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Stadia died because no one trusts Google

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Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#361

Post by simonh »

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…

I don’t think you’re wrong, yes all the individual technologies in the iPhone already existed, but there’s a bigger picture. The fact is the iPhone revolutionised hand held mobile computing, so given that fact it’s up to us to figure out how they did it and why it worked.

The reason Apple’s success at product development is so hard is that it involves orchestrating many, many different technologies together to create a powerful set of capabilities accessed through a consistent seamless user experience. That’s not a simple thing to even describe or discuss, let alone understand. It’s why they take years to develop products, and are almost never first in a new category, such as smart watches as you say.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#362

Post by flohofwoe »

IMHO it wasn't just Google (and if then only in the sense that they picked the wrong people), Stadia was lead by an "old guard" from the traditional game console business (and weren't even particularly successful there). Trying to shoehorn the console business model into a streaming service is essentially like trying to create an awesome technology for streaming movies, but then still forcing people to buy movie tickets and go to the cinema for watching those streamed movies.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#363

Post by michaelt »

vermilingua wrote: post #301
yyyk wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense if Stadia was targeted at casuals (high school students probably can't afford AAA). However, the lack of subscriptions, separate purchase model, lack of discoverability (no search bar for years! from the Search company!) and porting model make it clear Stadia was very much not targeted at casuals.

AAA games are targeted at casuals.

I thought one of the selling points of Stadia was it would let you play games that need a $500 graphics card, without buying a $500 graphics card.

And in my mind, those are enthusiast games, because only enthusiasts are spending $500 on a graphics card.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#364

Post by password54321 »

delecti wrote: post #211
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.

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 wh…

Any gamer actually looking for a console would have found one through a discord bot in a decent amount of time. No one was about to abandon console gaming because they had to wait a month. Something to also keep in mind is people have friends on these consoles and accounts with achievements they care about.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#365

Post by password54321 »

_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…

It’s not just the default prices but the sales which are quite competitive on both steam and the ps store.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#366

Post by ggnall »

Matthew Ball had a great angle on why streaming gaming generally and what niche (and kinds of games)it would actually serve. The (current) top comment here is spot on that this product didn’t make sense to any particular gamer audience.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#367

Post by microtherion »

kelnos wrote: post #290
panick21_ wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With android they had to get buy in from phones makers and other powerful parties. To do this they had to give up quite a bit of power and control. They never owned the ecosystem in nearly the same way. It was always a compromise.

I think that was true years ago, but less so now. Google has clawed back a lot of the power and control they initially gave away in order to gain partners. Things like moving functionality into Google Play Services give them the ability to do things without making an agreement with partners, and tightening requirements for passing conformance testing means they get to dictate even more as to what being an "Android de…

> Similarly, Apple made a lot of concessions to the wireless carriers back in the beginning

What concessions would those have been? The way I recall it, Apple in the early iPhone years would always favor retaining control over the phone experience over carrier reach, so they were available on very few carriers initially (especially compared to Android), but would not make concessions to them. Eventually, iPhones became a must-have item for carriers, so they all signed on under Apple's terms — and nowadays, unlocked phones are mostly the norm anyway.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#368

Post by Rathseg »

It wasn't a matter of lack of trust. Oddly, the article kind of refutes itself by providing plenty of examples of it just being a bad product.

Stadia was a solution in search of a problem. No one wanted it and it wasn't a good product. It was also a case of when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Google did everything in the cloud and already had cloud compute services that were good technically but under utilized because of Google's low-touch business models. Add in the appeal of that sweet, sweet recurring revenue model that drives the MBA types wild and it became very easy rationalize that it was a good idea. They likely never considered if it was going to be appealing to gamers or to developers because they were blinded by their their own desires.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#369

Post by monlockandkey »

bastard_op wrote: post #46

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.

Linux is what killed stadia. They have to get developers onboard to port their games. Getting big games ported cost them millions upon millions. If they embraced windows, they would have a huge library just like Geforce now. Linux killed stadia imo.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#370

Post by ahartmetz »

bombcar wrote: post #146
heavyset_go wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 profitabl…

In his book "The Road Ahead", which was full of bad predictions by the way, Bill Gates wrote something about the competition between computers and TVs and about set-top boxes. The original Xbox makes sense in that context. It was a bottom-up project initially, but its approval probably had something to do with Bill Gates' set-top box ideas. Microsoft Bob was another related development (cf. the Xbox dashboard, computing appliance).
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