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Google is shutting down Stadia

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#881

Post by david_allison »

jedberg wrote: post #221
scarmig wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of a conundrum: every company is going to shut down products. What's the best way to launch new, risky things? Startups can simply go all in on the product, and if it fails, the company dissolves, though people rightly are hesitant to go with a fly by night startup for exactly that reason. I'm not even sure that Google has shut down more products than an equivalently sized company. But it's certainly shut…

> I'm not even sure that Google has shut down more products than an equivalently sized company. AWS has shut down I believe only one service in its entire existence (SDB). And only when they had a viable alternative (DynamoDB) and helped their biggest users make the move. I can't recall any Apple service that has been shut down without an alternative. They've certainly cancelled hardware programs, but that doesn't br…

> I can't recall any Apple service that has been shut down without an alternative. They've certainly cancelled hardware programs, but that doesn't break your existing hardware. And they give plenty of warning for iOs phase outs. They pissed some people off by dropping support for old apps, but only after most of the big ones had been converted.

Not sure if it counts, but dropping 32-bit support on macOS may be counted.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#882

Post by esprehn »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #849

Somehow I don't think this surprised anyone. I just did a quick check and the same people who were making these kinds of decisions when I was there all appear to still be there (at least by their social status indicators like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook). Back in early 2009 when "the mortgage crisis" was the big financial scare, I talked with folks about the difference between "moon shots" and "products". The for…

If it make you feel any better, they eliminated exit interviews a few years back.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#883

Post by dataflow »

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…

> He doesn't seem to be solving existing issues related to culture and incentives.

https://retailwire.com/discussion/google-rethinks-employee-r...

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#884

Post by skohan »

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…

The crazy thing is if they delivered on promise it would have been huge. If you made games a part of the internet the way videos are they would have nothing but advantages.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#886

Post by wruza »

cbozeman wrote: post #231
n8cpdx wrote: post #25

At what point does working for Google (on anything released after 2008) go from being prestigious to embarrassing?

You're being downvoted, and I have no idea why. It is embarrassing. It's not just embarrassing, it's fucking embarrassing. Google Stadia could have been enormously successful. What killed it? The same thing killing all manner of innovation in this country - poor broadband Internet service. But... oh God, if only... if only Google had something they could use... something they could do to solve this problem!? Oh... wa…

started building out their fiber infrastructure massively, dumping whatever loads of cash were required, and they could easily have eaten up huge chunks of metro and suburban areas in America and might even be one of the leading ISPs in the nation.

Haha, imagine them shutting it down eventually.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#887

Post by jorl17 »

effingwewt wrote: post #733

Oh man were is that guy from the leak who kept insisting that they would never do this, their paud products were perfect and lasted forever. Paging @sofixa [1], [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32485397 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32492932

Wow!

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#888

Post by imron »

matrix_overload wrote: post #686
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 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…

> vs. $10M to purchase goodwill that is only worth $1M.

The goodwill is worth far more than $1M because it affects Google's entire reputation.

They already have a reputation of shutting things down.

How many people will look at this, and start considering whether or not they should move off GCP?

How many people will not sign up for their next big new product because of things like this? Which will ironically be likely for that product failing and being shut down (like Stadia).

It's a vicious cycle, and Google is going to have a hard time breaking it.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#889

Post by [deleted] »

doliveira wrote: post #759
endtime wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dude, they're making half a million dollars a year, they're gonna be fine

[deleted]

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#890

Post by [deleted] »

timsneath wrote: post #834
candiddevmike wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

(Disclosure: I lead PM/UX for Flutter & Dart.) For sure, anything that I could say along the lines of "we're not shutting Flutter down" might be taken as having overtones of the Baghdad Bob meme. And indeed, why should you trust my word? The reason you should feel confident to use Flutter is because it's strongly in our business interest to invest in it. Over 600,000 apps in the Play Store alone are already written u…

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