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Stadia died because no one trusts Google

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Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#431

Post by ktzar »

invader wrote: post #427

It died because it solved the problem nobody really had. It's Startup 101. Who said hardware is the problem? Modern consoles are relatively cheap, especially considering modern $60 price tags on games. So why Stadia tried to solve that? I'm sure Google has a lot of brilliant engineers who can build a state-of-the-art streaming platform that can leverage existing Google cloud infrastructure. But that's all it is - a b…

Sporadic gamers who don't have the space or money to have a $400 console permanently using space in their living rooms. I played RDR2 on Stadia for 2 months. Then didn't use it again until I got my next game, a few months later.

I rather pay a bit more for games without the burden of having a console, or a gaming pc to be honest.

It solved a problem for me. Until my kids are not old enough to have a PS (whatever the number is in 6 years) I won't have a console able to run top tier games

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#432

Post by MikusR »

Dalewyn wrote: post #30
cududa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously this isn't the same thing, but yes - this seems right. But, I remember my first time going to Google's campus in 2010 and connecting to their guest wifi network. 1Gbps! Insanely cool! Pulled up gmail and google docs and it worked PERFECTLY! My first thought was "...oh this is why their webapps suck - they have no idea how it's being used in the real world where latency is above 10ms"

For a specific example of latency incompetency that immediately came to mind while reading this: Chrome. Chrome will not run properly on first execution, as in ran for the first time after a cold start of the computer, when executed off a HDD. Why? Because the HDD takes too long to read off data. Chrome expects SSD latency and fuck your computer if it's not residing on one. When executed off a HDD, I've found Chrome…

Chrome also runs a full built in antivirus scan of your whole PC on first launch after updating.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#433

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

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…

If staff were told early it would be at the top of HN and Blind 10 minutes later. Same for if developers were told to wind down porting. In both cases, customers would be upset about being able to spend money on a service without being told it's circling the drain. There's no clean way of doing it without telling everyone at once and in that case, immediately shutting the store and giving a deadline in the future is the option that gives the most advance warning.

I also guess there are legal complications about telling employees early. Google employees are Google investors.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#434

Post by nicbou »

Macha wrote: post #420
nicbou wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The further your lifestyle is from that of a Silicon Valley developer, the further FAANG is from serving your needs. No one devs on a 8 year old budget laptop or a slow internet connection. Some devs forget that those even exist.

It's very common on HN to forget that Macs have only a 10% share of the laptop market for sure

Even high end Windows laptops have a small market share. Same for 4K displays.

Fast internet isn't a given either. It's slow in some areas, and slower in most hotels. I've had sub-10mbps, 1500ms ping internet quite often, especially while travelling.

That's without counting cultural assumptions SV companies make, especially when their staff is lacking in cultural diversity.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#435

Post by ghaff »

Waterluvian wrote: post #424
ghaff wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "average" gamer/consumer doesn't want to fuss with any special gamer hardware or upgrading PCs. They may not even know what a GPU is. And they probably accept that there are lots of things that they can't do with bad internet most of which they care about a lot more than games. The idea of Stadia made a lot of sense to me when I first heard of it. I guess the implementation wasn't very good though.

In fact, that’s such the case that the average gamer just uses a tablet or phone.

They tend to be playable offline, but yes. The average player has zero interest in having a gaming PC.

Of course, the average consumer has also never heard of Stadia. I've barely heard of it and I was at the Google Cloud event where they either launched it or gave it a lot of air time.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#436

Post by pessimizer »

KajMagnus wrote: post #355
chongli wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their solution was anything but, and it was truly innovative (at the time) and their success was well deserved. It was totally low hanging fruit. Try building a search engine today. The barriers to entry are much harder. Finding useful sites and filtering out spam are much more difficult now than when Google started. The signal to noise ratio on the internet has plummeted. And that is just the difficulty of building…

> implement it yourself. It’s not very difficult But that's not where others failed. Instead, it's coming up with the idea, realizing that it's a truly good idea, that was the important thing. (Remember, Yahoo and other(s) didn't want to buy Google and the algorithm, when they had the chance.) Maybe if you replace "totally low hanging fruit" , with "It was undiscovered winner-takes-it-all markets" I'd agree. In hinds…

> Maybe if you replace "totally low hanging fruit", with "It was undiscovered winner-takes-it-all markets" I'd agree.

I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make. I think what's being proposed is that the more undiscovered markets get discovered, the fewer undiscovered markets are left, and the more difficult they are to discover. Pagerank was a good idea that worked.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#437

Post by wafriedemann »

_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…

>You had to buy games at real $40-$60 prices but you could only play them through this limited service.

Like any other console.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#439

Post by ghaff »

nottorp wrote: post #337
chx wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There were a lot of naysayers at the time around doing away with a physical keyboard led by all the Blackberry speed thumb typists. The criticisms weren't even wrong per se but they ultimately didn't win out against the tradeoffs--which were certainly aided by the maligned but very necessary aggressive autocorrect.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#440

Post by wafriedemann »

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…

GeforceNow looks cheap compared to a gaming PC, but it's quite expensive when compared to a console. Especially an XBOX Series S. Not having to pay a monthly fee was a benefit of Stadia imo.
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