Google Stadia is still a thing...no really you guys....

[CriticalGaming]

Google is shutting down its in-house Stadia game development studios

Studio lead Jade Raymond will be departing Google.

www.theverge.com

Google has shutdown it's one and only first party game development studio that had supposedly been working on one of several exclusive titles for the streaming platform. Stadia and the so-called "cloud gaming" business model continues to be a big flop. And I can't help but wondered if there was a way that Google could have used it's huge pocketbook to make something like Stadia more appealing to people.

Stadia's a double dip of expensive shit, you pay for Stadia itself, then you also have to buy games to play on Stadia often for full price and in some cases higher than full price. This is Stadia's biggest failure imo. Because the idea of not having to buy the latest and greatest systems to keep up with gaming is a real concern for some people I'm sure. Being able to offer people a passable experience to keep up with modern gaming, while not breaking their pocket books could have been really successful. And once you get a large user base invested in the platform you then make money on extras on the back end. Seemed like a no-brainer idea for a model like that.

However there is one other issue that Stadia suffers from. American internet in most of the country is absolute dogshit. You people in out there in some European countries have internet that makes our shit look like dial up. This is a big problem in the mid-western u.s where it is very very rural and as a result people are on phone-based internet lines like DSL, or satalite internet which is great in short bursts but doesn't hold up to sustained use.

Thus this shutdown is but the first of many things about the Stadia platform that i predict will be gone in the next year or two.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Well, it's not like Google has a history of dropping support for projects and services.

...oh, wait....

American internet in most of the country is absolute dogshit.

Remember when Google was gonna fix that with Google Fiber? That lasted right up until Google realized just how entrenched ISPs are in this country, and just how much money they'll spend on crooked local politicians to protect that entrenchment. We don't hear much about Google Fiber anymore.

 

[sXeth]

Yeah, even if I were inclined to do Stadia vs.... any of the other pre-exisitng options that aren't an experiment being floated by a company with a history of abruptly axing their projects.


I live in what is generally considered a college town, most of the available internet is decent as a result. There's even fibre in some area. I've tried PSNow and the latency still sucks for anything real time based. The games that could be "reliably" played well on a Cloud system.... turn based ones mostly, I don't need to worry about the requirements cause they're usually pretty tame.

 

[Houseman]

I just don't get why it isn't taking off.

Typed from my N-Gage.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Yeah, even if I were inclined to do Stadia vs.... any of the other pre-exisitng options that aren't an experiment being floated by a company with a history of abruptly axing their projects.


I live in what is generally considered a college town, most of the available internet is decent as a result. There's even fibre in some area. I've tried PSNow and the latency still sucks for anything real time based. The games that could be "reliably" played well on a Cloud system.... turn based ones mostly, I don't need to worry about the requirements cause they're usually pretty tame.

On top of that, the best case scenario is that Stadia is a more expensive Steam library that you can play anywhere that has internet. Which sounds okay enough if the internet was good everywhere you went. But the fact that it's extra expensive is going to be the killer of every chance this thing has.

I mean with Google's backing, why couldn't they do what Microsoft's done with Game Pass. "Here's all the games, ten bucks a month." Boom easy.

Or at worse, offer a monthly service that offers a library of games and if a customer really wants the newest title "unlock" it on their account for a huge discounted cost like 50% of launch prices. It's not like they can then give that game away, or trade it in at gamestop or whatever. And it isn't like Google itself needs extra copies wince they are simply steaming the game to the device and probably are only paying for a licence to stream the game to X-users.

 

[BrawlMan]

And anyone other than Google is surprised because....?

 

[laggyteabag]

Stadia shouldn't have launched when it did. It sealed its fate, then and there.

Imagine Stadia was next-gen alternative, at a time where all next-gen consoles were universally sold out. It would have been amazing.

But launching as a current-gen alternative, at the end of the current generation and, well, who is this for?

Did Google not hear the tale of the Wii U?

Most people who even have a passing interest in gaming, probably would already own a PS4 or XbOne by the time Stadia launched, because you can grab the base consoles for about £100, or the Pro/X for about £200/£300. I don't really see where Stadia fits into that, when the hardware is relatively inexpensive, and so available.

But now, here we are. The final blow has been delivered. Stadia is on its deathbed, and on life support. Sure, a handful of third party games might still get ported over, but without any first party exclusives, who will care about the platform, as a whole?

RIP Stadia. I never knew ya.

 

[sXeth]

Stadia shouldn't have launched when it did. It sealed its fate, then and there.

Imagine Stadia was next-gen alternative, at a time where all next-gen consoles were universally sold out. It would have been amazing.

But launching as a current-gen alternative, at the end of the current generation and, well, who is this for?

Did Google not hear the tale of the Wii U?

Most people who even have a passing interest in gaming, probably would already own a PS4 or XbOne by the time Stadia launched, because you can grab the base consoles for about £100, or the Pro/X for about £200/£300. I don't really see where Stadia fits into that, when the hardware is relatively inexpensive, and so available.

But now, here we are. The final blow has been delivered. Stadia is on its deathbed, and on life support. Sure, a handful of third party games might still get ported over, but without any first party exclusives, who will care about the platform, as a whole?

RIP Stadia. I never knew ya.

I think both Stadia, along with Steam Machines when they took a swing, just failed to realize that they need to actually interact with a separate marketbase.


Do your own research and inform yourself is par for the course for dedicated PC gamers... but both Stadia and the Steambox concept were useless to dedicated PC gamers, who woudl typically put together their own rigs rather then whiffle around with Streaming or grabbing some prebuilt thing with a logo on it.


Since neither one actively tried to push into a market and actually provide convenience, they just missed their potential target markets

 

[stroopwafel]

The concept is pretty good but it's too soon.

 

[Chimpzy]

The concept is pretty good but it's too soon.

Game streaming services kind of strike me as similar to viable nuclear fusion in that they're always at least another 5 years away.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Game streaming services kind of strike me as similar to viable nuclear fusion in that they're always at least another 5 years away.

Yeah, I feel like gaming tech moves faster than internet tech and therefore it can never keep up. Like the games get bigger and better faster than they can hope to build up universal internet average speeds to make cloud gaming viable.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Honestly, what did these “professionals” think was going to happen? Pie in the sky ambitions and a shit sandwich infrastructure for the foreseeable future don’t really go together. The real kicker is all these ISPs boasting 300+gbps speeds as if we’ll ever be able to utilize a fraction of it. Hey guy, here’s a Ferrari but have fun driving it down Molasses Avenue.

Jade Raymond. Wasn’t she with Ubisoft? I think the head of Santa Monica Studios left for Google Stadia last year too. Wonder if she’ll go back now.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I wonder if the disc-less version of the PS5 and Xbox Series S were the established console giants' way of muscling out Google, i.e.: "oh, your appeal is in game streaming? Ok, we'll do that too."

That said, I'll never see the appeal of game streaming. I've got my old Xbox 360 and +100 games for it in my closet; all I'll ever need to play any of them is electricity and a TV. Hell, I don't even need a ton of hard drive space because installing the games on that system is an option. For $60, I got discs that can stay with me forever. Streaming? For the same $60, you can play your game as long as it's available at someone else's behest and/or your stable Internet connection, nevermind when inexorably, as with most online-dependent games, servers get shut down. Leasing a car makes sense; leasing games under the guise of a purchase doesn't.

 

[Dreiko]

The only way to make stadia appealing to people is to just do it as a service for free and release games on it at major discounts. Nothing else would suffice since gamers already have game systems to play games on.


Their attempt is only rational if they are aiming stadia at people who do not own anything that can play games.

 

[Chimpzy]

Their attempt is only rational if they are aiming stadia at people who do not own anything that can play games.

There is a demographic for Stadia tho: tech enthusiasts who live (and can afford to live) in areas with top-notch internet connections and own lots of devices with screens to stream games to, and who are probably already paying for tons of streaming services anyway (so what does one more matter?)

In short, Google Stadia's target audience is Google.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Stadia should've...stayed...eyy there?

You claimed you were Stadia, but you're just... Stadion't?

Most platform owners want a steady year, not a Stadia?

Fuck, I'm done, sorry! Gona go and hate myself for a bit now, work out this shame.

 

[Worgen]

If they had just made it a straight up subscription service without having to buy games separate then that could have helped it out a lot.

 

[Xprimentyl]

If they had just made it a straight up subscription service without having to buy games separate then that could have helped it out a lot.

Sega Channel, anyone?

 

[Worgen]

Sega Channel, anyone?

Maybe, but that also came out before most people even had good internet, let alone great internet. But it does also raise the question of who the Stadia was for. To get the high speed internet required for it you already need to have some money and if you have money and are a gamer you probably already have a pc or console that can do what stadia can. At best it just seems like its a product for people who hate wires or boxy electronics.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Maybe, but that also came out before most people even had good internet, let alone great internet. But it does also raise the question of who the Stadia was for. To get the high speed internet required for it you already need to have some money and if you have money and are a gamer you probably already have a pc or console that can do what stadia can. At best it just seems like its a product for people who hate wires or boxy electronics.

Sega Channel was actually through a coax cable connection, not internet-based at all, IIRC. Just pointing out how sometimes getting ahead of your time can be more back-breaking than ground-breaking. Sega Channel came out at a time when it was largely superfluous, even if it was a decent idea, not unlike Stadia.