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Stadia died because no one trusts Google

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Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#511

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

Aerroon wrote: post #394

Stadia died because the product doesn't make sense. Stadia is essentially trying to replace a gaming PC. To offer this service you will have to charge users enough money to: 1. buy a gaming PC every 3-5 years 2. run it at ~250W for average play time (4-8 hrs a day) 3. pay for all of the bandwidth on your end And then you can offer the user a worse service than if they had spent that money on a PC themselves. Where's…

>run it at ~250W for average play time (4-8 hrs a day)

I think this is the important aspect. If you're only using it for a few hours a day, the hardware can be used for someone else while you're not playing.

So it runs into the same issue as autonomous taxis: the hardware is only useful in a narrow region and most users want to have their go at the same time.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#512

Post by Asooka »

josefresco wrote: post #469
_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. sigh As a gamer and actual Stadia user this is not a complete or fair depiction. Like almost every other cloud/gaming service including Xbox etc. Stadia had a "Pro" subscription model which have you access to dozens (hundreds?) of games. Furthermore "you could only play them through this limited service" is exactl…

> Furthermore "you could only play them through this limited service" is exactly the same model as every other gaming service!

In theory, yes. In practise, if Steam shuts down tomorrow, I still have all my games on my hard disk and cracking Steam's DRM is pretty easy, and quite possibly completely legal in the circumstance.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#513

Post by hedora »

shakna wrote: post #245
rippercushions wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big companies are quite paranoid about leaking shutdowns even internally, because they don't want the press to know, customers to start asking questions, team members leaving, etc etc. I once casually speculated to a director that product X felt like it was going to get the axe. He was visibly freaked out and responded with a fervent Shakespearean lady-doth-protest-too-much denial, complete with demanding to know whe…

That's true... But when you act as a publisher, then you're required to take the risk of leaking something's final days. When you approve something for launch, and then kill the product before it can either launch or launch effectively, then you become liable for the investment in the launched failure. Google can absolutely be sued by those that just had a failed launch. They misrepresented themselves. This risk, ten…

Were there stadia exclusives? What were people doing to make it ready?

I can “launch” (pun intended) AAA title on a cloud VM in the time it takes for steam to download the game.

I haven’t used stadia; honestly curious.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#514

Post by Godel_unicode »

jayd16 wrote: post #111
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.

But who has good enough internet for this service and no console?

I have college friends on the east coast who all said it worked great for them. The they all commented that it was better on ethernet. The mesh Wi-Fi kits that everyone loves now add noticeable latency.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#515

Post by hedora »

ktzar wrote: post #431
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…

My cloud gaming vm costs Stadia had none of those properties.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#516

Post by hedora »

inerte wrote: post #82
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.

I think I will say this for the 3rd time in HN and I look like a shill, but Xbox Cloud is awesome. It’s exactly what you described!

Yeah; but I can’t be bothered to log into my xbox. It invariably takes me over 45 minutes of reading forum posts and poking around obscure microsoft sites.

It would probably be better if I plugged it in more often, but it pisses me off so much I usually stick it back in a box once it accepts my password.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#517

Post by noirbot »

michaelt wrote: post #363
vermilingua wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And yet it mostly launched with games that I could play on my 5-year old $200 GPU that I probably couldn't even sell for scrap at this point. People really overestimate how much of a GPU you need to play a lot of these games. Sure, if you have a 4k monitor and you want to play at 144hz then sure, but at that point you've spent $2000 on the monitor, so what's $500 on the CPU.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#518

Post by Godel_unicode »

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.

This mindset is pretty outdated, the most popular games now are all free-to-play. I suggest checking out Fortnite (although I personally don’t suggest actually playing it), CoD Warzone, or Overwatch 2. For pre-teens (or almost anyone else for that matter) wanting to try out the free games their friends are playing, a $300+ console is a huge barrier. That’s why they play on their phones.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#519

Post by hedora »

tester756 wrote: post #487
smallerdemon wrote: post #485

When Google first appeared on the tech scene, a lot of us were excited to have a great tool for search that actually kicked back relevant things you needed. And they toyed with great experiments, most of which are all dead except for the most boring of them: the traditional productivity suite of email, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. (For the record, I have never seen or heard of a single person in my ent…

what? I'd say that when people say Google they mean search, youtube, android/gmail, maps

Google Search is dying. Last night I tried to identify a baby rattlesnake (?) in our living room. On my wife’s phone, many of the pictures were for ratsnakes. Of course, I didn’t notice it while I was waving brooms around, and of course I can’t reproduce the issue while logged out.

YouTube, Android: Fair point, though android is shrinking in developed markets.

Gmail and maps are commodities with minimal network effects and differentiation.

Re: Stadia died because no one trusts Google

#520

Post by noirbot »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #415
_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…

> 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. That’s where the market is moving towards however. A lot of the game you "purchased" on the other platforms refuse to work if you can’t connect to their weird anti-piracy scheme. I agree with the…

I'm not sure that's exactly the right read in a way that is important here. Sure, if you buy a game on Steam or EGS, you're still kinda just "renting" it since if they go away, you can't play the game because of DRM. That said, I have a lot more faith that Valve will be able to keep offering Steam, since it's so lightweight, relative to the clear amount of cost inherent in running Stadia.

It's a lot harder to build a walled garden from scratch as a late-comer, and even harder when you're building it in a swamp where people are less confident about moving in.

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