Google is shutting down Stadia • Hacker News Board

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#121

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #55

kikki wrote: post #2

While inevitable, I am impressed they are refunding all purchases, including hardware. That can't be cheap.

I’m surprised, but I’m also glad they are doing this. It could be to avoid class action lawsuits. I used mine for a total of 5 minutes before throwing it in trash. It is a very unfinished product they shipped thinking they’ll solve it. But the reality is, even with the best internet in the country, the games were barely playable. I’m talking 600mbps download and a 100mbps upload speed.

Anytime I see an asymmetric upload bandwidth like 600/100, I assume the ISP is just advertising temporary burst speeds and does not actually allocate enough upload bandwidth to the neighborhood for people to sustain usage at 100Mbps.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#122

Post by jnwatson » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

scottyah wrote: post #78

falcolas wrote: post #28

This is a great example of why you can never trust PR statements. They outright lie. We're not working on X. We won't shut down Y. Bald faced lies. Edit: Missed that they're doing refunds. That part's good. EDIT2: Why I'm calling it a lie: These decisions are not made on a whim. They're made months if not years in advance. A public company making public statements about how you're not shutting something down while yo…

Or the PR teams are just misinformed? Some intern doing customer support on twitter isn’t going to be invited to long term strategy/budget meetings

Or even more likely, management changes their mind.

It is obvious that Google is battening the hatches for a recession. Economic conditions looks worse than just a few months ago. They’ve already reduced their Area 120 investments. This makes sense to cut as well.

Disclosure: Googler but have no inside info.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#123

Post by tpmx » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

So since Google is refunding the likely relatively small number of hardware purchases, the losers here are:

- Game developers who spent time/focus/money on porting their game(s) to Stadia.

- Google.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#124

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

scottyah wrote: post #92

n8cpdx wrote: post #25

At what point does working for Google (on anything released after 2008) go from being prestigious to embarrassing?

Why are so many of you here so bitter against this company?

[deleted]

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#125

Post by yellow_lead » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #119

yellow_lead wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that was a lie

What is the social media person supposed to say in this case? "we're working on a blog post about Stadia shutting down that'll be released in 2 months"? Even if Phil Harrison himself were the one running that Twitter account, he probably knew it was destined to shut down but didn't have anything official on when or the details of the shutdown.

How about nothing?

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#126

Post by buffington » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

beoberha wrote: post #12

Anyone here use Stadia? Not much of a gamer but very interested in the tech of cloud gaming.

I've been using for about two years I'd guess. I have a pretty fast connection and it worked pretty flawlessly at home. I used it while traveling too, and if the connection was good enough for streaming services like Netflix or Hulu, it was typically totally fine for Stadia. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 at the highest settings while playing on an iPad was pretty damn cool, and meant I could slim down a ton when traveling.

That said, I haven't played any multiplayer FPS games. The multiplayer games I did play seemed totally fine, though "seems totally fine" is obviously a subjective observation.

The biggest gripe I had was that you couldn't use your Steam library or bring your own games in any way. The fact that they're refunding purchases is kind of amazing. Knowing Google, I assumed that when Stadia shut down, that'd be it, and I was ok with that.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#127

Post by wcfields » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

Love the foreshadowing of it being a total flop from the launch exhibition: https://twitter.com/AllGamesDelta_/status/119683308108220416...

"Remember when Google compared Stadia with the Powerglove, Atari ET and the Dreamcast?"

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#128

Post by Karunamon » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

scottyah wrote: post #78

falcolas wrote: post #28

This is a great example of why you can never trust PR statements. They outright lie. We're not working on X. We won't shut down Y. Bald faced lies. Edit: Missed that they're doing refunds. That part's good. EDIT2: Why I'm calling it a lie: These decisions are not made on a whim. They're made months if not years in advance. A public company making public statements about how you're not shutting something down while yo…

Or the PR teams are just misinformed? Some intern doing customer support on twitter isn’t going to be invited to long term strategy/budget meetings

That remains a lie by incompetence. Just because Google can't be bothered get their product and PR people on the same page doesn't excuse the entity named Google from making misleading statements.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#129

Post by sascha_sl » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

anthonybsd wrote: post #42

TillE wrote: post #17

You know it's gonna be bad news when you see a title like that. I've always been bearish on game streaming because it's just not practically, physically possible to solve the problem of input lag. Even an extra 10ms is going to be noticeable and unacceptable for many games.

I disagree. The fastest human reaction time is something around 100ms. ( https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime ). I've just measured, and mine is 230ms. As such 10ms lag wouldn't make any difference. I've used Shadow Tech PC for a while during pandemic. With good upstream and downstream bandwidth it was a fairly decent experience, even for playing something like competitive Overwatch. I noticed the difference…

I tried Shadow and, well, you could really tell they host in a budget datacenter with how often there was stutter or missing keyframes (they host with OVH in Europe). I never had such issues with GeForce Now.

Also, I found it kind of scummy how they will not actually tell you what hardware you'll be getting beyond "4c/8t". Mine turned out to be a low-clocked Haswell, a CPU so outdated that Steam downloads were CPU throttled. I used it for about an afternoon and then immediately cancelled.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#130

Post by npinsker » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

anthonybsd wrote: post #42

TillE wrote: post #17

You know it's gonna be bad news when you see a title like that. I've always been bearish on game streaming because it's just not practically, physically possible to solve the problem of input lag. Even an extra 10ms is going to be noticeable and unacceptable for many games.

I disagree. The fastest human reaction time is something around 100ms. ( https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime ). I've just measured, and mine is 230ms. As such 10ms lag wouldn't make any difference. I've used Shadow Tech PC for a while during pandemic. With good upstream and downstream bandwidth it was a fairly decent experience, even for playing something like competitive Overwatch. I noticed the difference…

You're definitely right for most people, but even 10-20ms is noticeable by experienced players and can be very impactful at pro-level -- e.g. some high-level LoL players feel 35ms ping is unacceptably high for competitive play: https://afkgaming.com/esports/news/ls-talks-about-why-35-pin... (though it probably doesn't matter much for Stadia's use cases)