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Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

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Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#751

Post by ahelwer »

GlennS wrote: post #619
ahelwer wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2008-2017 period was great for PC gaming. Now graphics cards alone cost as much or more than an entire console. The prices only seem to go up. Game streaming has the opportunity to dramatically decrease costs. I think it will work.

You don't need to buy a high-end graphics card. Those are for hobbyists who enjoy buying the latest kit and fitting water coolers etc. for its own sake. 17" Dell with a GeForce mobile whatever-it-comes-with will let you play everything fine for 5ish years if you're into the latest shooters, longer for other genres.

Try to find any PC build that competes with modern console MSRP today. It can't be done, not even close. The equivalent gpu, the gtx 1070, goes used for $300. PC gaming fans are still living eight years in the past when the frugality argument was true. Time to update your beliefs.

Now compare it to the cost of a streaming box & subscription.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#752

Post by detaro »

macspoofing wrote: post #749
detaro wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in the context of this discussion, I'm fairly sure "Google has a game studio and is making games for Stadia" was never an important part in the decision of game makers to port to Stadia or not, because zero customers got Stadia because of some hypothetical Google games that might come out for it at some point in the future. (Certainly wasn't for any of the Stadia users I know)

>I'm fairly sure "Google has a game studio and is making games for Stadia" was never an important part in the decision of game makers to port to Stadia or not ... and most publishers didn't even bother with Stadia, so what does that tell you about how publishers view Stadia? >because zero customers got Stadia because of some hypothetical Google games that might come out for it at some point in the future. And how man…

> The audience for Stadia are gamers who probably have a console or are into PC gaming.

FWIW, most people I know using Stadia are not the core gamers, but people who do not want to invest in a gaming PC or console (or worse, a gaming PC/console for each of the kids!). And they seem really happy with it, specifically because its a streaming thing, so I'm not as negative about it. (For myself, yeah, Gamepass would win if I'd get any of these things)

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#753

Post by dagw »

ahelwer wrote: post #751
GlennS wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to buy a high-end graphics card. Those are for hobbyists who enjoy buying the latest kit and fitting water coolers etc. for its own sake. 17" Dell with a GeForce mobile whatever-it-comes-with will let you play everything fine for 5ish years if you're into the latest shooters, longer for other genres.

Try to find any PC build that competes with modern console MSRP today. It can't be done, not even close. The equivalent gpu, the gtx 1070, goes used for $300. PC gaming fans are still living eight years in the past when the frugality argument was true. Time to update your beliefs. Now compare it to the cost of a streaming box & subscription.

Try to find any PC build that competes with modern console MSRP today.

If you're willing to build your own and buy second hand components on ebay you can just about put together a PC that is competitive with a modern console, at around the same price. But yea, if you're buying new from reputable dealers it's pretty much impossible.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#754

Post by PicassoCTs »

throwawayzRUU6f wrote: post #710
Xelbair wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well to be fair Stadia was an idiotic project that was doomed to fail due to physical constraints(getting sub 80ms latency, and that's VERY generous for input latency that people are used to), which are unsolvable. No ML does not fix that, because if game predicts your inputs are you even playing it, not to mention the frustration when it mispredicts. That's the sort of thing you have engineers for - so you don't sin…

The engineering side did a great job on a complex technical task. It's satisfactory, kind of works, not great, not terrible. What boggles the mind is that nobody is able to formulate who is Stadia even meant for. Who are the target customers? Draw a Venn diagram of people who: - care about gaming - are OK paying full price for their games - are OK paying 10 euros a month subscription - are OK buying an extra controll…

Stadia could be a way into gaming for crowds who cant afford top-notch machines.. which is 5/6 of the population on this planet.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#755

Post by macspoofing »

detaro wrote: post #752
macspoofing wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm fairly sure "Google has a game studio and is making games for Stadia" was never an important part in the decision of game makers to port to Stadia or not ... and most publishers didn't even bother with Stadia, so what does that tell you about how publishers view Stadia? >because zero customers got Stadia because of some hypothetical Google games that might come out for it at some point in the future. And how man…

> The audience for Stadia are gamers who probably have a console or are into PC gaming. FWIW, most people I know using Stadia are not the core gamers, but people who do not want to invest in a gaming PC or console (or worse, a gaming PC/console for each of the kids!). And they seem really happy with it, specifically because its a streaming thing, so I'm not as negative about it. (For myself, yeah, Gamepass would win…

Let's take a step back. Stadia, as a product and service, has been out for over a year. It has tepid publisher support, and tepid consumer support, without any inkling that it's growing and now we have an announcement that Google isn't going to bother releasing games for the platform (even though they went to the effort of buying and setting up full fledged gaming studios to do just that - which isn't cheap).

So I'm not sure what we're arguing about here. That publishers are clueless and don't realize that Stadia is a goldmine waiting to be tapped? That consumer don't know what they are missing by not buying into the platform? The platform is clearly failing.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#756

Post by AstralStorm »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #754
throwawayzRUU6f wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering side did a great job on a complex technical task. It's satisfactory, kind of works, not great, not terrible. What boggles the mind is that nobody is able to formulate who is Stadia even meant for. Who are the target customers? Draw a Venn diagram of people who: - care about gaming - are OK paying full price for their games - are OK paying 10 euros a month subscription - are OK buying an extra controll…

Stadia could be a way into gaming for crowds who cant afford top-notch machines.. which is 5/6 of the population on this planet.

Nah, that's what consoles are for. You don't even need the latest one sometimes. Consoles have existed before Stadia.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#757

Post by ahelwer »

dagw wrote: post #753
ahelwer wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to find any PC build that competes with modern console MSRP today. It can't be done, not even close. The equivalent gpu, the gtx 1070, goes used for $300. PC gaming fans are still living eight years in the past when the frugality argument was true. Time to update your beliefs. Now compare it to the cost of a streaming box & subscription.

Try to find any PC build that competes with modern console MSRP today. If you're willing to build your own and buy second hand components on ebay you can just about put together a PC that is competitive with a modern console, at around the same price. But yea, if you're buying new from reputable dealers it's pretty much impossible.

I don't think you can. The 1070 is $300 used. That gives you $200 to fit in a case, fans, PSU, SSD, motherboard, RAM, and CPU. No way. A comparable CPU would cost at least $100 used by itself.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#758

Post by rco8786 »

lutte wrote: post #537
rco8786 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of times in my life that I've gone back to play an old game I've already played is like...three. I'm not a curator or collector, I just want to play some games here and there. If owning games forever is important for you, then buy the hardcopy. For me, being able to play games now on the devices I already own is a huge win.

>I'm not a curator or collector, I guess people who play chess or soccer are "curators" and "collectors" considering how old those "game" concepts are? Some people may only see video games as a replacement for popcorn movies, a vapid session of watching characters talk about meaningless things and occasionally press a button or two as an illusion of interactivity with something. But some of us get attached when there…

Yes. That’s great for you and people like you.

Please let others enjoy games the way they like to, also.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#759

Post by rco8786 »

zajio1am wrote: post #432
rco8786 wrote: post #198

This is totally the right move. I am a (very happy) user of Stadia. If you haven't tried it, you really should...it's an amazing piece of tech. I can find myself with 20-30 minutes worth of downtime during the day, fire up Cyberpunk 2077 or Hitman or Assassin's Creed in moments from my browser *on a macbook* and play at high settings with no noticeable lag. Obviously you need a strong, steady internet connection for…

> If you're an old gamer who wants to play newer games but doesn't have a ton of time and don't want to drop $1k+ Or just pay $150 for a second-hand graphics card that is one or two generations behind current models but was top-end at its age, and put it to a basic desktop PC.

I don’t have a desktop PC. Even if I did, $150 is ~16 months of Stadia Pro.

Re: Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

#760

Post by selectodude »

v7p1Qbt1im wrote: post #682
selectodude wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't go too much further than that. The value of their employees is best spent on facilitating more ad clicks so without a decree from the top stating "we are pivoting" and having the political capital to follow through with that, they're stuck. Microsoft is so exceptionally lucky they found Satya Nadella. Saying "yes we make untold amounts of money on this but it cannot be our focus moving forward" is almost i…

Except Azure is the new thing that makes MS untold amounts of money via the same lock-in effect created by windows/office. It‘s adjacent business basically. Culturally it was much more difficult for Google to create a functioning cloud business, even though the tech is in it‘s nature. A better comparison would be Xbox for MS. Or AWS for Amazon. It‘s quite surprising that xbox wasn‘t cancelled or sold off, really. It…

Lock in is fine. But Microsoft saying “we’re no longer primarily a Windows company” is one hell of a step.
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