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Stadia died because no one trusts Google

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Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#41

Post by polio »

Dalewyn wrote: post #30
cududa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously this isn't the same thing, but yes - this seems right. But, I remember my first time going to Google's campus in 2010 and connecting to their guest wifi network. 1Gbps! Insanely cool! Pulled up gmail and google docs and it worked PERFECTLY! My first thought was "...oh this is why their webapps suck - they have no idea how it's being used in the real world where latency is above 10ms"

For a specific example of latency incompetency that immediately came to mind while reading this: Chrome. Chrome will not run properly on first execution, as in ran for the first time after a cold start of the computer, when executed off a HDD. Why? Because the HDD takes too long to read off data. Chrome expects SSD latency and fuck your computer if it's not residing on one. When executed off a HDD, I've found Chrome…

In the first-boot-on-HDD scenario, why would latency make the program fail to start at all? I'd expect it to just start slowly.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#42

Post by silisili »

birdyrooster wrote: post #3

Stadia was not good because of physics. Like GeforceNow, it is laggy and artifacty. It’s not a real business because they don’t actually have a significant target audience. It doesn’t matter who runs it. I’ve been saying this for years and predicting this exact scenario but not because of trust. People trust Google enough to be swayed but this product sucked.

It's all where you live, and your home network. I had about 15 to 20ms latency to nearest POP, and Stadia honestly played just as well as a PS5 or such.

Moved to a different city, and latency wasn't near as good because of ISP routing, mainly. Still playable, but definite pretiming everything. I think latency there was 50ish ms.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#43

Post by kovac »

birdyrooster wrote: post #3

Stadia was not good because of physics. Like GeforceNow, it is laggy and artifacty. It’s not a real business because they don’t actually have a significant target audience. It doesn’t matter who runs it. I’ve been saying this for years and predicting this exact scenario but not because of trust. People trust Google enough to be swayed but this product sucked.

Not sure why you're down voted but this is what I thought as well. What I mainly heard was that thus was aimed at casual gamers. But this felt like an over-engineered solution for casual gamers to make enough money from them while too underpowered to appeal to the hard-core gamers (PC,console gamers).

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#44

Post by cududa »

Dalewyn wrote: post #30
cududa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously this isn't the same thing, but yes - this seems right. But, I remember my first time going to Google's campus in 2010 and connecting to their guest wifi network. 1Gbps! Insanely cool! Pulled up gmail and google docs and it worked PERFECTLY! My first thought was "...oh this is why their webapps suck - they have no idea how it's being used in the real world where latency is above 10ms"

For a specific example of latency incompetency that immediately came to mind while reading this: Chrome. Chrome will not run properly on first execution, as in ran for the first time after a cold start of the computer, when executed off a HDD. Why? Because the HDD takes too long to read off data. Chrome expects SSD latency and fuck your computer if it's not residing on one. When executed off a HDD, I've found Chrome…

Made some offhanded comment about Chrome perf on Twitter earlier this year and a Google friend replied something like "Well, pretty much the whole Chrome team just got upgraded to local test machines with at least 32gb of RAM. Godspeed everyone."

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#46

Post by bastard_op »

I tried to use Stadia, as a long-time paid user with a gsuite account I use for my personal account, they wouldn't let me as an "enterprise user". I spit on their future grave then, and I spit on it now - it was destined to die. Steam actually embraces linux with Proton to make windows games work. As a full-time linux user for ~20 years, bless Valve's soul.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#47

Post by cududa »

polio wrote: post #41
Dalewyn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a specific example of latency incompetency that immediately came to mind while reading this: Chrome. Chrome will not run properly on first execution, as in ran for the first time after a cold start of the computer, when executed off a HDD. Why? Because the HDD takes too long to read off data. Chrome expects SSD latency and fuck your computer if it's not residing on one. When executed off a HDD, I've found Chrome…

In the first-boot-on-HDD scenario, why would latency make the program fail to start at all? I'd expect it to just start slowly.

JIT. It's using a "known state"/ cached blob to start then quickly falls apart as it does it's "SSD expected" memory management voodoo.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#48

Post by quicklime »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #23
MarkusWandel wrote: post #13

This is kind of an anti chicken/egg situation! What happened first, the chicken got run over so no more eggs, or the egg got smashed so no more chicken? To clarify the analogy: Nobody trusts Google not to cancel a new thing, so they don't invest any money or effort in the new thing, so it gets cancelled.

It's a vicious cycle, for which the blame falls solely on them. Should be a cautionary tale for all companies.

I'm hearing it a lot less after the recent tech backlash, but a few years ago it was fashionable to say things like "take risks" and "embrace failure". But the cautionary tale that most companies are going to take from this is to take fewer risks and to avoid failure at all costs, which I think is a bad outcome.

Google shouldn't stop cancelling products that fail to get traction, they just need to learn to fail gracefully without leaving customers and developers who've built on top of their platforms in the lurch.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#49

Post by jasonlotito »

Sounds about right. Pretty much every single gamer (across multiple circles of friends, most outside of tech) I knew joked about this. Most also commented on why would they need it when they already have a PC/console and performance (though Nvidia and PS Now users were quick to speak up on the quality). In general. I'm not saying this was the only reason, but this was one of the reasons every dismissed it.

Even the gaming press was pretty harsh on this in general.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#50

Post by manicdee »

aeturnum wrote: post #14

The thing that I find odd about Google is that it feels like they drink their own coolaid. Reports I've seen suggest that nearly no one knew this was coming. Teams who have been working on ports for months were blind-sided. Employees generally did not know. It just seems like a very poor way to run a business. It feels sloppy and needlessly messy. Especially when providing soft landings is so possible for a company w…

Reader, Wave, G+, Hangouts, Stadia and soon RCS.

Never build a business on a Google project, only ever use Google as a side hustle.

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