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Stadia died because no one trusts Google

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Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#141

Post by sva_ »

sp332 wrote: post #67

I mean that's part of it, but Google really worked to kill it too. Like they spun up a whole game studio, hired people to work on games for two years, then cancelled the whole studio. That's not just negligence or trust issues, they took years of work from developers working on games for the platform and threw it in the trash.

I would hate it if I worked on something for n years and then it just gets binned.

I imagine that if you work on such stuff at Google, you probably need the attitude that you're only there to earn money. If you get too involved, it would suck big time if it got thrown out.

So I would think that devs not getting too involved with what they work on, will probably reflect in product quality.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#142

Post by ip26 »

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #94
cududa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Makes you wonder what would happen if companies occasionally did the exact opposite to their engineers. "Oh, you know that 32 GB machine you've got? We're replacing it with this new 16 GB one. If the test suite is too slow on your new machine, I guess you'll just have to make the tests faster."

You’d have less fallout if you just delay giving them upgrades long past the point they are due.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#144

Post by jonhohle »

I didn’t try Stadia, but recently tried Luna after coming across a controller at a thrift shop. I was happy to find Earthworm Jim in the section of included games, but it ended up being unplayable. I didn’t take the time to determine what the latency cause was - Luna itself, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, display path - but there is so much in that game that requires tight timing that it was unplayable. I was surprised they’d use that to advertise their service.

Modern games are built with an understanding of controller and display latency that just didn’t exist in the analog era, and I’m sure most cloud adapted games don’t mind a few dozen milliseconds of round trip latency. It’s remarkable that nearly 30 years later, retro games that could be easily emulated locally in any streaming device give these services a hard time.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#145

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#146

Post by bombcar »

heavyset_go wrote: post #132
_HMCB_ wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be curious as to the elevator pitch presented to Google execs and why they bought into it. Wasn’t anyone thinking about the issues you brought up? Seems like fundamental issues. To think they spent millions and millions on this service only to close it down in short order. Typical Google but what other company does this repeatedly with 4-year precision.

I think some of Google's strategy is identifying new markets and potential rivals, and then throwing their resources at them until they dominate the market or buy/crush the competition. Building a sustainably profitable product is ancillary to that and not much of a factor initially.

I suspect this was exactly it; Google saw a potential for something like this, wanted in on it, and when the whole market didn't pan out, abandoned it.

Microsoft did something similar with the Xbox (people forget that it was basically done because they were afraid that consoles would become general purpose computers and destroy the Windows monopoly) but they also actually made a business with it and made it profitable in its own right.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#147

Post by GekkePrutser »

heavyset_go wrote: post #132
_HMCB_ wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be curious as to the elevator pitch presented to Google execs and why they bought into it. Wasn’t anyone thinking about the issues you brought up? Seems like fundamental issues. To think they spent millions and millions on this service only to close it down in short order. Typical Google but what other company does this repeatedly with 4-year precision.

I think some of Google's strategy is identifying new markets and potential rivals, and then throwing their resources at them until they dominate the market or buy/crush the competition. Building a sustainably profitable product is ancillary to that and not much of a factor initially.

But in this case they didn't do any of that?

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#150

Post by stingraycharles »

h0l0cube wrote: post #131
_zgx0 wrote: post #66

I feel like some of these perspectives are very tech industry focused rather than gamer focused. As a gamer, I think Stadia failed because the system they created doesn't make sense. You had to buy games at real $40-$60 prices but you could only play them through this limited service. I don't think anyone wants that. Compare that to paying the same price for a regular PC game which you can play via streaming using a…

> As a gamer, I think Stadia failed because the system they created doesn't make sense. Google, Facebook, etc. are victims of early success. They made their billions on low hanging fruit, by throwing a lot of resources at problems with very high demand for a solution that weren't yet tackled well (e.g. query the internet, keep in touch with friends). So it's no wonder that in this day in age they are incapable of und…

At least for Google, I don’t think you can call what they did with search low hanging fruit. Their solution was anything but, and it was truly innovative (at the time) and their success was well deserved.

I do agree that they’re victims of their early success, but rather that it proves that it’s rather difficult to make multiple successful products.

When you own a whole ecosystem, like Microsoft and Apple do, it makes it much easier to do; you can also see this in case of Google Maps. You can just push your products inside the ecosystem, and be almost guaranteed success.

Stadia drifted away from that ecosystem (as does Google Cloud for that matter), and as such is much more difficult to pull off. Combine that with Google’s reputation for killing things, and the writing was on the wall from the start.

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