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Google is shutting down Stadia

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#951

Post by roydivision »

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…

This is the way Google works, it's their operating model. Big fanfare when they launch things so the muggles continue to believe that 'Google' is still relevant, and then quiet shuttering when the product either doesn't add to their ad revenue, their overarching interest, or it was never even meant to be a success in the first place.

There is no failure here, it's working exactly the way they planned it to.

Google sells attention. Anything else it does is flim flam to support that.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#952

Post by corobo »

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?

Only if they stop paying in to the ad machine

Of the two I'd bet on gmail being the dead man walking. They should full circle it and announce on an April 1st

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#953

Post by kranke155 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #859
furyofantares wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think happens in situations like these (from experience) is that the team is trying as hard as they can to prevent shutting down. And they either believe they'll succeed, or believe they can't succeed without boosting the expectation that they'll succeed by explicitly claiming they aren't shutting down. If you say, both to the public and to the team, that you might shut down but you're not sure yet, that's as…

Yes. There's a Japanese podcast (rebuild.fm) where one of the recurring guest (Hak) is from a game dev background and was probably assigned to Stadia. He never said it explicitely but from the conversation you would guess. One of their discussion was on how much commitment was crucial in the game dev world. Devs on all sides (platform, libraries, actual game) would put their skin in the game and gamble time and money…

Games really take 1-2 years to develop, minimum. And the expertise in game mechanics is hard to come by - a really good developer/designer who can deliver consistently fun games is likely to stay in the industry for a long time.

So this does make a lot of sense. Huge time commitment for deliverables + ultra specialist roles and expertise = the important industry people have long memories.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#954

Post by GoblinSlayer »

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…

>acquisition

>literally bought

Is it Google's doing then?

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#956

Post by autoexec »

synicalx wrote: post #926
autoexec wrote: post #693

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…

> 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. If you're playing through Steam, Origin, Epic, or even GoG's launcher then yes those two things are being recorded. Unless your PC is totally air gapped it will definitely be sending that kind of telemetry back to the mothership. > With very few exceptions, t…

Agreed on Steam (the only launcher I've allowed). They're absolutely collecting data too.

I prefer physical copies or at least complete installers. GoG is the first place I check. Anything I buy on steam I make sure to grab a cracked copy of as well (I've been burned by steam once already) so I can be sure games that don't need to be online don't have to be, and I can keep my purchases if steam closes shop.

The US can be weird about censored games too, but usually only with sex/nudity. I had to download Fahrenheit since Americans were only allowed a censored version named "indigo Prophecy", and I've had to patch some older games like BloodRayne too but it's nothing like what you guys have to put up with!

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#957

Post by puyoxyz »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #488

Absolutely devastated about this. I love Stadia. I bought it for a friend last Christmas and we have been using it this year to play games together, she has a Macbook which cannot play a lot of PC games and the Stadia model works a lot better for us. Despite the lack of AAA titles, it had everything we wanted to play, we just started playing overcooked on it. Now I do not know what we will do. Geforce now will requir…

You still have a few months :)

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#958

Post by traspler »

vhab wrote: post #608

Unfortunately this doesn't surprise me. We worked on a Stadia title before launch. We were constantly reminded by Google how big the YouTube integration would be, which unique killer features we absolutely had to integrate with, and more. And non of that ever materialized after launch. If Google can't even convince their own internal teams to cooperate, how do they expect studios and consumers to care the slightest f…

Do you think the YouTube integration and the other "killer features" you mentioned would have made Stadia more popular if they actually came to fruition?

Personally I believe if the YouTube integration was ready at launch the whole Stadia story would have been very, very different. I do believe that a frictionless way to jump into a game that you are currently watching a video/stream for or even join a streamer in multiplayer with a click would have been an amazing thing!

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#959

Post by puyoxyz »

reitanqild wrote: post #942

After all they mismanaged and shuttered Google+ too, the best social network that ever existed so no wonder. And no, just because it didn't work for some of you doesn't mean it wasn't best ;-)

This. Stadia was years ahead of every other streaming service, at least for me. It was the only one that was actually playable!

Everything else had either unbearable latency or unbearable image quality

And even ignoring the actual gaming experience, it just feels more polished (as in the UX and UI) than some of the other ones like GFN

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#960

Post by cm277 »

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…

Genuine question to the Googlers here: how do OKRs factor in the misaligned incentives internally? in other words, are OKRs a good idea badly executed, or just ineffective period?
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