because their competitors died as they replaced the verb "search" with their brand, and then created a browser to funnel people into search. Search is only important because of ads. And buying Youtube after failing with Google Video, in order to show more ads. So it all boils down to buying Doubleclick, building a browser, and buying a popular video site for me. Android is certainly key in this too, but its key was somewhat in funneling people into Google's ads, but mostly preventing Apple or some FOSS upstart from getting between users and Google's ads.

Google was successful at being a significantly better search engine for a very short time. It took the money it made and bought the largest ad company. Then it vertically integrated the entire industry from OS to final purchase (with varying degrees of success) to funnel people into its ads.

The only skill that Google has is taking advantage of and creating monopoly positions, not technology.

edit: Oddly, I think that their greatest success might have been to covertly corrupt Firefox. Without that, Chrome might have ended up a largely USA-locked thing like the iPhone is. Although releasing a brutally locked down and closed mobile OS masquerading as an FOSS upstart is a close second.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#820

Post by morepork »

krossitalk wrote: post #435
ConceptJunkie wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Google we're talking about. They shut everything down eventually.

Does anyone think we'll ever see the sunsetting of something huge like YouTube or GMail?

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1361/

There are 2 classes of product that I don't see them shutting down.

1. Those that make lots of money, e.g. search, youtube, maps. Unless that changes of course.

2. Those that are heavily used internally at Google, e.g. gmail, docs, calendar. They are always going to want those as internal tools. I guess they could make them internal only, but how much more work is it to maintain the public version too given it already exists?

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