This is an anonymous source (not even verified by the original publicizer of the rumor) reporting second hand on what their "regional manager" friend heard in a "seminar". Why give any credence to this? This is about as close as it gets to "my friend has an uncle working at Nintendo" level of sourcing, but it's being taken as absolute fact by basically everyone in this thread.
Yeah... The "rumour" has been going on for a while -- I myself helped promulgate it, just after Stadia released!!
I smugly clicked into TFA, expecting my cynicism to finally be flattered, but... Like the parent says, this is just that same smuggery we commenters have been predicting since the service started. It's not like the writing on the wall is ambiguous, it's just not official. This isn't the official announcement either.
Google's denial takes nothing away from the credibility of this rumor. Google isn't going to deviate from their own preplanned PR campaign on any product's demise just because a rumor leaked. That doesn't mean this rumor is true, only that the denial has no informational content for evaluating the rumor.
Yet on the other hand, if Google really wanted to refute the rumor, they'd say "It's not true, we have a firm roadmap for improvements and expansions etc." And actually have a published roadmap they could point to. Instead they claim they're working on getting new games but from what I can piece together we're about 60% through 2022 and Google has only released 37 of the promised 100+ new games that would come to the platform this year. They could make up some ground but they're not on pace for it.
Of course they will. They are not 'shutting down soon'. They will be shutting down by the end of autumn.
They don't want to scare their users and confirm that it really is shutting down immediately today, or next week. This account is damage control at its finest and Google will release a statement and then wind all of Stadia down, including that Twitter account in denial. Given that Stadia failed in the pandemic, it already failed in general.
I mean, I did say that this information was given to me from the future [0] so I've already watched this unfold once. Now it is unfolding for the second time for real.
I think the reason this kind of non-news gets any traction at all is that Google is known to shut down services rather than fix their revenue model, and that Stadia has been a failure for some time. So we all know Google will shut it down, just waiting for it.
Keep launching this rumor, and you'll be right eventually.
It also plays right into peoples biases, so they'll keep their doubt low. If I were to spread any rumor to get my ten minutes of fame, Stadia shutting down would be the rumor to spread.
But the baseline probability -- that Google will shut Stadia down at some point -- is what, 80%? higher? So even 'straw-in-the-wind' evidence [0] consistent with that hypothesis is probably pointing in the right direction.
There's a fine line between a rumor and an open secret. I personally have experienced exactly what you described. One of my coworkers knows someone on the Stadia team. Based on the gossip I've heard completely independent of this 'revelation' that all turned out to be true, it wouldn't surprise me. Who cares? It's not like I've got any any money riding on it, and frankly everyone should know better about Google's behavior attitude about this stuff by now.
You would really hope there would be some far reaching repercussions for senior leadership at Google on this one. There are lots of projects that Google has tried and failed on, and sure, that happens. But this one is probably the clearest, obvious failure of execution. There is an absolutely crystal clear playbook of a Tech company forcing its way into the Gaming business. So how Google has managed to enter, completely fuck up, screw around partners, screw around customers and then leave all within the span of 3 years is just fantastic.
And it's not just that, because Google's reputation for giving up on anything remotely difficult, no one bought into it in the first place. I would wager there are entire market segments that Google can just never enter now since they have done such a good job at branding themselves unreliable. It reminds me of a Petrostate where a country has huge wealth because of what they're sitting on, but that same wealth destroys their ability to develop anything meaningfully different.
No. In fact, the incompetent people at the head of those projects fail upwards. Take Phil Harrison, who is at the head of Stadia (not Stadia Games and Studios):
- Worked at Sony Entertainment, handling the software side of things, was there to help for the massive fuckup that was the PS3 launch.
- Got fired (or "resigned" in C-level speak), joined Infogrames (soon to become Atari) and majorly fucked up, saying that single player games would become increasingly rare as well as contributing to running the company into the ground while taking massive dividends.
- Got fired from Atari and joins Gaikai (another game live streaming service that failed miserably and was picked up later by Sony for Playstation Now).
- (Most likely got fired from Gaikai, but no news from this anywhere) and joins Microsoft, just in time to utterly fuck up the Xbox One launch and making the branch he was a director of produce... absolutely fuck all ?
- Got fired from Microsoft and gets named vice president at Google, before heading the Stadia team as a product manager, utterly fucking up its launch, closing down Stadia Games and Studios (that actually managed to build up a pretty talented team), and soon, closing down Stadia.
This clown just gets paid to fail. He's got the reverse Midas touch, short anything he touches.
One of the reasons for this is probably that all (minus Stadia, it seems) of the products you've mentioned might have had bad starts but ended up gigantic successes:
>PS3
performed extremely well, beating Xbox 360 by a fairly thin margin.
>Gaikai
sold for $380M USD to Sony (most people consider this a success, even if you think it should have been more.)
>Xbox One
lost to the PS4 by a factor of two but was still successful (50 million est. lifetime sales)
Even if every single thing he was in charge of failed catastrophically, anyone who isn't looking closely is going to see someone with a huge amount of industry expertise working on some of the largest and most successful products to ever exist full stop (not just in gaming.)
I don't feel it's fair to say Gaikai failed miserably. They were on par with other competitors such as OnLive. That whole first generation of game streaming created a new market, but was ultimately too early -- the internet infrastructure they were betting on didn't come soon enough to enable their product to take off. At that point, getting acquired by the biggest dog in the gaming industry is the best possible outcome.
Do you think senior leadership was involved? It seems just as likely that some platforms engineers figured they could mess around with hardware on the edge and got it shipped from the bottom up.
No, they had a huge push behind it at one point, they even had internal game development studios and hired inhouse game devs, which they then proceeded to fire less than 18 months later. That's right, from new platform to fired in less than 18 months. It's a shameful way to run a company.
>But this one is probably the clearest, obvious failure of execution ... There is an absolutely crystal clear playbook of a Tech company forcing its way into the Gaming business.
I'm not sure this was an 'obvious failure of execution'. They wanted to build a gaming cloud-streaming-only service, and they built one. I don't think you can build a better one because the problems with cloud-streamed gaming are with the concept not execution. The streaming service provided by Xbox is on par with Stadia, in that it suffers from the same latency, and graphical downscaling issues as Stadia did. On the Xbox it is part of my subscription (so technically 'free') and I don't want to use it because the experience is bad (although it is nice to quickly sample a game without needing to wait for download and install).
Oh, there definitely were obvious failures of execution. Not on the core streaming tech side, but on the business and product aspects. The product should have been quite compelling: a way of playing current gen console games with basically no up front hardware investment and no ongoing subscription. That's what the "free" version of Stadia was.
But then they muddied things up with Stadia Pro, making people think it was actually supposed to a "Netflix for games" subscription service, and crucially making Stadia Pro the only SKU for a very long time. So rather than the really appealing entry point to console gaming that people could have easily tried, they ended up targeting the exact people for whom Stadia was the worst fit (hardcore gamers with existing console owners and large game libraries).
Stadia has provided an excellent game night for me and my remote friend (who is on a Mac) this year and we've had a blast, we mostly play little party games as nither of us our big gamers, but it makes for an excellent night,i've bought a couple of games on it that i've yet to even get too and plan to buy some more and enjoy the odd hour or two in the evenings. Stadia removes all fraction and means I don't need to install/update or have gaming hardware.
The service is great. Despite it not being popular. It would be an absolute disaster for me if the service were to close.
No where near as good and as stable as Stadia, also the monthly fee is a pain.
With Stadia you can just buy the game and then play when you want, I don't think there is anything else like that.
I mostly agree. I'm a "gamer" but not a very serious/avid one. Stadia has been great for casual play and a few of the family/kids games that I play along with my little ones. They have a blast. I also enjoy the cross-platform nature of it. Using a Chromecast is great on the huge projector and then sometimes more casual play on a computer (via the browser) since some games I prefer to play not on a huge screen and with a mouse/keyboard instead of their Stadia Controller.
I haven't bought many titles, personally, so if it is disappeared, I wouldn't be terribly upset. Annoyed, yes.
And it would probably cause me to go hunt around a bit more at Xbox Cloud gaming (Which I have also tried and looks promising with a nice but small library of titles) and I have yet to check out GeForce Now but have heard good things there, too.
Not tried GamePass as it's expensive and a subscription service unlike Stadia, I used Geforce now before and it wasn't very good. My friend reports Stadia works far better for them when compared to Geforce now which is not as well optomised / laggy etc. I think it might require a stronger connection that what she has, where as Stadia works flawlessly.
Not sure if game pass is better but the price would put me off a little bit, because we only play for a few hours every couple of weeks.
I avoided checking Stadia out in the first place as I thought they'd end up shutting it down after prior experiences. This seems a difficult branding loop to break, but does them no favors.
It really doesn't! The common responses you hear in these types of threads include "I didn't even try it; because I knew it would get killed." And of course, this results in lower turnout, and eventual death of the offering. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point.
So what's Google to even do?
* They could burn money and keep the offering afloat to "prove" they are serious (seems to be the case with Stadia).
* They can pivot/transition the offering (see Google Glass).
* Or they can use new offerings for R&D (and in some cases, like that of Stadia, be paid for that R&D), and then fold that technology/data somewhere else (see Wave) - this seems like the path most taken.
If we remember Google's core competencies, the revolving door of offerings as feeder into their larger services makes sense on paper, but I do agree that it's hurting consumer confidence and there is a hidden cost to that.
What should the consumer to do? Donate their money and time to the service in the hope that this time will be different? (not to mention that Stadias pricing was pretty bad)
So yes, it's Google's turn to show commitment and keep their services running. Plus, the possible loss with keeping Stadia up should also be weighted against this cementing their reputation.
Google seems to shut down services mostly on the basis of adoption being too low. For its scale, tens of millions of users could mean a failure.
However, those services could be profitable, just at a smaller scale. They could keep them around and exploit them without too much investments. This is what other large companies do, they won't break the experience for their customers because they value them.
If they were serious about Stadia, Google should have worked to provide experiences only Stadia could allow. That was one tagline of SG&E before it was canned a mere 18 months in - clear failure on Google's part because you can't develop a game that fast.
As for what could have gone differently - cut deals with smart TV manufacturers to include the Stadia app on the TV, making it easy for millions to try it out.
Instead, the Stadia app wasn't even on the Chromecast initially. (OK, memory vague here but I remember having to fiddle around and after upgrading from the Chromecast that came with the Cyberpunk 2077 bundle to Google TV with Chromecast or whatever they were calling it, it was still a while before the Stadia app was there or left beta).
I also thought Google should have done a sports game tie-in, or perhaps F1 racing, to essentially let viewers replay something they just watched. Kind of a live replay, where YOU control the offense/defense/car. Say you're watching a soccer match and team X scores. During a break, advertise Stadia's version of FIFA, click a button and replay the scoring play where you control one of the teams. Can you also score, or can you defend??
Yes this would be complicated licensing and software between TV ads, game maker, license holders, etc. but it would have showcased an advantage Stadia had over traditional consoles/pc gamers - immediacy, play right on your TV in response to something you just watched. Brady just score a touchdown - can you do it to, or play defense and stop it (pick up Stadia controller, click some buttons or whatever and get dropped into that scenario, ready to play)??
I think this would have had insane appeal among sports fans, building excitement, etc. But no, Stadia just crapped itself and cancelled their in-house studio and basically tread water for the rest of the time.
Selling games directly on Stadia might just be the wrong business model.
Selling access to a machine on demand seems much more appealing.
GeForce NOW, despite initial problems with publishers, will always leave you with the option of moving to a different service or building your own machine to run the games you own.
They’re past the point of it being “hidden”. At this point Google cancel culture is a popular meme for consumers. That’s a major reason many people refuse to even try Stadia. Due to their history with consumer product cancellations, everyone just assumes a cancellation is around the corner.
Other companies like Amazon and Sony are also no stranger to product cancellations. The major difference is that when Amazon or Sony cancels a product, they will refund early adopters the cost of the product. Google isn’t willing to do that.
The problem is that Stadia isn't a scrappy startup. Google has over a hundred billion in cash, so this really just seems like a fun side-project for them. Microsoft spent $2.5 billion just to purchase a single game. I'd be surprised if Google spent even 10% of that on Stadia. Very few people are going to be interested in gaming on the cloud just to play some lightweight indie games. If Google paid the big bucks to get AAA Stadia exclusives, then more people would be interested and everyone would know that it's something that they're actually committed to.
They could offer something you can't get anywhere else that would force consumers to come.
I mean game exclusives, not technology.
In the end it's all about games
I'd like to be a counterpoint for the Stadia bashing here:
I'm not much of a gamer, but I've always been interested in playing Red Dead Redemption 2. However, I neither had a console nor a PC with a decent enough graphics card.
This spring, I picked up a Google TV with Chromecast, and realized I could pair any bluetooth device with it. I bought a cheapo PS4-like controller off of Amazon, saw that RDR2 was on sale on Stadia, and gave it a shot.
I have to say, the experience was quite pleasing. No need for an expensive/out-of-stock graphics card. No need for a dedicated console. If feels like a great solution for a casual gamer. Overall, I've been impressed with the experience, and haven't experienced any lag or game stutters. Heck, it even plays Cyberpunk smoothly!
Stadia definitely lacks in terms of marketing and game library, but I feel like it's a concept that works.
I had a month off between jobs and used a week of my evenings off to play through red dead.
I don't particularly care about losing the license, because I just wanted to play the game through. Haven't touched it since then.
Stadia's ideal market wasn't "real gamers" -- those folks will buy rigs. Their ideal market was people like you and me, who don't have the time or interest to justify purchasing a gaming machine but still want to play through a AAA title or two every once in a while.
Another same here. I didn't need to buy a console, a tv or even a controller. It feels like unlimited power to be able to access RDR2 on just another tab - 13 year old me would have gone crazy :)
I've tried to find a flaw with this argument and admittedly it's pretty hard. As long as you accept to pay a above the market price for the game and you don't care about retaining ownership then it somehow makes sense.
I'm guessing this value proposition is what made it unsustainable for Google.
The need for GPUs during an unprecedented spike in demand for chip fab capacity couldn't have helped.
I think the basic model will eventually work out, though. The bandwidth is there. The compute has to be cheap enough that the biz model works by just taking the retailer's cut of the title sale + maybe a tad more. The tad more can come from one-time hardware sales and maybe better negotiated cuts of the sale from the studios. I would never ever have purchased a copy of any AAA title without Stadia and similar services. I think the same is true for almost all Stadia purchases.
But Google's failure here makes sense. It's a low margin game. google sucks at low margin games.
"The source also claims that there'd be no license transfer of any sort, which means that any purchases made on Stadia would effectively be nullified as the service closes down."
There clearly needs to be a law to make such things illegal. I've refused to take the discount on digital Switch games since Nintendo has clearly shown they are willing to shut down old servers and tell you to just buy your games again.
But there are some games that are digital only and I fear the next generation of games will be like Xbox. You buy a physical that does nothing more than connect to a server that downloads the game.
Perhaps legally allowing backups of games you purchased would help.
>Perhaps legally allowing backups of games you purchased would help
as great as that would be, the corporate-run governments of the world would see that as tantamount to legalising video game piracy, one of the few (if not, the only) media that have actually succeeded in making online piracy difficult
It would be difficult from a security perspective, but if they provided their own flash drives for backing up games it could be the best for consumers and the manufacturers.
Nearly all software produced currently ships out with the assumption that updates can easily be pushed out. As a concrete example, twenty years from now I don't want to play the original Mario Kart 8 that shipped when the switch was released, I would want to play the Mario Kart 8 that has double the levels that they are currently slowly dropping over the next year. The ideal situation would be an ability to write that information back to the card.
Couple that with another law that enforces consumers ability to roll back updates to any previous version they desire and you're fully protected with the ability to play your games essentially forever
No need for laws, all the digital game stores are going to migrate their users to game subscription services regardless. It's much more clear legally speaking that you walk away from a subscription service with nothing, and it lets platforms drop support for problematic content. Nobody wants to be responsible for your digital library.
>There clearly needs to be a law to make such things illegal. I've refused to take the discount on digital Switch games since Nintendo has clearly shown they are willing to shut down old servers and tell you to just buy your games again.
The problem is that there really isn't a way to legislate it. The content is tied to the service (either the platform service like the Switch, or the game service itself), and if the servers aren't running, you're done. No backup is going to help you. And there's piracy. I do not see any governments creating legislating to force publishers (or platform (e.g. Steam) or console manufacturers) to remove anti-piracy measures.
Mandate keeping the servers open. Or to put it another way, mandate that purchases which were advertised and sold as purchases of content (not "licenses", as the wink and nod legal fiction the industry likes to fall back on when questioned) remain fit for purpose, or the buyer is entitled to a full refund.
Then let the industry figure out the technical details. Most of these services amount to a bog standard download of encrypted files. There is absolutely nothing about this that requires any more than the most basic infrastructure anybody reading this could set up.
Alternatively, we force them to describe these time boxed, locked down, lacking basic consumer rights things we're purchasing as the rentals they actually are.
> And there's piracy. I do not see any governments creating legislating to force publishers (or platform (e.g. Steam) or console manufacturers) to remove anti-piracy measures.
Decriminalization of piracy so people can support themselves would be a good start, but I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
I have this pipe dream that the digital markets act forces consoles to either allow sideloading and lose basically all of the profits on their ecosystems, or remove digital markets entirely and go back to physical games only.
"Replying to @BlueFireDemon44
Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro. Let us know if you have other questions."
I can't think of any other service from Google that's more weirdly polarizing, although Google's Pixel phones probably run a close second. People either find Stadia useful and say they use it regularly, or they hate it to the point they seemingly spend their days telling everyone how terrible Stadia is, how it was doomed from the start, how investing in the platform is a waste of time and money, etc. Oddly, you get the same thing on Pixel forums where people spend as much time telling everyone how they switched and how much better their new $whateverphone is than their previous $googlephone as people do looking for support or saying they like their phone just fine.
Perhaps when Google disappoints people they really disappoint them? It seems like an oddly visceral and out of proportion reaction to waste time on the internet disgruntled and complaining that some people like something you don't like.
That's an odd comparison. Unlike Stadia, if the Pixel phone division shuts down you still have a working phone.
Forums will be forums and the trolls get the spotlight. Pixel phones, particularly the cheaper 'a' models, are very popular and good value. What significant things are much better on non-Google Android phones?
You do, but if Google literally dropped support of their phones, you'd never get another security update, so it'd be in your best interest to move although not mandatory like if Stadia shut down. The comparison is about peoples' visceral reaction to Google products when they're disappointed, not specifically when the product is dropped.
> What significant things are much better on non-Google Android phones?
Not my point and frankly I have no clue: I've had a google android phone of some kind or another since the G1, which if that reference is lost on you is the original android phone.
Readit News
Mr. Killedbygoogle doesn't seem to be all that confident in this either, and is hiding behind a "I'm just a shit poster" defense: https://twitter.com/killedbygoogle/status/155293002348465766...
I smugly clicked into TFA, expecting my cynicism to finally be flattered, but... Like the parent says, this is just that same smuggery we commenters have been predicting since the service started. It's not like the writing on the wall is ambiguous, it's just not official. This isn't the official announcement either.
https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656
Yet on the other hand, if Google really wanted to refute the rumor, they'd say "It's not true, we have a firm roadmap for improvements and expansions etc." And actually have a published roadmap they could point to. Instead they claim they're working on getting new games but from what I can piece together we're about 60% through 2022 and Google has only released 37 of the promised 100+ new games that would come to the platform this year. They could make up some ground but they're not on pace for it.
They don't want to scare their users and confirm that it really is shutting down immediately today, or next week. This account is damage control at its finest and Google will release a statement and then wind all of Stadia down, including that Twitter account in denial. Given that Stadia failed in the pandemic, it already failed in general.
I mean, I did say that this information was given to me from the future [0] so I've already watched this unfold once. Now it is unfolding for the second time for real.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039202
I think the reason this kind of non-news gets any traction at all is that Google is known to shut down services rather than fix their revenue model, and that Stadia has been a failure for some time. So we all know Google will shut it down, just waiting for it.
Keep launching this rumor, and you'll be right eventually.
[0] https://polisci.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/people/u382...
And it's not just that, because Google's reputation for giving up on anything remotely difficult, no one bought into it in the first place. I would wager there are entire market segments that Google can just never enter now since they have done such a good job at branding themselves unreliable. It reminds me of a Petrostate where a country has huge wealth because of what they're sitting on, but that same wealth destroys their ability to develop anything meaningfully different.
- Worked at Sony Entertainment, handling the software side of things, was there to help for the massive fuckup that was the PS3 launch.
- Got fired (or "resigned" in C-level speak), joined Infogrames (soon to become Atari) and majorly fucked up, saying that single player games would become increasingly rare as well as contributing to running the company into the ground while taking massive dividends.
- Got fired from Atari and joins Gaikai (another game live streaming service that failed miserably and was picked up later by Sony for Playstation Now).
- (Most likely got fired from Gaikai, but no news from this anywhere) and joins Microsoft, just in time to utterly fuck up the Xbox One launch and making the branch he was a director of produce... absolutely fuck all ?
- Got fired from Microsoft and gets named vice president at Google, before heading the Stadia team as a product manager, utterly fucking up its launch, closing down Stadia Games and Studios (that actually managed to build up a pretty talented team), and soon, closing down Stadia.
This clown just gets paid to fail. He's got the reverse Midas touch, short anything he touches.
>PS3
performed extremely well, beating Xbox 360 by a fairly thin margin.
>Gaikai
sold for $380M USD to Sony (most people consider this a success, even if you think it should have been more.)
>Xbox One
lost to the PS4 by a factor of two but was still successful (50 million est. lifetime sales)
Even if every single thing he was in charge of failed catastrophically, anyone who isn't looking closely is going to see someone with a huge amount of industry expertise working on some of the largest and most successful products to ever exist full stop (not just in gaming.)
Phil Harrison is an absolute tool though.
I'm not sure this was an 'obvious failure of execution'. They wanted to build a gaming cloud-streaming-only service, and they built one. I don't think you can build a better one because the problems with cloud-streamed gaming are with the concept not execution. The streaming service provided by Xbox is on par with Stadia, in that it suffers from the same latency, and graphical downscaling issues as Stadia did. On the Xbox it is part of my subscription (so technically 'free') and I don't want to use it because the experience is bad (although it is nice to quickly sample a game without needing to wait for download and install).
But then they muddied things up with Stadia Pro, making people think it was actually supposed to a "Netflix for games" subscription service, and crucially making Stadia Pro the only SKU for a very long time. So rather than the really appealing entry point to console gaming that people could have easily tried, they ended up targeting the exact people for whom Stadia was the worst fit (hardcore gamers with existing console owners and large game libraries).
Stadia has provided an excellent game night for me and my remote friend (who is on a Mac) this year and we've had a blast, we mostly play little party games as nither of us our big gamers, but it makes for an excellent night,i've bought a couple of games on it that i've yet to even get too and plan to buy some more and enjoy the odd hour or two in the evenings. Stadia removes all fraction and means I don't need to install/update or have gaming hardware.
The service is great. Despite it not being popular. It would be an absolute disaster for me if the service were to close.
No where near as good and as stable as Stadia, also the monthly fee is a pain. With Stadia you can just buy the game and then play when you want, I don't think there is anything else like that.
I haven't bought many titles, personally, so if it is disappeared, I wouldn't be terribly upset. Annoyed, yes.
And it would probably cause me to go hunt around a bit more at Xbox Cloud gaming (Which I have also tried and looks promising with a nice but small library of titles) and I have yet to check out GeForce Now but have heard good things there, too.
unfortunately there's not enough of you guys, Stadia was targeting the latter crowd but as you can see, they've failed.
Not sure if game pass is better but the price would put me off a little bit, because we only play for a few hours every couple of weeks.
So what's Google to even do?
* They could burn money and keep the offering afloat to "prove" they are serious (seems to be the case with Stadia).
* They can pivot/transition the offering (see Google Glass).
* Or they can use new offerings for R&D (and in some cases, like that of Stadia, be paid for that R&D), and then fold that technology/data somewhere else (see Wave) - this seems like the path most taken.
If we remember Google's core competencies, the revolving door of offerings as feeder into their larger services makes sense on paper, but I do agree that it's hurting consumer confidence and there is a hidden cost to that.
So yes, it's Google's turn to show commitment and keep their services running. Plus, the possible loss with keeping Stadia up should also be weighted against this cementing their reputation.
However, those services could be profitable, just at a smaller scale. They could keep them around and exploit them without too much investments. This is what other large companies do, they won't break the experience for their customers because they value them.
Google has another approach.
If they were serious about Stadia, Google should have worked to provide experiences only Stadia could allow. That was one tagline of SG&E before it was canned a mere 18 months in - clear failure on Google's part because you can't develop a game that fast.
As for what could have gone differently - cut deals with smart TV manufacturers to include the Stadia app on the TV, making it easy for millions to try it out.
Instead, the Stadia app wasn't even on the Chromecast initially. (OK, memory vague here but I remember having to fiddle around and after upgrading from the Chromecast that came with the Cyberpunk 2077 bundle to Google TV with Chromecast or whatever they were calling it, it was still a while before the Stadia app was there or left beta).
I also thought Google should have done a sports game tie-in, or perhaps F1 racing, to essentially let viewers replay something they just watched. Kind of a live replay, where YOU control the offense/defense/car. Say you're watching a soccer match and team X scores. During a break, advertise Stadia's version of FIFA, click a button and replay the scoring play where you control one of the teams. Can you also score, or can you defend??
Yes this would be complicated licensing and software between TV ads, game maker, license holders, etc. but it would have showcased an advantage Stadia had over traditional consoles/pc gamers - immediacy, play right on your TV in response to something you just watched. Brady just score a touchdown - can you do it to, or play defense and stop it (pick up Stadia controller, click some buttons or whatever and get dropped into that scenario, ready to play)??
I think this would have had insane appeal among sports fans, building excitement, etc. But no, Stadia just crapped itself and cancelled their in-house studio and basically tread water for the rest of the time.
Selling access to a machine on demand seems much more appealing.
GeForce NOW, despite initial problems with publishers, will always leave you with the option of moving to a different service or building your own machine to run the games you own.
Spin off non-core companies as soon as humanly possible with some investment and simply be a (majority) investor in them instead.
Other companies like Amazon and Sony are also no stranger to product cancellations. The major difference is that when Amazon or Sony cancels a product, they will refund early adopters the cost of the product. Google isn’t willing to do that.
After that, they need to think very carefully before starting anything new, and if they do, commit to it.
I'm not much of a gamer, but I've always been interested in playing Red Dead Redemption 2. However, I neither had a console nor a PC with a decent enough graphics card.
This spring, I picked up a Google TV with Chromecast, and realized I could pair any bluetooth device with it. I bought a cheapo PS4-like controller off of Amazon, saw that RDR2 was on sale on Stadia, and gave it a shot.
I have to say, the experience was quite pleasing. No need for an expensive/out-of-stock graphics card. No need for a dedicated console. If feels like a great solution for a casual gamer. Overall, I've been impressed with the experience, and haven't experienced any lag or game stutters. Heck, it even plays Cyberpunk smoothly!
Stadia definitely lacks in terms of marketing and game library, but I feel like it's a concept that works.
Same.
I had a month off between jobs and used a week of my evenings off to play through red dead.
I don't particularly care about losing the license, because I just wanted to play the game through. Haven't touched it since then.
Stadia's ideal market wasn't "real gamers" -- those folks will buy rigs. Their ideal market was people like you and me, who don't have the time or interest to justify purchasing a gaming machine but still want to play through a AAA title or two every once in a while.
I'm guessing this value proposition is what made it unsustainable for Google.
I think the basic model will eventually work out, though. The bandwidth is there. The compute has to be cheap enough that the biz model works by just taking the retailer's cut of the title sale + maybe a tad more. The tad more can come from one-time hardware sales and maybe better negotiated cuts of the sale from the studios. I would never ever have purchased a copy of any AAA title without Stadia and similar services. I think the same is true for almost all Stadia purchases.
But Google's failure here makes sense. It's a low margin game. google sucks at low margin games.
There clearly needs to be a law to make such things illegal. I've refused to take the discount on digital Switch games since Nintendo has clearly shown they are willing to shut down old servers and tell you to just buy your games again.
But there are some games that are digital only and I fear the next generation of games will be like Xbox. You buy a physical that does nothing more than connect to a server that downloads the game.
Perhaps legally allowing backups of games you purchased would help.
as great as that would be, the corporate-run governments of the world would see that as tantamount to legalising video game piracy, one of the few (if not, the only) media that have actually succeeded in making online piracy difficult
Nearly all software produced currently ships out with the assumption that updates can easily be pushed out. As a concrete example, twenty years from now I don't want to play the original Mario Kart 8 that shipped when the switch was released, I would want to play the Mario Kart 8 that has double the levels that they are currently slowly dropping over the next year. The ideal situation would be an ability to write that information back to the card.
Couple that with another law that enforces consumers ability to roll back updates to any previous version they desire and you're fully protected with the ability to play your games essentially forever
The problem is that there really isn't a way to legislate it. The content is tied to the service (either the platform service like the Switch, or the game service itself), and if the servers aren't running, you're done. No backup is going to help you. And there's piracy. I do not see any governments creating legislating to force publishers (or platform (e.g. Steam) or console manufacturers) to remove anti-piracy measures.
Then let the industry figure out the technical details. Most of these services amount to a bog standard download of encrypted files. There is absolutely nothing about this that requires any more than the most basic infrastructure anybody reading this could set up.
Alternatively, we force them to describe these time boxed, locked down, lacking basic consumer rights things we're purchasing as the rentals they actually are.
Decriminalization of piracy so people can support themselves would be a good start, but I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656?...
"Replying to @BlueFireDemon44 Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro. Let us know if you have other questions."
Perhaps when Google disappoints people they really disappoint them? It seems like an oddly visceral and out of proportion reaction to waste time on the internet disgruntled and complaining that some people like something you don't like.
Forums will be forums and the trolls get the spotlight. Pixel phones, particularly the cheaper 'a' models, are very popular and good value. What significant things are much better on non-Google Android phones?
You do, but if Google literally dropped support of their phones, you'd never get another security update, so it'd be in your best interest to move although not mandatory like if Stadia shut down. The comparison is about peoples' visceral reaction to Google products when they're disappointed, not specifically when the product is dropped.
> What significant things are much better on non-Google Android phones?
Not my point and frankly I have no clue: I've had a google android phone of some kind or another since the G1, which if that reference is lost on you is the original android phone.