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Stadia died because no one trusts Google

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Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#321

Post by pas »

wokwokwok wrote: post #197
_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.

You’ve just got to look back through history and you’ll see the same thing play out, and controversially it’s not actually the worst play in the long run. 1) pick a high risk / high reward opportunity 2) invest heavily in the fundamental tech behind it and see if it works out 3) when it doesn’t work out, shut it down, take the tech you built and use it for something. So for example, let’s look at dart. There was neve…

flutter may be ok, but it's again something that's hard to relate to, because it's using fuckin Dart. and artificial barrier.

they should use TS. or kotlin or Swift ... or just Java.

look at React. the simplest piece of shit and it's eating the world because people got into the cult of React. similarly with Go.

...

streaming tech: they'll just fold it into YouTube somehow.

unicorns: did they ever launch any since Gmail?

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#322

Post by DharmaPolice »

mediumiqsad wrote: post #293
mach1ne wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO no need for a disclosure if you're just stating a single fact.

It’s intentional, it’s a way to brag. They don’t need to at all. There’s a reason why nobody at other companies does that - people at other companies are normal and don’t think they’re gods gift to the world.

If you search for "Disclosure I work at Microsoft" site:news.ycombinator.com you get 300+ results.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#323

Post by _Algernon_ »

HungSu wrote: post #99

As Google Stadia's target user, in my opinion a stronger reason Stadia died is because GeForce Now was a competing and better product. GeForce Now allowed me to play the games I already own with a more powerful machine than I could buy myself, for just $10/month. Artifacts were noticeable but not enough for me to care. If I bought my own gaming PC later, I would be able to continue playing the game there. GeForce Now…

Before Cyberpunk 2077's poor launch, I was looking into game streaming to play it and Geforce Now was the obvious choice. There really was no competition due to the lack of lock in. When users potentially have multiple thousands of dollars already invested in their game library over a period of >10 years, you better support playing with that library, especially when the competition already does.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#324

Post by ZiiS »

utopcell wrote: post #272
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, Altavista was the one to use before Google. I'm not sure the search results were that much better to be honest when they launched, although they were good. Call me shallow, but I liked the simple, distraction free landing page and the "feeling lucky" button.

What on good earth are you talking about ? Google results upon launch were miles ahead of anything else at the time. I personally Googled once and never went back.

At the time many technical users were using programs that could search multiple diffrent engines to desperately try and improve the results. On home connections these programs also needed to notify you when the results were done. Google results were miles ahead of everything found accross all the engines whilst being nearly as fast as you could type.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#325

Post by xxs »

linsomniac wrote: post #28

Personally, I got an offer of a free Stadia controller from Google, took them up on it. It also included an offer for several games free. I searched through the list of games and, honestly, couldn't tell one from the other. They all seemed to be basically the same thing, some sort of FP adventure. My Stadia controller never ended up showing up, but the games were so uninteresting that I never pursued it. My BIL order…

>but the games were so uninteresting that I never pursued it.

Here - no one wants to work with google on this one. They have to port their games to linux at the least (which is amazing on its right own).

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#326

Post by chx »

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.

While certainly Apple has innovated on things, you can't name anything which was not a gradual improvement but, as you say, a device that didn't exist yet.

The first phone with a capacitive touch screen was the LG Prada. Of course, resistive touch screen phones existed for a long, long time before that.

Sony Ericsson Liveview, MOTOACTV, the Pebble watch, even the Samsung Galaxy Gear predates the Apple Watch.

As always, downvotes are welcome but where I am wrong?

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#327

Post by xxs »

zarzavat wrote: post #135
chii wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stadia would've worked if it didn't charge per title. A subscription, which allowed you access to the entire library of games in stadia, akin to netflix, is a compelling product.

Games require a lot of upfront investment. Games are not like music where top hits are routinely created in a day or two. Nobody is making a game on the off-chance that they will collect enough pennies from plays on a streaming service. Anybody making a game, be it indie or AAA, is investing years and $$$, and they need that big payday on release. Even Netflix mostly funds their own content. A “Netflix for games” wou…

>Google funding exclusive games to be made for their platform.

Stadia had their own first party games that they canceled rather early - Feb 2021, year and two/three months after launch. The writing was on the wall. Stadia was a failure through and through, and they knew it.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#328

Post by v7p1Qbt1im »

It‘s really a pity. Unfortunately the gaming market is so difficult to penetrate. It took MS decades and endless amounts of money. And it’s really shitty for cloud gaming prospects. Likely MS will take it all over the long term and there will be a lack of competition in the space.

Stadia was so far ahead technically. They just needed to invest 15 years and 100 billion in studios and a sub model. Gaming and cloud will be the future. And now they lost one them. I get that it’s really difficult to justify loss leaders for that long but you kind a have to in this case.

It’s funny that Google became so risk averse over the years while MS is just taking massive gambles and spending like they don’t have a care in the world. And MS seems to be doing the right things for them somehow.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#329

Post by xxs »

yyyk wrote: post #253

Stadia died because the business model made no sense. The service was squarely targeted at AAA gamers. However, it was a poor deal for AAA gamers and (much more importantly) a horrible deal for AAA game companies. The deal for AAA companies was: Port your game for an entirely different OS/API, pay the Google tax and be subject to Google reviews. But you can't treat a game streaming service like a Play Store. AAA game…

> Make 1st party studios and show capabilities only cloud gaming could have

They started with 1st party game studios, they shut the bit more than a year after the launch.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#330

Post by csydas »

_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…

I get what you're saying but I don't think it's about gamer focus so much as just gaming in general.

I wrote this on another article comment but I don't think it's just about Google not understanding gamers, but gaming in general.

- People who play games are fickle and distrustful (and rightfully so, cause gaming in general has a sordid history of screwing the player-base repeatedly). Google didn't understand this and seem to have understood it as "built it and they will come", ignoring the handful of failed consoles that claimed to revolutionize gaming

- People who play games are fiercely fanatic towards specific games/platforms (that the console wars still continue is very strange to me; preference sure, but the outright militant approach towards different platforms is just silly). Google didn't understand this and thought it would be enough to just put platform out there and everyone would switch over

- Developers understand the resource allocation for making a game pretty well, and they constantly are missing deadlines and/or releasing half-baked games. Google didn't understand this and just released a platform that was costly to port to and might as well have been another console

- The games that were the showcase of Stadia were not games you want to just pick up and play on the go, they're something you sit down and put a few hours into. Google didn't understand this and apparently just thought "well, AAA game X is popular, let's get that on our platform"

- Google already _has_ a platform for gaming called Android, and they didn't seem to understand what makes it work and what doesn't, or how to use that as a base for their idea, and instead tried to make a whole new platform

- Stadia was a new gaming platform no matter how you slice it, but Google seemed to have the idea that Stadia was just something everyone would love and convert to immediately no matter how complex it was to put games on it. Developers even as late as 2022 still had trouble porting games to Stadia and if it's hard to port, naturally they're not going to develop something specifically for it

The list can go on, but really Google just didn't understand what they were trying to do. The tech was pretty neat, but they didn't understand that what they were offering simply wasn't the way people wanted to play games or develop games for.

Combine this with the fact that _everyone_ (devs and players alike) knew that it had a limited window to be successful before Google shut it down due to lack of $$$, and not having a strong showing from day 1 was not even a nail in the coffin, it was shoveling dirt atop the platform the moment it arrived.

Google was never poised to disrupt gaming in my opinion -- what they were poised to do was to provide the datacenter and audience for developers to create their own vision of what Stadia should have been, but Google tried to make a video game platform, and instead made another entry in the "Failed Video Game console/platforms" lists that will be content for Youtube in the future.

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