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Stadia died because no one trusts Google

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Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#331

Post by xxs »

test6554 wrote: post #255

Here's what a cloud gaming service needs to take off: * Allow me to use any controller the game natively supports on almost any device (phone, tablet, pc, stream box, etc.) and also as many game consoles as possible (probably 0 or 1) * Give me access to hundreds of games when I subscribe just like Netflix gives me access to hundreds of shows and movies. Don't make me pay for the service and again for games. Gamers ju…

> Use modern GPU hardware with ray tracing and dlss or the AMD equivalent.

DLSS, upscaling - but why? Just so the company can save costs. You should be able to get 60 frames without, and you won't get more than 60fps/4k with any latency. Upscaling will be even worse due to compression artifacts of the streaming. So in short - DLSS is useless. I guess nvidia ad division has a true power.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#332

Post by dontlaugh »

brirec wrote: post #152
HollywoodZero wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also just use an Xbox controller, right? I mean, I'd rather use that than the Stadia controller.

If you streamed Stadia to your web browser, sure, you could use an Xbox controller. The real feature of the Stadia controller was that it connected directly to the Stadia servers to minimize latency (and load on your computer), instead of connecting to your computer using USB or Bluetooth and having your browser relay inputs. You’d initially set the controller up using your phone and Bluetooth to bootstrap a Wi-Fi co…

That doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. You reduce latency by removing Wi-Fi entirely. The latency between the controller and a machine sending to Google is comparatively minor. And that machine can have a wired network.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#334

Post by majani »

KVFinn wrote: post #90

There are advantages to game streaming but Google never really did anything with them, instead they just made a worse version of a console. The marketing at the beginning was confusing. Everyone had the impression Stadia was like a Netflix for games. But it was almost the inverse, Stadia is a free gaming console but the games cost money. At the very least Google's number one pitch should have been "We're giving you a…

In gaming, Free has some bad connotations, especially for console gamers who are Stadia's target market

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#335

Post by eis »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #323
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.

I find it interesting that a service not having lock-in is actually a reason for people to adopt and stay with it. In an industry where lock-ins are common, these lock-ins also effectively become lock-outs.

It is said the biggest motivator for people is fear and lock-in results in fear. It's powerful anti-marketing.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#336

Post by threatripper »

What is the technical reason why streaming is much better than having your own hardware? So far I don't really see it for most people.

I could imagine it's better for business because you can gate-keep access to your game and nobody can copy it.

It's easier and faster to develop because you just have to optimize it for a few datacenters with a limited scope of hardware. (But is hardware support even a big problem today?)

For the user they don't have to care for anything. Just click "START" in the browser and you're good to go. Optionally transfer some money for a day pass for premium games. (But is it that easy?)

So I think it's supposed to make sense from a business and UX perspective but technically it still falls short. Whoever has enough internet also has enough hardware. Both get cheaper. Whoever develops a game with a big budget could also develop a custom streaming solution.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#337

Post by nottorp »

chx wrote: post #326
h0l0cube wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 alway…

You're not wrong but you're simply describing Apple's business model. Take technology that has matured and do it well.

If you ask me, Apple's main innovation with the iPhone was making the UI usable with just a finger instead of a stylus.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#338

Post by whywhywhywhy »

chx wrote: post #326
h0l0cube wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 alway…

The innovation and genuine new thing on the iPhone and the entire key to its success was the screen.

But you’re just seeing the screen 1 dimensionally yes capacitive screens existed but when I say the “iPhone screen” is why it was a success I mean the technology (capacitive) + the interaction design (momentum scroll and pinch to zoom) + heavy optimization (jerky scrolling was unacceptable, every interaction had to move exactly with the finger, even browser redrawing was decoupled from the scroll to enable this).

All these parts together in unison and to a high level of polish is what made that product magical and a success.

On the other hand the LG Prada devs and designers just had jerky scrolling and no one on the team said “this isn’t good enough”

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#339

Post by technion »

kelnos wrote: post #303
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, completely agree, same here. I don't touch Google products any more, and it's mostly because I don't trust they will remain available. I only use the products that are very unlikely to go away quickly. Search, Gmail and Android. I'd like to get off Gmail for other reasons, but it's a pain. And I mostly use DuckDuckGo for search these days.

> I'd like to get off Gmail for other reasons, but it's a pain. I used to think that, but I was actually surprised how easy it was to get off GMail. I gave Fastmail my credit card number, clicked a few buttons in their UI to get my mail transferred over, moved my MX records, and I was done. I ended up migrating contacts, too, but that was just a couple more clicks in Fastmail's UI, as they have an OAuth flow that int…

I've always used a custom domain not with google, but the reason I would find it hard to get off gmail is the list of sites that only offer a 'login with gmail' with the only alternative being 'login with facebook'. And the list is getting consistently bigger, with many developers getting in on the trend of "passwords are too risky, just let Google handle it". If there is ever a day Google turns off sso for free Gmail users it will be a big one.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#340

Post by chrisbuc »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #268
rippercushions wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh, no, Altavista was the dominant player before Google and it had plenty of competition. Google's key innovations were leveraging PageRank to extract signal from what other webpages were saying, instead of relying on naive keyword search etc, and then figuring out a way to monetize search with targeted keyword ads when Yahoo and co were stuck with banner impressions.

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.

I remember using dogpile [1] (which was a search engine aggregator) - the results from google were consistently better than altavista, so over time I gravitated directly to google for results. These days I'm on Kagi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogpile

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