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Stadia died because no one trusts Google

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Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#211

Post by delecti »

impalallama wrote: post #88
klodolph wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that while you still pay $60 for the game, you don’t pay $400 for the console.

A 300-400 dollar console isn’t that much of a barrier compared to a 60 AAA video game. This market of people willing to pay premium prices for enthusiast products but is unwilling to pay for the hardware to run them I don’t think exists.

A 300-400 dollar console that's out of stock is a barrier. I still can't go to Amazon and easily buy a PS5, and until recently couldn't have easily bought a high-end GPU, but I could have gone to Stadia and bought any of the (admittedly lacking) selection of games and played immediately, without even waiting to download anything, and on any of several devices I own.

I'm surprised at how many people are discounting what Stadia offered. My reasons for not investing in it are pretty much just data caps and lack of trust in Google.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#212

Post by HWR_14 »

threeseed wrote: post #155
smelendez wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think so: People who played video games as kids, don't really have much time for them now, and don't really want to go through the effort of even figuring out which console to get and setting it up, but occasionally get curious about a particular game. Maybe they don't even have an obvious place in the house for a console, if they only have wall-mounted smart TVs with nothing hooked up to them, or maybe they don't…

> go through the effort of even figuring out which console to get and setting it up There are effectively 3 consoles and it takes about a minute to set it up. They don't strike me as common reasons to choose Stadia.

Not only are there only three consoles, I bet I could set up any of the three faster than setting up stadia.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#213

Post by delecti »

threeseed wrote: post #155
smelendez wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think so: People who played video games as kids, don't really have much time for them now, and don't really want to go through the effort of even figuring out which console to get and setting it up, but occasionally get curious about a particular game. Maybe they don't even have an obvious place in the house for a console, if they only have wall-mounted smart TVs with nothing hooked up to them, or maybe they don't…

> go through the effort of even figuring out which console to get and setting it up There are effectively 3 consoles and it takes about a minute to set it up. They don't strike me as common reasons to choose Stadia.

Modern consoles take way longer to setup than they used to. Playing a game on PS5 requires installing it, plus usually patches. I think you're giving consoles too much credit for ease of use.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#214

Post by Dalewyn »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #126
cududa wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You having fun/ being able to develop fast isn't your customer's problem/ the problem's of people actually using the things you build. Windows Vista devs with 8GB of DDR2 when real world customers had 512mb of DDR learned this lesson hard. EDIT: Also - client side native software and web dev are insanely different. Web/ serverside people seem to disregard this. Constantly.

> You having fun/ being able to develop fast isn't your customer's problem/ the problem's of people actually using the things you build. I cannot parse this sentence. What does vista having its minimum requirements poorly defined have to do with being forced to develop on underpowered hardware? If my boss says “we are giving you a worse machine because we think that will make you write better code” I am out of there.…

>I cannot parse this sentence. What does vista having its minimum requirements poorly defined have to do with being forced to develop on underpowered hardware?

Basically: An end-user has computer with 4GB of DDR3. Devs for wrote for and tested on a machine with 64GB of DDR5. ends up running like shit on end-user's computer.

It isn't the end-user's problem that the software runs like shit, because the devs programmed to an unrealistic common denominator. The end-user is going to find that doesn't run like shit on his computer, and the devs only have themselves to blame for losing a customer because they were so out of tune with reality.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#215

Post by teaearlgraycold »

adrr wrote: post #119
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…

You have to pretty naive to not realize that Google could flip directions any day. Look what happened to Nest? They went from being apart of Google, getting kicked out, and back to being apart of Google in a short time frame. Or the pixel that went from being a flagship phone to being a mid tier phone and then back to a flagship phone in a 3 year period. There’s more examples like Google fiber which stopped expanding…

They do have video streaming down. YouTube is still a great product IMO.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#216

Post by charcircuit »

bitexploder wrote: post #104
_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…

Steam games I bought a decade ago are still in my library. Steam is trusty. Google is not.

Software I bought from Google on the play share a decode ago are still in my library.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#217

Post by vxNsr »

h0l0cube wrote: post #194
stingraycharles wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 make…

> When you own a whole ecosystem Google virtually own Android, and yet they haven't innovated or taken the initiative in a way that Apple has. A distinction can be drawn with Apple here, as they've opened new markets by making devices that didn't exist yet (e.g., touch-driven mobile computing). They innovated from the beginning, not so much remaking Altavista with Bigtable.

This is such a great point. Google has been coasting on android for years now, pixel has some cool phone features (call transcription, navigating phone trees) but those aren’t shared to the wider android market and virtually everything else comes down to, let’s make a better camera. The whole reason they created android was to prevent Microsoft from winning the mobile space.

Making sure the other guy loses isn’t great motivation to do anything. Especially once the “other guy” has lost. Google isn’t especially excited by OS, because their bread and butter is all in the cloud they just don’t have the institutional energy to care about consumer software for the consumer’s sake. It’s always looked at through the lens of how it will help advertisers and since the zeitgeist for the last few years has been about privacy as it relates to personal devices, they can’t really “innovate” much without hurting their core business.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#218

Post by choppaface »

stingraycharles wrote: post #150
h0l0cube wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 make…

Search was full of low-hanging fruit. TF-IDF was well-known. PageRank less so but when the nascent internet has so much signal-to-noise it’s often hard to go wrong. Execution was key—- especially compute efficiency—- but a lot of those are nerdy problems detached from real people. Which is wear Google does well.

Stadia was a rich technical problem with an application area that’s accessible to Googlers. Even if Googlers don’t video game, real life is a game to them. But Stadia failed because it lacked the artistic passion behind Nintendo and the best gaming studios.

If Google set themselves up like McKinsey—- i.e. turn their engineering workforce into a contracting service—- then Google might be able to contribute to a real product. But Googlers just don’t care about people. They care about puzzles and systematicity.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#219

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #127
impalallama wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 300-400 dollar console isn’t that much of a barrier compared to a 60 AAA video game. This market of people willing to pay premium prices for enthusiast products but is unwilling to pay for the hardware to run them I don’t think exists.

When I buy a console I usually wait until it’s had some price drops and then there’s really only a few games I want to play. And because I waited so long these too are at a steep discount. These days, that means there’s so much content with DLCs and the base game that it could take me over a year to finish a AAA title. If I could just play the game and not worry about the hardware, I’d be tempted as long as the servi…

Now that I think about it, Stadia launched into an extremely favourable market where both GPUs and next-gen consoles were unobtainium and 'price drops' are a thing of legend, but they still couldn't make it work. Any other time without that advantage and they'd have failed even harder.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#220

Post by vxNsr »

narrator wrote: post #204
stingraycharles wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 make…

Larry and Sergei decided they are not interested in the business anymore. That's probably why Google has failed to innovate much lately. How great would Tesla or SpaceX be without Elon? Companies without the founders become too cautious and status quo oriented.

It’s pretty interesting actually you can see exactly where Elon is focusing based on what’s going on at each company. The fact that Tesla has failed to output a new car or really innovate much lately, and spacex appears to be stuck in a morass of engine troubles for their latest big rockets, tells you how much he’s taken his eye off the ball.
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