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When will Google shut down Stadia?

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Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#471

Post by sirlatrom »

iamsb wrote: post #239
iforgotpassword wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But these are all things where Google was late to the game and didn't succeed in taking someone's crown. So it's an interesting question: How does Google failing at some product that isn't already a well established concept impact the consumer's sentiment towards the idea behind it.

FWIW Google had orkut long before facebook became a success and moved out of colleges. Google had gtalk long before WhatsApp was conceived.

Microsoft had MSN Messenger, there was ICQ and many others, and there was "always" IRC etc., and frankly things were great with gAIM, Pidgin and other messenger aggregators until Google Talk switched off access for third-party apps and launched Hangouts...

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#472

Post by OnlineGladiator »

EpicEng wrote: post #456
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Google advocate. But Google (well Alphabet) is a public stock - there are many ways to short it.

Cool. Can I short stadia specifically? I'm pretty sure you understood what I was saying.

I honestly thought you meant what you said - that you wanted to short Google.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#474

Post by aylmao »

ivankirigin wrote: post #343

I tried Stadia and had a wonderful first experience on my Mac. Mac is relevant here because it's still worse for gaming, with access to fewer titles. If the product is good, I'll pay for it. With streaming bundling, they can create a solid business.

> With streaming bundling, they can create a solid business.

I do wonder if this would be profitable though. Is Google operating at a profit even with the current model?

NOTE: I got way into writing this comment. I have things to do, but I thought I'd do some napkin math instead haha. I'm probably way off, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

My guess is it isn't. I'd be surprised if Google is selling the hardware at a profit right now, simply because the volume is not too high and they definitely want to reduce the barrier of entry.

On the software side, game companies probably don't want to lose margins and it sounds like right now they have leverage since this is a nascent platform. My guess is they're taking around 70% of the game sale (wild guess from the "digital sales" info in these Ubisoft slides [1]).

Let's ignore Stadia Pro for now and just assume the $10 a month go towards the the free games, or the extra compute for the 4k games / surround sound, or the discounts. If we go with $60 as the average price of a game, this napkin math tells us Google is making like $18 per game and that this their main source of revenue.

How long is a game? It varies widely, depending on the game (and the player) [4]. Let's say people spend an average of 20 hours on a game though. An hour and a half a day for two weeks.

Can Google stream games, HD at 60fps, for less than 90¢ an hour? Of course, this is Google so they're just employing their existing developers infrastructure, etc. The scale probably means they can probably get RTX 2080s in bulk at a discount. It's perfectly plausible they can. Im again, also certainly way off in my numbers. But it is a huge investment— the promise is it could open the doors of an industry for Google, but if it doesn't, is it worth it?

To be clear, I'm not calling doom on Stadia just yet— YouTube operated [2] (operates?) without profit and there's still old services that have stuck around. Google Voice still exists in spite of many calling its doom years ago [3]. Just wrote this for the analysis, not really to make a point one way or another.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7x2sp3/ubisioft_reta... [2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-f... [3]: https://gizmodo.com/google-voice-is-dying-and-its-beautiful-... [4]: http://www.gamelengths.com

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#475

Post by quantdev »

endorphone wrote: post #412
40acres wrote: post #174

I understand the cynicism of this community to Stadia but implore you all to think a little broader. Stadia is different, with this product Google is trying something really innovative. For one, the fact that Stadia actually costs money should be a signal of Google's long term ambition here. Yes, Fiber also cost money but was bogged down by the hell that is infrastructure development. Stadia will require a substantia…

On the original rumors about Stadia I did think Google was going to revolutionize the industry, particularly in social/massively-multiple games. Starting with the development stack that would leverage a coherent, synchronized world that is massively malleable -- huge banks of systems connected in the microsecond latency range with virtually unlimited throughput, massive neural engines, etc. Destructables, enormous pl…

So what? Products improve. This one will too. Imagine seeing an ad on Youtube and immediately being able to play the game on your chromebook. I don't know that's what is going to happen and it can't work today, but maybe in a few years.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#476

Post by dageshi »

dimino wrote: post #158

So like, what is the counterargument? Google keeps projects alive that drain resources for longer? I guess I don't understand what people want here.

It's the daily hate on google thread. It doesn't really matter what specifically google is or isn't doing you'll see the same litany of complaints repeated over and over. HN has become painful in that regard.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#477

Post by eikenberry »

gilrain wrote: post #118

The criticism of Google Stadia and the defense of its concept in this thread are correct. There is a successful future in cloud gaming and nobody denies that. However, it's extremely likely to be delivered by a company with both the technical chops and industry chops, including a deep existing library. Google only has one of those, and they didn't even nail the technical side convincingly. Look toward Microsoft or So…

I think Valve has the option to play king-maker here. They seem to have everything but the inclination to dominate the game streaming market. I don't blame them for not wanting to get into it as running giant hardware farms is way outside their forte. But imagine a streaming service coming out that was tied to your steam account, letting you run all those games but keeping the ability to download them and run them on your PC.

I don't really see Sony doing that... I could see MS doing it though as it plays into their cloud ambitions and they seem more open to alliances than the other big cloud players.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#478

Post by Kye »

blueberry_47 wrote: post #451
Semaphor wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2) is what almost every new service could do. And 1) I don’t understand. Feedly was one of the first ones I tried, and none of the settings I tried got me close to a headline-only view that I used in GReader. I used Newsblur for a while and am on TT-RSS nowadays. But Feedly always seemed to cater more to those people who enjoy image-heavy subreddits and full-page hero images, or pinterest. Nothing I tried with Feedly…

Odd, I was able to get a headline only view almost immediately. I believe the display option said something like "most like Google Reader". Titles-only View is what I am using now.

They added this view after Google announced Reader would be shutting down. I was one of the people asking for a headline view like Reader had.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#479

Post by [deleted] »

msh wrote: post #430
NotATroll wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing I don't get. Who precisely is this concept even marketable to? People with high speed internet, that also can't afford a gaming console? But can afford a device capable of handling all of the inputs & playback of the video. So lets low ball and say a $140 chromebook. + the cost of the games. How many people is this? Genuinely.

Well I bought stadia. With 3 young kids and a busy job i don't have a lot of time to game so I want something where I can just sit down and game. No wasting time downloading/installing games. No patches. Just games ready to play. A second point, sometimes i play coop games with my wife. Its nice not needing 2 consoles or gaming pc's. One can play on the TV and the other on a tablet or cheap laptop.

[deleted]

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#480

Post by ctroein89 »

lonelappde wrote: post #421
ctroein89 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember, for years, Xbox One has allowed for local streaming from Xbox One consoles to Windows 10 PCs via the Xbox app over LAN, which gives Microsoft's Project xCloud the benefits of: * significant experience with the fundamental technology, * no new special hardware required (they can tweak existing Xbox One hardware), * a much larger library of games currently available for download (for consumers who want to swi…

> I could get the same results with a high quality VPN set-up to connect to a Xbox at home. Has anyone actually done that, or are you speculating?

> Has anyone actually done that, or are you speculating?

There are videos on YouTube of people using Xbox game streaming, but it requires setting up a VPN at home which presumably few people do.

Edit: with the Stadia launch, I'm currently working on setting up a Raspberry PI as a VPN server to try this myself.

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