Stadia is shutting down, to the surprise of nobody

The Rogue Wolf

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Stadia was the "solution" to a "problem" that wasn't a problem. Given the climate of gaming over the past several years, I think the last thing anyone was troubled over was the need for a console/PC to play modern games. If anything in that vein, it has been trying to make consoles as functional as/competitive with PCs, not that consoles needed to go away so we could all game from the Cloud.
As others have said: It seemed to be aimed at people who couldn't afford a decent gaming PC but somehow have access to a high-tier Internet connection. I can't imagine a whole lot of overlap in that particular Venn diagram.
 

Old_Hunter_77

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Stadia was the "solution" to a "problem" that wasn't a problem. Given the climate of gaming over the past several years, I think the last thing anyone was troubled over was the need for a console/PC to play modern games. If anything in that vein, it has been trying to make consoles as functional as/competitive with PCs, not that consoles needed to go away so we could all game from the Cloud.

Stadia reminds me of those $19.99 product commercials that overdramatize the hassles one might experience with a typical product with grey-washed footage of some "every man" fussing with it only to go to full color to show how their new product rectifies all of said hassles. Stadia should have been sold out of mall kiosks, and not tried to be taken seriously as a competitor with the likes of Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo and PCs.
lol you mean like that commercials were the lady opens a cupboard that is higher than her head, and all the tupperware falls on her stupid head, and she's sad, and the narrator is like "how often does this happen to you?" And I'm like- never, because tupperware is already stackable so just stack your damn tupperware!

What this means for Stadia- ok, here's what I don't get about cloud gaming- isn't the whole point of cloud gaming that you get the performance of a console without the console, right? But then don't you also need a good TV and sound system? That has nothing to do with cloud.
I guess what I'm saying is- if you care about performance and graphics, you're spending money on fancy TV and headphones/speakers. Then what, you're not gonna just buy a damn console or PC? I dunno. I think everybody regardless of level of gamr hardcoreness or tech saviness inherently understands the trade-off between convenience/mobility and quality.

Similar to how BluRay and super-hid-def and all that stuff comes out and most people are like, meh, whatever, we know it's "better" but we don't care. Or like lossy music files- you can lecture to people all day about how mp3's "lose data" but it sounds good to them on the go and convenience is more important. Yes for those of you younger than like 35, this was a for-real thing that was argued when iPods came around. Neil Young even made his own music player about it, it's a whole thing.
 

Dalisclock

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As others have said: It seemed to be aimed at people who couldn't afford a decent gaming PC but somehow have access to a high-tier Internet connection. I can't imagine a whole lot of overlap in that particular Venn diagram.
Yathzee was arguing that the mobile phone crowd could have been into this, people who didn't want a console but still use their phones a lot for games. I have no idea if that would have worked honestly.
 
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Dreiko

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But for real though, both Stadia and Netflix's game offers do seem in theory to be great- play cool stuff wherever, on your phone even! And there's a lot of reaction about poor leadership and marketing and I'm not saying that ain't true, but also- maybe nobody really just gives a shit about that. Maybe it's ok that big splashy deep games are on a dedicated machine plugged into your TV and your phone is for matching 3 red balls.
Nah I play some good stuff on my phone too, and was an avid fan of the vita and so on. The issue is that if you don't have exclusives and just offer a way for people to play things they already can with no other expenses they have no reason to buy your things. Also cloud gaming is not really good in some genres of play, ones that get affected by latency like competitive fighting games of which I am a huge fan of alongside Jrpgs.
 

BrawlMan

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I have no idea if that would have worked honestly.
Probably not. Most mobile phones can already do what Stadia does, but better and cheaper. Similar to consoles. Most mobile gamers prefer simple games or time-wasting games. Mobile had a better chance by comparison, but only by about 5% at best.
 
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Dalisclock

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Nah I play some good stuff on my phone too, and was an avid fan of the vita and so on. The issue is that if you don't have exclusives and just offer a way for people to play things they already can with no other expenses they have no reason to buy your things. Also cloud gaming is not really good in some genres of play, ones that get affected by latency like competitive fighting games of which I am a huge fan of alongside Jrpgs.
It got brought up in the podcast but I can imagine trying to play DOOM 2016 on stadia. Mostly I imagine the rage of trying to play DOOM on stadia.
 

Eacaraxe

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As others have said: It seemed to be aimed at people who couldn't afford a decent gaming PC but somehow have access to a high-tier Internet connection. I can't imagine a whole lot of overlap in that particular Venn diagram.
It never had a target demographic, or as far as I can tell, market research or any kind of systemic planning whatsoever to make it a success. It was something a bunch of stoned dipshit tech bros whose total adult life experiences extend no further than the limits of the Bay area (and sex tourism destinations), thought would be cool.

Nothing tells the story more than the fact they tried to launch a game streaming service...with proprietary hardware/software that needs both a subscription and license purchases to function as advertised, on top of having fiber with as clean a routing as possible. Rather than, y'know, play to their strengths.
 
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