[HN Gopher] Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing ...
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Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus
Author : danso
Score : 298 points
Date : 2021-02-01 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kotaku.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kotaku.com)
| rektide wrote:
| I can't help but feel like any big software platform company
| that's not trying to get good at virtual worlds, gaming, virtual
| space is making a huge mistake.
|
| It's hard as heck. One can do all the things, and keep turning up
| with un-fun games. Games require magic, in a way few other things
| do.
|
| But I also think these big companies have some of the best chance
| of creating something special and better. They keep reaching for
| better scaled universes, better scaled worlds, and I think this
| ambition is really key. Better scaled worlds is what's important,
| is what we need to be up to. Lots of simulated agents, lots of
| space, lots of players, all in virtual space.
|
| EVE Online seems to be really running up into the wall, these
| days. It feels like there's such basic fixes for some of this
| stuff (allow modules to be set-to-go online while in warp), but
| the huge grid filled with players, the massive time-dialation....
| it's a real cluster $@#@#$[1]. Few others have tried to be
| anywhere near as cool. We all get some little shells, shards, and
| the bigger total us never happens.
|
| [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/how-eve-online-commandos-pulled-
| off-...
| drusepth wrote:
| I know it's cool to hate on Stadia still (but less so than it
| used to be, now that everyone seems to just use it as a Cyberpunk
| console...) but this move makes sense to me.
|
| 1. First-party AAA games are a huge investment (in time and
| money), especially for a company without any experience in
| building them. Starting a first-party game studio is a huge risk
| (financial and planning) that I'm not surprised didn't pan out.
|
| 2. Stadia has a reputation as the "indie game streamer" platform
| in a lot of circles after such a large % of their first games
| were older and from smaller dev cos. The unpolished first-party
| AAA game (if it ever came out) wouldn't do much to help this
| reputation; focusing on partnerships and getting new releases on
| the platform seems like it'd do far more for the service's
| future.
|
| 3. Unpopular opinion but I don't think exclusives should exist
| for any platform. It may be good for business but it's bad for
| most gamers.
|
| 4. Politically, it feels like we're about to move into a period
| where companies need to be way more careful with monopolistic
| moves into new markets. "Owning the platform and the content"
| seems to be a wedge-prone position that a lot of companies are
| worried about (Amazon, Apple, Google, etc) and this kind of just
| clears Stadia/Google from having to worry about that on "their
| console".
|
| FWIW I have almost 100 hours on Stadia and 49 friends online in
| Stadia at the time of writing this comment, but YMMV, I am most
| definitely in some kind of Stadia-bubble, I probably have some
| confirmation bias, and this may also be wishful thinking based on
| the fact that I want Stadia (and cloud gaming as a whole) to
| succeed.
| mdoms wrote:
| > I know it's cool to hate on Stadia still
|
| What is up with the Stadia people thinking anyone on Earth
| gives them a single moment of thought whatsoever? No one who
| doesn't use it cares enough to Stadia to hate it, trust me.
| jonathannorris wrote:
| I get all the doom and gloom about this announcement, but it's
| exactly what I would be doing if I ran Stadia. Don't waste
| money trying to build first-party games when you don't have
| scale, spend all your money on scaling. Specifically:
|
| - Spend budget on getting more AAA titles released on Stadia on
| launch day. (like they did with Cyberpunk)
|
| - Spend budget giving huge discounts on AAA titles to attract
| more users.
|
| - Spend the money to get integrated into every Smart TV
| platform (Roku, Google TV, LG Web OS, Tizen, Apple TV, ect.).
| TV Boxes should include a Stadia controller in their box and a
| few months free.
|
| - Advertise that you can play AAA console games on the TV /
| Streaming box you already own.
| ece wrote:
| These are all things that consoles and existing game stores
| do extremely well already, and the last two are net deficits
| for Stadia if you have an ISP or router that's not up to the
| job.
|
| Amazon Luna, GeForce Now, Shadow, running Parsec in the cloud
| and paying by the minute, xCloud, and PS Now all better
| Stadia by offering game subscriptions or more features or are
| more sustainable by being cheaper in the case of GeForce Now
| for 4K.
|
| If Amazon Luna/GeForce Now can succeed as upstarts, it says
| Google should've likely focused on a game subscription
| service or offering a standalone game streaming platform.
| They're closer to being the later with this announcement, but
| not until I can play my Steam/GoG/Itch/Epic libraries on it.
|
| I have a few hours in AC:Odyssey and BL3 on Stadia, it's a
| good service that has improved a lot too. It's still tough to
| recommend if you're not the most occasional gamer.
| Andrex wrote:
| From Kotaku[0]:
|
| > "The service's best moments may have been when its third-party
| ports showed off the strength of the cloud gaming model, in which
| a game can run well on just about any device with a screen and a
| strong internet connection. Ubisoft games such as Assassin's
| Creed Odyssey ran well on Stadia. Destiny 2's Stadia support let
| players of that game drop in for an extra match or quest from
| their phone or laptop when they were far from their regular
| gaming gear. When Cyberpunk 2077 was faltering on everything else
| in December, it was running quite well on Stadia.
|
| They're not wrong. If Phil *Harrison is trying to turn Stadia
| into, say, the "Unreal Engine of cloud gaming" (scare quotes
| added by me), he'll likely be much more successful at doing that
| than trying to make "a traditional console like PS5, but, like,
| _in the cloud_. "
|
| This shatters my confidence in Stadia as an ongoing consumer
| platform, though (especially that Stadio Pro sub, and possibly
| even the hardware/controllers too.)
|
| 0. https://kotaku.com/google-stadia-shuts-down-internal-
| studios...
| mywittyname wrote:
| > This shatters my confidence in Stadia as an ongoing consumer
| platform,
|
| Being affiliated with Google is why I never bothered with
| Stadia. Google can't stick with platforms long enough to make
| investing in them worthwhile. I knew Stadia would under-perform
| whatever obscenely high standards Google set for the product
| and would roll it into YouTube Gaming or something before
| silently killing it off.
| Hadrianus wrote:
| Phil Spencer is XBOX, Phil Harrison is Google
| [deleted]
| Andrex wrote:
| Harrison was also formerly Xbox, but point taken and post
| updated!
| Narishma wrote:
| Seems like anything he touches goes sideways. PS3, Xbox One
| and now Stadia.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> >"When Cyberpunk 2077 was faltering on everything else in
| December, it was running quite well on Stadia."
|
| This is the first time I have heard that, it seems like
| something that Stadia's marketing team would want to tell
| people.
| MikusR wrote:
| Stadia and PC's (even 3 year old ones) ran the game well.
| eecks wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that there are/were game breaking
| bugs, ui bugs, AI bugs, lack of features, strange stuff
| that plagued all versions of the game.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| It was quite well known that Cyberpunk 2077 was running
| smoother on PCs and trash on consoles. I was surprised too,
| but lots of reviews came out that Stadia was the best
| performing out of the "console" varieties.
|
| - https://www.androidcentral.com/cyberpunk-2077-stadia-review
|
| - https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-cybe
| r...
| s3r3nity wrote:
| Can confirm - Cyberpunk 2077, along with Doom Eternal and
| Celeste, have been a blast on Stadia for me for the past few
| months.
| guardiangod wrote:
| I know Google/Stadia recently partnered with LG to bundle the
| Stadia app with LG TVs, but I wonder why Google doesn't do this
| with every TV manufacturers (save Sony.)
|
| If I were Stadia's marketing chief, I'd
|
| 1. Bribe the TV manufacturers to include the Stadia app
|
| 2. Advertise that the TV includes _a game console_ during TV
| commercials.
|
| 3. Allow the TV users to pay a bit extra ($20?) to buy a basic
| game controller.
|
| 4. Have all the store demo units to auto stream Stadia playing
| video games and explicitly explain you don't need a
| xbox/playstation to play these games.
|
| 5. Buy out Witcher 3/Call of Duty 4/Project Cars 2/other older
| games and make them free for TVs with Stadia bundles.
|
| Most smart TVs these days are more than fast enough to stream HD
| broadcast. I don't understand why Google doesn't push this.
|
| Fiddling with my phone to play Stadia on my TV is pretty crumple
| some. It's just too much work for normal folks. People just want
| to turn on the TV and start playing.
|
| Edit: I guess monopolistic abuse is a concern. However Sony and
| MS have their own streaming services. Google can just advertise
| 'play games with Stadia and Playstation Now and Xbox Cloud on
| your TV!' I am 100% if players switch to playing games on TV
| without game consoles, it hurts MS/Sony a lot more than to
| Google.
| wronglebowski wrote:
| There was recently an article about Stadia where a developer
| from a decent sized studio claimed they were approached by
| Google for Stadia. What did Google offer for the developer to
| bring the game to Stadia? Almost nothing. The figure was in the
| tens of thousands.
|
| For reference when Microsoft/Epic approaches the studios for
| games on their platforms they front the entire development
| cost. Sometimes millions of dollars. Google is just cheap and
| won't invest in their own platform.
|
| Direct quote: "We were approached by the Stadia team," one
| prominent indie developer told me. "Usually with that kind of
| thing, they lead with some kind of offer that would give you an
| incentive to go with them." But the incentive "was kind of non-
| existent," they said. "That's the short of it."
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-so-few-games-on-goog...
| Jare wrote:
| > when Microsoft/Epic approaches the studios for games on
| their platforms they front the entire development cost
|
| We once had a Microsoft rep come visit us to get us to
| publish our upcoming mobile games for Windows Mobile Tablet
| notreallysurewhatwasthatanymore. When we asked what kind of
| support they were ready to provide, they offered to lend us a
| device for a few weeks.
|
| Of course it's not representative of how things should
| happen, but for every big partnership or exclusive you read
| about, there's a dozen dumb wastes of time.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| As an independent person without a company, Microsoft gave
| me a free Windows Phone just for expressing _interest_ in
| developing an app for it. These sorts of developer
| incentives kinda come and go, depending on the platform and
| how much they 're investing in it.
| lozaning wrote:
| When I was in college, you could show up to their 'Make
| an app day' and as long you successfully uploaded your
| own version of their slot machine app you'd be entered
| into a drawing for a bunch of really nice hardware.
| Microsoft was terrible at promoting these events, so
| everytime I went there where more prizes than people.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| OK, but...
|
| was that the end of the discussion? Was there, you know,
| pushback like "we want 10 devices each of the two most
| popular sizes, and exclusivity for xxx months, and, and..."
|
| Or did everything just fizzle out after "well, we'll lend
| you the unit I have in the back of my car?"
| lrae wrote:
| Yeah, not sure where the idea comes from that Microsoft
| fronts like the entire development cost for ... for what
| even? As a publisher? Sure, maybe.
|
| For games coming to Game Pass? No.
|
| Same for the EGS, it's not like they front all those games.
| (Most exclusivity is bought way later in the process.)
|
| But the original comment is pretty much Windows Phone back
| then. To this day I have no idea why Microsoft was so cheap
| and didn't even try to get developers on their platform.
| Rip Lumias, some of you were some great devices.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Epic exclusives have generally been provided in the form
| of a revenue guarantee on projected sales, I believe.
| Essentially, they're not paying much of anything if the
| game is successful and profitable on it's own, but if it
| tanks, the developers still get paid as if it did not.
|
| For an indie developer, this basically means worrying
| about whether the game will succeed a non-issue prior to
| launch.
| wronglebowski wrote:
| My point of reference here is from this twitter thread.
|
| https://twitter.com/RaveofRavendale/status/13094734056039
| 096...
|
| "With Nowhere Prophet, it was an interesting case because
| we were also launching on Xbox Game Pass at the same
| time, which had essentially already secured financial
| success for the console versions"
|
| Not exclusive, still got a significant chunk of cash.
| lrae wrote:
| Having the money to port a game to console is great, but
| usually not comparable to fronting the full development
| of a game.
|
| There might be a couple where Epic might have done that
| (kind of, I know they saved some games), but I don't
| think Microsoft funded any development for a gamepass
| game so far. (From a third party, not published by
| Microsoft.)
| rodgerd wrote:
| Its remarkable to contrast with, say, GamePass; while there's
| not a lot of disclosure around what that entails precisely, a
| few small developers have suggested it pretty much floats
| their studio financially (and doesn't require a re-write, as
| Stadia does).
|
| From a customer perspective, it gets the game on streaming,
| Xbox, and Windows PC.
| madrox wrote:
| Having been approached by Google for these kinds of projects,
| I 100% believe this. I was leading a team approached by them
| to do something similar for Google Glass. There was no real
| incentive there except the privilege of being an early glass
| partner. The entire process of working with them was a
| nightmare and we decided to bow out.
|
| I'm short on any attempt Google makes at being a media
| company.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Just to add general interest info to this strain of the
| conversation: I had to work with Apple in ensuring content
| for the launch of News+ in Canada after they bought out
| Next Issue/Texture, and they were very involved and the
| incentives were substantial.
|
| It makes a real-world difference, there's no doubt about
| it. Hell, this is why governments issue arts funding. The
| return has virtually limitless potential in more than just
| the financial aspects. But it does take commitment,
| perseverance, and often, patience.
| canada_dry wrote:
| > commitment, perseverance, and often, patience
|
| Despite these being crucial attributes to being a good
| developer, it's shocking how few (people and tech
| organizations) exhibit them.
| krick wrote:
| I'm not sure if I'm surprised or not. On one hand, it kind
| of fits my mental image of Google perfectly, I don't know
| why. On the other: doesn't Google have a shitload of money
| and doesn't Google burn it so often by starting hundreds of
| projects it just kills after a couple of years of
| development?
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Google glass and game streaming are two very different
| projects with different motivations/incentives etc for
| partnering. Game streaming is on the cusp of becoming
| mainstream. The technology works (playable latency), and
| the overall product is simpler than competing products
| (pcs, consoles) for the job we hire gaming hardware for. It
| is clear the future is in the controllers and displays, not
| in math boxes. The biggest difference is that gaming is an
| existing habit gamers have. Google Glass was something
| completely new and was unclear what we were using it for.
|
| I would also say "media company" is pretty broad. Will
| Google become a media infrastructure company? yes (they
| already are). Will they become a media platform? yes, (they
| already are). Anything more and it's probably spreading
| investment too thin, but those are substantial components
| to media.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Game Streaming also needs typical home internet
| connections to get better before it can really go
| mainstream.
|
| Not everyone has low latency, high reliability fibre in
| their home, yet. If you have some crappy DSL or whatever
| then the experience isn't great. Likewise if your WiFi
| signal is anything less than perfect!
|
| And the people who do pay for the best internet
| connections are often those who don't need Stadia,
| because they already have latest-generation consoles and
| gaming PCs?
| enos_feedler wrote:
| That's a great point. I did say the technology is proven
| but did not specify the market this is ready for. It is
| sort of like Tesla adoption 10 years ago. It will take
| time for the investments in technology and infrastructure
| to cover more of the market. Hopefully Verizon can
| accelerate their mmWave 5g deploys.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Given Goog's history on this, I read this announcement as
| them soft-killing Stadia. They aren't going to admit defeat,
| but unless they put real resources behind paying people to
| use it, they aren't going to see any use of it as an API and
| are effectively mothballing it.
| Reason077 wrote:
| I hope not. The Stadia _platform_ is fantastic: the best
| streaming user experience out there. It's just that much of
| the Stadia Pro content is mediocre, and the paid titles
| tend to be expensive. (Compare to GeForce Now with it's
| awkward, clunky UX but near-unlimited library of content
| via Steam)
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Thanks, from that same article proof that the Google
| Graveyard is hurting Google...
|
| >This concern -- that Google might just give up on Stadia at
| some point and kill the service, as it has done with so many
| other services over the years -- was repeatedly brought up,
| unprompted, by every person we spoke with for this piece.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| > For reference when Microsoft/Epic approaches the studios
| for games on their platforms they front the entire
| development cost.
|
| This is so painfully misleading.
|
| You're either describing situations where Microsoft or Epic
| have become the publisher for the game, or you're describing
| situations where extremely large titles are paid to
| _exclusively_ release on a platform where they will then
| recoup costs from as the sales have to go through their
| platform.
| Jabbles wrote:
| Sounds like a lot of effort, why not just put an ad on the
| Chrome new tab page?
|
| https://9to5google.com/2020/10/23/google-chrome-shopping-
| new....
| smileybarry wrote:
| > Most smart TVs these days are more than fast enough to stream
| HD broadcast. I don't understand why Google doesn't push this.
|
| A lot of them have pretty bad game mode latency, though, which
| isn't a problem with home consoles but start to become a
| problem once you add streaming latency. Then some of them have
| >10ms decode latency, and all of it starts to ramp up the
| delay.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Google generally doesn't do BD that well. I think it's
| something to do with their start as a consumer-facing company.
| They prefer making a thing and then marketing it rather than
| using partnerships to get in.
|
| The Android stuff seemed to suffer quite a bit from this early
| on, though they seem to have a handle on it now.
| p1necone wrote:
| Not enough people have consistently fast internet without data
| caps for this to work. Can you imagine the backlash when
| everyones tv with "included game console" turns out to be a
| stuttery laggy mess?
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Moreover, the people with really fantastic Internet access
| tend to also be the same people that can afford to buy a
| console or gaming pc instead.
| paulpan wrote:
| Sounds like the right approach, and it seems Google is slowly
| moving in that direction...starting with this decision.
|
| As others have commented, it was pure hubris for Google (and
| Rick Osterloh) to believe they could just start a new game
| studio and use it to fuel growth of the Stadia streaming
| platform. Xbox surely would've died without Halo!
|
| This "do it all myself" approach needs to start with building a
| massive user base upon which to lure other game developers and
| TV manufacturers - not the other way around. A telling sign is
| that the newest Google TV dongle doesn't yet support Stadia...
|
| From a hardware technical standpoint, I think most TV
| manufacturers don't include a powerful enough SOC from which to
| run a Stadia app (e.g. a built-in Chromecast != Chromecast
| dongle). There's also some server-side compatibility issues
| that we're not aware of.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I don't know if this is a consideration, but the reason Sony's
| PlayStation 3 included "OtherOS" feature was so that it would
| be classified as a computer instead of a gaming console to
| avoid a stiff import tax.
|
| I wonder if there's a difference between making Stadia
| available via an app store and having it pre-installed or
| advertised as a core function of the device?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jayd16 wrote:
| Stadia could already be on those TVs. Google/Android TV has
| built in chromecast support but Stadia doesn't register these
| as a supported chromecast.
|
| I think its probably some technical issue or they don't want to
| risk getting a bad reputation by supporting a wide list of
| semi-compatible devices.
| crucifiction wrote:
| The reason they don't push this is because Stadia, like a lot
| of things, is just a side project at google. It does nothing to
| drive significant new ad revenue, so it's never going to get
| this kind of deep pocket investment.
| causality0 wrote:
| Bingo. They didn't even bother to include Stadia support in
| the latest Chromecast. To me that says _nobody_ high up at
| Google cares about Stadia in a meaningful way. At this point
| I 'm taking bets on how much Play Store credit Stadia
| subscribers are going to receive when the service shuts down
| and all their purchased games evaporate.
|
| The saddest part is, the technology works well. Really well.
| If Stadia had launched as a Netflix for games it would be
| very successful. Paying full price for individual games that
| stop existing as soon as _Google_ gets bored? That 's a
| dangerous investment my friend.
| tclancy wrote:
| Do you mean the Google TV? Because Chromecast Ultra has
| been how you use Stadia from the start. Google TV support
| is apparently coming this year but yeah, I am suspicious of
| the whole thing. Worst case, I am out $60 for the
| controller and not all my email or something.
| notatoad wrote:
| the latest chromecast is the "Chromecast with Google TV",
| also called the 3rd-gen chromecast. The Chromecast ultra
| is the previous generation.
|
| https://store.google.com/ca/product/chromecast_google_tv
| the-dude wrote:
| That is one of the most obnoxious sales pages I have seen
| in a while. WTF is up with the scrolling?
| causality0 wrote:
| I'm talking about the "Chromecast With Google TV", which
| is the official replacement for the Chromecast Ultra.
| ljm wrote:
| Google basically sounds like a large scale startup
| incubator where every successful project is doomed to fail.
| causality0 wrote:
| There's only two outcomes: Either Google gets bored and
| kills it because it doesn't generate ten billion dollars
| a year in profit or it becomes so ingrained in our
| society killing it might cause an angry mob to attack
| Google HQ with torches and pitchforks.
|
| Why it can't spin these side projects off into their own
| companies to survive or die on their own merits I don't
| know.
| aabhay wrote:
| The second one should read "or it becomes a large scale
| ad data gathering opportunity". That's the value of Maps
| and Gmail IMO.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| You're implicitly painting "become an unqualified mega-
| success" and "become a large scale data gathering
| opportunity" as if they were mutually exclusive, but
| they're not. It's _because_ Maps and Mail are so wildly
| successful that they 're great data gathering
| opportunities.
| jsight wrote:
| > Why it can't spin these side projects off into their
| own companies to survive or die on their own merits I
| don't know.
|
| They would only do that if the spinoff made them a
| noticeable amount of money. I suspect that is rarely the
| case.
| im3w1l wrote:
| My guess would be that disentangling a project from all
| proprietary dependencies is very expensive.
| Traster wrote:
| It's actually a pretty interesting element of Google,
| their adherence to a centralized infrastructure must make
| spin offs and acquisitions incredibly difficult.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Couldn't the spun out company just license the
| centralized compute infrastructure and subsequently
| migrate as needed?
|
| Seems easy enough, unless I'm missing something here
| StillBored wrote:
| Wasn't that sort of the point of alphabet? To put these
| into their own self sustaining "divisions" so they could
| be spun out easily or at a high level choose to fund
| them?
| ljm wrote:
| I'm sure Alphabet was really a restructuring to optimise
| tax returns
| fossuser wrote:
| They do sometimes do that, Loon 'graduated' to become its
| own company that issued its own shares and has since
| died.
|
| Waymo is another spin off company.
|
| The structure of Alphabet exists for this purpose.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| > Why it can't spin these side projects off into their
| own companies to survive or die on their own merits I
| don't know.
|
| They do sometimes. Niantic (Pokemon Go) used to be part
| of Google Maps (well, Geo) and they spun out completely.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Google is like a rich guy who switches hobbies.
|
| He may have real musical talent, but he'll never put in the
| blood, sweat & tears for the band to make it big.
| danellis wrote:
| Google has ADHD.
| scep12 wrote:
| Then why do it at all? What would possibly justify such a
| large investment of capital if Google didn't believe it to be
| a potentially nontrivial contributor of future revenue?
| curiousllama wrote:
| Think of it like there's generally two ways to innovate.
|
| 1) Old-school Waterfall: evaluate, commit, and then build
| (Tesla, Apple, 2000s MSFT are examples)
|
| 2) Spray and Pray: build, evaluate, and then commit
| (Facebook, Amazon are examples)
|
| Google is 2
| deegles wrote:
| People need promotions I guess.
| ballenf wrote:
| When you have Google's resources and talent, you probably
| need a reason _not_ to do these kinds of things. If a
| product has a decent chance of generating revenue or
| building out consumer profiles or reaching a new
| demographic and doesn 't undermine the ads business, it has
| a shot of being pursued.
|
| For gaming, I bet you could make a strong case that Google
| needs another hook into younger users who will stop using
| Google search the second their phone changes default search
| engines. Kind of an insurance policy.
|
| The psychological profiles of users that could be built are
| also kinda terrifying. Hopefully that's not a part of the
| business case for Stadia.
|
| Finally there's a case to be made for synergy with Youtube
| and its efforts to compete with Twitch.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Senior engineer retention program?
| dleslie wrote:
| Because of how Google's internal performance evaluation
| works.
|
| You need to ship and show user growth. You are effectively
| punished for making improvements and fixes that do not have
| a clear connection to user growth.
| Lammy wrote:
| So another company can't.
| Exmoor wrote:
| Cynical answer: Because at big tech companies culture leads
| them to believe they have to have a competing product in
| every new market rather than letting their "competitors" go
| unopposed. Occasionally it works out, but often you just
| get a ton of also-rans. The companies are so big a
| profitable that even complete failure barely moves the
| stock price.
|
| Nobody is incentivized to point out the proverbial emperor
| has no clothes. Top execs have something they can point to
| as "innovation" for a few quarters. Lower leadership for
| the project has their kingdom expanded and probably comes
| out the other end better off career wise. I would imagine
| its most frustrating for the actual IC's and PM's who pour
| their lives into something that eventually just gets
| unceremoniously deprecated, but they get to cash some
| pretty good paychecks and it probably helps their careers
| as well.
| adrr wrote:
| How do you increase revenue/stock price in meaningful way
| without expanding into other markets?
|
| Google does these half ass attempts with minimal risk.
| They could be a major player in cloud computing, IoT etc.
| Amazon is dominating these areas with Ring and AWS.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I expect this is true. Perhaps Jade Raymond will start a
| service like Stadia and do this. It would be an excellent
| move on her part.
| SR2Z wrote:
| There are like 700 full time engineers working on it. That's
| not a side project.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I think they know that it's a sub standard product that is
| "good enough" for today but it will never be good enough for
| a use case like VR. I think the future of gaming is in ultra
| low latency, high resolution experiences and people will look
| at Stadia like a silent film from the 1920s.
|
| Also it's clear that by getting rid of their reference
| developer they don't have the appetite to dog food Stadia for
| themselves. There is a secondary and tertiary reason Apple
| and Microsoft write software for their platforms, it's to 2)
| serve as a reference for other developers what is possible
| and 3) iron out the bugs in their SDKs.
|
| Google doesn't take that seriously and it shows us the Stadia
| is already starting to wind down.
| fathermocker wrote:
| Stadia already has very low latency. Maybe not enough for
| VR, but it's still an impressive achievement.
| topkai22 wrote:
| I think you are right that Google isn't taking it
| seriously, but one of the futures of gaming is subscription
| streaming, for basically the same reasons as video.
| Streaming can dramatically improve user experience by
| making it trival to acquire or switch between games, and
| subscription revenue allows providers to sponsor the
| creation of content that doesn't make financial sense in a
| individual purchase model- think games that strongly appeal
| to a single demo or amazing, but short, experiences.
| notatoad wrote:
| but up until now they did apparently have funding to be
| running an internal studio? seems like those funds could have
| been better spent bribing tv companies like the parent is
| suggesting.
| username90 wrote:
| Google is a company of engineers. Engineers solve problems
| by building stuff, not by bribing companies. I think the
| main exception is Android and Ads, which also happens to be
| the main parts of Google I disagree with...
| [deleted]
| rco8786 wrote:
| 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
| Stadia to shine, but I'd guess that the HN crowd skews towards
| that.
|
| 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+ on a gaming rig,
| check out Stadia.
|
| The game library does leave a lot to be desired, no question
| about that. But this decision seems to be the right move to
| mitigate that by giving developers better access to getting their
| games on Stadia rather than Google trying to be both the platform
| and the content.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| > Obviously you need a strong, steady internet connection for
| Stadia to shine, but I'd guess that the HN crowd skews towards
| that.
|
| Sad Australian internet noises.
|
| > don't want to drop $1k+ on a gaming rig, check out Stadia.
|
| Or, or, do buy the gaming rig, because it will still work and
| you'll still have the games 3 years after Google inevitably
| shuts down stadia and you're left with nothing.
| rco8786 wrote:
| 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.
| muppetman wrote:
| Great that it works where you are, I assume the US. Here in New
| Zealand of course it's not launched. So while I can pick one of
| any other consoles/devices to play games on, Stadia isn't one
| of them.
|
| If you can't reach more than one country, why would anyone want
| to develop for it?
| cheeze wrote:
| Stadia is supported in 21 countries though. A majority of NA
| and EU.
|
| Totally feel for you, but similar to anything that requires a
| decent internet connection, NZ and AUS get left in the dust
| mdoms wrote:
| NZ has excellent internet speeds.
| jankeymeulen wrote:
| Stadia needs low latency to a Google DC. There are plenty
| of such DCs in the US and Europe, but not in NZ.
| rco8786 wrote:
| > If you can't reach more than one country, why would anyone
| want to develop for it?
|
| Stadia is in a bunch of countries and rolling out to more.
| It's almost as though it's a new product and didn't
| immediately launch at global scale.
| anonymousab wrote:
| I can't imagine anyone seeing it as a good sign of confidence
| if Sony or Microsoft abandoned all first party game development
| for their platforms. Not even just exclusives development. Not
| just selling off or divesting their studios, but shuttering
| them altogether.
|
| Stadia being good tech is just another sign that Stadia
| deserved better than Google.
| rco8786 wrote:
| > I can't imagine anyone seeing it as a good sign of
| confidence if Sony or Microsoft abandoned all first party
| game development for their platforms.
|
| Apples to Oranges IMO. Stadia is a PC game streaming service,
| not a physical game console. Google doesn't own the PC game
| platform, they're just facilitating it.
|
| If Google had never attempted a game studio and launched
| Stadia as a standalone platform (as it will now be), _no one_
| would have said "ok but it's a bad sign that Google isn't
| getting into the game development business"
|
| > Stadia being good tech is just another sign that Stadia
| deserved better than Google.
|
| Probably true. I wish it were a standalone company also, but
| it's not.
| speby wrote:
| I am with you. I think the actual use case for a casual gamer
| is absolutely there, running and playing decent games from many
| different devices, without having to invest in and own a more
| expensive PC equipped with higher end internals (graphics,
| etc.).
|
| I am worried about Google's ability to actually execute and
| make this successful, however (And that does give me hesitancy
| to buying some of the games that are on there, because they
| aren't transferrable to somewhere else if Stadia is shut down).
|
| For one, with this in-house studio model, they haven't even
| _shipped_ a single game yet and they 're pulling the plug on
| the approach. That just seems like giving up before they've
| even tried. But Ok...
|
| As others have said, the single biggest issue with Stadia is
| not that it doesn't work wonderfully (it does), it is the
| extremely limited catalog of games available that needs to be
| addressed. If they can successfully address that, then they
| really do have a pretty sweet offering that will be tough to
| beat.
| mdoms wrote:
| It's not in my country so as far as I'm concerned it doesn't
| exist. I expect Google will kill the product entirely before it
| ever gets here.
| cryptoquick wrote:
| Imagine it being a banner year for PC gaming during a pandemic,
| and then shutting down your cloud gaming service. It's almost
| like Google can easily make their money elsewhere, so they don't
| have to make their money any other way, or even put in the work
| to make it work.
| czhiddy wrote:
| I was looking forward to seeing some of the games that would have
| only been possible on Stadia's architecture. Imagine a
| Battlefield-style game with a larger map and over 500+
| simultaneous players.
|
| Hopefully the games that SG&E do finish showcase what's possible
| when a developer targets Stadia's strengths.
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| Planetside 2 (2012) has 1200 players per continent ie one giant
| map with zero loading screens.
|
| Very active subscriber base and developer even in 2021.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Why is that sort of game only possible with cloud rendering vs
| some dedicated server architecture?
|
| I think you'd need to go much higher in terms of how many
| unpredictable, latency dependent objects are needed on screen
| before you'd start hitting issues with client side rendering.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| I just got into Planetside 2 and it's everything I wanted it to
| be.
| dleslie wrote:
| As a game developer, Stadia does not in any way excite me because
| of my prior experiences with the Android App Store.
|
| That is to say, if somehow Stadia is successful then I expect a
| long term outcome where games are nearly all freemium adware or
| grind-to-win, with a few poorly-performing notable exceptions;
| mashing out the same three or four proven-successful concepts
| with new skins ad nauseum. The margins will be so razor-thin that
| there won't be any room to risk on innovation.
|
| This is because they don't care to improve discovery on their
| store front. It's always been awful, it will continue to be
| awful. There will be virtually no quality control to speak of,
| with sudden and opaque decisions to remove products, and so on...
|
| Recall that in the very early days of the Android app store it
| was flush with $20 games, and effectively absent of stolen
| content, adware and spyware. Look at it now.
|
| The two major improvements that it might have over the App Store
| experience would be an absence of asset-ripped "clones" (read:
| your APK is ripped, minorly re-branded, and re-uploaded with a
| similar name), and perhaps far less malicious software, because
| access to the local device will be limited.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| How dare you express a personal opinion that doesn't suck off
| the trend setting tech industry leaders! Down vote! Ban!
| Mwahahaha...
| olivermarks wrote:
| I feel bad for Phil Harrison. He worked v hard at Sony
| PlayStation to get a Facebook style platform off the ground way
| before FB ever existed, got shafted in the 1st party game dev
| worldwide studios politics wars, joined MSFT to try and resurrect
| Xbox and is now presumably not doing well with Stadia at Google
| which has broken a lot of very hard ground to enable cloud
| gaming. The games always come before the platform (People bought
| Sonic The Hedgehog, not the enabling Sega hardware). Assuming
| Stadia doesn't disappear someone else will probably profit from
| all this.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Stadia is a good idea that did not reach its potential. But the
| same can be said about just about anything Google launches these
| days. I'm starting to get worried about waymo in particular.
| Perhaps it will not see any of the necessary investments either.
| liaukovv wrote:
| That was quick
| throwaway29303 wrote:
| The article says Google will continue to
| operate the Stadia gaming service and its $10 monthly Stadia
| Pro service. It's unclear how many, if any, exclusive games
| will still come to the service, though the company has
| indicated that it can still sign new games and will bring more
| third-party releases to the platform. It nevertheless will look
| to many like a draw down of the plan to have Stadia run as a
| bona fide competitor to console platforms.
|
| So it's not dead yet. The race is still on.
| liaukovv wrote:
| I would agree if their service was a way you could play games
| you own on google's computers, but stadia is more of an
| another player in console wars, with its upsides and
| downsides. And we know that consoles without exclusives lose,
| I bet product managers at google know that too.
| Animats wrote:
| Google had a game studio? Did it make anything?
| bhaile wrote:
| They brought over an exec to build the studio. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/19/18272965/google-stadia-
| stu...
| dharmab wrote:
| As far as I can tell they never released a game.
| [deleted]
| hexadec wrote:
| Nothing of real note it seems: https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-
| news/google-stadia-announces...
| josefresco wrote:
| Journey to the Savage Planet
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_Savage_Planet
|
| *through acquisition
| macspoofing wrote:
| Typical Google half-assery. If they wanted Stadia to succeed,
| they should have been investing in game studios years before so
| at launch they would some games to demonstrate the concept of
| cloud gaming and actually drive sales. After all, it's really all
| about the games. And third-parties are never going to do it.
|
| But there was no plan. They just did it and hoped success would
| just happen.
| danbolt wrote:
| Yeah, I feel like they should have looked how Microsoft more or
| less lucked out with Bungie producing a killer app for them.
| [1] Successfully creating a game service requires content,
| content, and more content.
|
| That said, there's still space for Stadia's infrastructure to
| compete with Xbox/Azure.
|
| [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwqjg3/the-complete-
| untold-h...
| jlawer wrote:
| Yeah luck was involved, but Microsoft was at least smart
| enough to buy a company with a good looking game which had
| been in development for a while. This brought down the
| timeline. Bungie had showed off halo at MacWorld and was
| initially targeted at Mac (with an expected port to PC).
|
| Google could do this, or pay even bigger $ for a timed
| exclusive from a AAA publisher. Instead google started their
| own studios, which would likely pay off in the long run, but
| google doesn't have the attention span to operate like that.
| paxys wrote:
| Some of the industry's largest players have been in the game
| development space for 30+ years and even then are only marginally
| successful. Xbox itself was on the brink of being shut down/sold
| off a few years ago. What exactly did Google (and
| Amazon/Apple/Facebook) expect would happen?
|
| Focusing on Stadia's strength as a platform seems to be a good
| move forward. It is a technically sound service. I'm sure the
| massive bump it got from Cyberpunk showed execs that a
| partnership-only gaming model could be successful. They do need
| to expand licensing, improve their subscription catalog and get
| more indie studios involved. Relying on users to consistently pay
| $60+ for games on top of the monthly fees is a losing business
| model.
| gman83 wrote:
| Yeah I agree this is the right move. They should use the
| YouTube model of just providing the best service for everyone
| else to provide their content on. Google has never been any
| good at creating original content.
| echelon wrote:
| $10,000 long bet that Google kills Stadia by 2025.
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| I just don't see the value add of stadia. Can someone explain?
| Why would a gamer choose it over a PS5 or Xbox?
| dharmab wrote:
| For one, it's been very difficult to buy a PS5/Xbox/high end PC
| for quite a while now. Stadia and other similar services are
| one of the few platforms that can run the newest AAA titles
| well and does so without physical supply problems.
| Eridrus wrote:
| It's a lot cheaper. You can imagine the cost getting down to
| basically the cost of the controller if users already have a
| streaming device (eg Chromecast) capable of running the
| streaming client.
|
| Putting aside Cyberpunk's overall problems, it performed a lot
| better on Stadia than last gen hardware
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/10/22167303/cyberpunk-2077-...
| Nullabillity wrote:
| You're still paying for the hardware somehow, even if it's
| not in your home.
|
| Theoretically nobody's going to play 24/7 so you could share
| the hardware between multiple customers, but in practice
| latency means that your DCs need to be close to them anyway.
|
| The only way Stadia (or some other bullshit like it) could
| possibly be cheaper would be:
|
| 1. Price dumping
|
| 2. Preferential game pricing from publishers (to instead hide
| the hardware costs there)
|
| 3. Gym model (tricking casual users into signing long and
| expensive contracts)
| wccrawford wrote:
| PC Games with the power of an always-upgraded PC. Maybe not
| 100% top of the line, but above average, always, with no
| upgrade cost.
|
| Plus you can play on your TV, mobile device, computer, etc,
| with the same game saves seamlessly moving between all of them.
|
| No initial $400+ cost.
|
| It offers a lot of the same benefits as consoles, including a
| monthly subscription that provides good, free games.
|
| The downsides are latency and having to have an internet
| connection, and the latency is actually pretty decent. Oh, and
| having to buy the games from Stadia, even if you already own it
| on Steam, but that's no different than other "consoles".
|
| It's a very compelling platform that they've completely failed
| to market correctly. With them giving up on first-party games,
| it seems pretty inevitable that they'll give up on the whole
| thing now, too. A lot of people never thought it'd last in the
| first place, and that's partly from their history and partly
| because Google didn't show enough commitment to it. Those
| studios that they just shut down were the best proof of their
| commitment.
| dharmab wrote:
| > but that's no different than other "consoles"
|
| Worth pointing out that Microsoft has opened up their
| platforms so you can buy a single copy of a game and play on
| any supported Xbox or Windows PC: https://www.xbox.com/en-
| US/games/xbox-play-anywhere
| devonkim wrote:
| At the moment when PC GPU prices are going through the roof
| into insanity territory, Stadia and its hardware requirements
| seems like a great idea in comparison to paying $2k for a GPU
| to play almost any title fairly smoothly at 4k on a shiny TV.
| This calculus isn't what was predicted for the value statement
| to consumers though
| psanford wrote:
| You don't have to buy any hardware to start using stadia from
| your browser. If you want to play on your TV the hardware is a
| lot cheaper than a PS5 or Xbox.
|
| Its also nice to not have a large box hooked up to your TV.
| smabie wrote:
| it's way more portable so that's a major value proposition in
| my book. I would never use it for multi-player games, but for
| single player it's probably okay if you're an average gamer.
|
| I personally wouldn't use it because I'm anal about refresh
| rates/max settings/latency/etc but for other people (especially
| younger gamers with less disposable income) I think it's pretty
| compelling.
| gman83 wrote:
| You don't have to wait an hour to download/install a game. You
| can start playing instantly.
| hexadec wrote:
| _Insert surprised Pikachu face_
|
| That aside, I do not think this is a bad move at all. None of the
| titles they were working on were that appealing, hopefully it
| will mean they pivot to integrate more into a shared licensing
| model. I would pay $5 a month to be able to import my current
| Steam games and play remotely, but this fractured model is
| incredibly reminiscent of video streaming.
|
| We had a first mover (Steam/ Netflix) come in and now all the
| stragglers are saturating the market with similar but slightly
| differentiated products (Stadia/ Peacock). I am curious what the
| next evolution of this model will look like.
| echelon wrote:
| > I am curious what the next evolution of this model will look
| like.
|
| Marketplace.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What an embarrassment. They showed off so many groundbreaking
| features that are only possible playing via the cloud then turned
| it into just another game streaming service.
| jtchang wrote:
| This is a fantastic move by Google. The war for gaming as a
| service will be on the platform level and something that Google
| is well positioned to win in. Not saying that Steam, Nintendo,
| Nvidia won't be some serious contenders as well but the outlook
| for gamers is quite positive.
|
| I expect to see what the web went through in the early 90s as far
| as turmoil goes. Lots of platforms with all their quirks and
| developers getting behind various ones. Eventually (hopefully?)
| some standards enabling cross platform development of stream
| gaming. Bandwidth/latency still needs to play catch up but 5G is
| getting there. Cellular connections are getting more and more
| stable while landline methods are lagging.
|
| I expect to see each platform playing to their strengths with
| Google pushing their expertise in infrastructure and Nvidia with
| their hardware. Also expect to see the space get even more
| crowded as traditional players join the market.
| dleslie wrote:
| Considering how poorly Google's external developer support has
| historically been, I think it's safe to say that without Google
| dog-fooding Stadia it's going to sputter and die.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Cross platform is old school. You can send email between
| providers, call people on different phones, and access websites
| without knowing what kind of server they're on, but can you
| place a video call from Skype to Google Duo? Send messages from
| Slack to Discord? Tweet something using your Microsoft account?
| The open web is dead, it's all big companies' silos now.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| For context, Amazon is also struggling to make first party games
| [1]. I think it was hubris that these large companies didn't
| start with smaller scoped games and instead jumped head first
| into building their own engines and ips.
|
| [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-
| ga...
| eulers_secret wrote:
| Here's an article I read the other day on this:
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-just-anything-except-g...
|
| My favorite quotation: (context: Frazzini is director-lvl)
| "[...]the team cringed as Frazzini struggled to differentiate
| between hyper-polished conceptual footage and live
| gameplay[...]". I am awe-struck, my only response is: LOL
|
| My second favorite tidbit was about their game "New World", in
| which players "colonize a mythical land and murder inhabitants
| who bear a striking resemblance to Native Americans". Then
| refused to believe their employees who said this was racist and
| offensive. Until they hired a tribal consultant who, indeed,
| found it offensive.
|
| There's other good things in there as well - not listening to
| other employees, hiring and then wasting talent, chasing
| trends, not understanding the industry, not scoping correctly
| (lumberjack). Even AMZN's culture was restrictive and harmful
| (IMO especially "leaders are right a lot" lmao, not at all in
| this case!).
|
| Could you imagine working in an industry for a decade, and then
| being in this position? Where your boss literally cannot
| differentiate between a rendered video and a pre-release video
| game - but the culture has an in-built "you're probably wrong,
| peon" attitude? I'd leave so fast I'd probably forget my desk
| plants!
| danbolt wrote:
| I think a lot about Treasure, a quirky game developer that
| tended to make a bunch of strange games in the past. I think
| their studio director and founder, Masato Maegawa, understood
| the value in being more hands-off in a leadership role. [1]
| [2] Part of me feels like Amazon and Google thought their
| super-direct top-down style would be successful in a creative
| project involving larger team, unaware of the lessons
| previous game developers had learned.
|
| Hardspace: Shipbreaker, on the other hand had a unqiue idea
| and was a critical success, and in a retrospective the
| developers were very explicit not to impose a top-down
| attitude to development. [3] (disclaimer: I work at Blackbird
| Interactive, but not on Hardspace: Shipbreaker)
|
| [1] http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/sinandpuni
| shm...
|
| [2] http://shmuplations.com/aliensoldier/
|
| [3] https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1026825/Forging-Hardspace-
| Ship...
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Could you imagine working in an industry for a decade, and
| then being in this position?
|
| Negotiate for fat RSUs because they need your industry
| experience. Placate the dumb boss long enough for stock to
| vest. Use stock gainz to finance a studio with former
| competent team mates. Sell successful IP back to AMZN. Retire
| to building goofy kids games.
| whymauri wrote:
| I... know about someone who did exactly this (minus selling
| IP back to AMZN).
| Noos wrote:
| It's probably more that PC gaming is just saturated anyways,
| and even throwing money at it won't work unless there is a
| clear and compelling advantage or hook. There are way too many
| market killers that just suck up time and attention now, with
| the rise of games as service.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Perhaps hubris. But it could also be the same thing that
| plagues every developer that tries to build games:
| procrastinating the impossible part (building games, especially
| games worth a damn) by the doing the easy part (building
| tools). And the delusion that you're doing anything of value
| because it feels productive. And the allure of generalization.
| narrator wrote:
| What's funny is a friend of mine who is a talented developer
| and started a game studio surprised me when he started
| blogging about his experience and he was solely focused on
| the characters, story development, animation, etc. Instead of
| technology. Reading about the problems Amazon has been
| having, this seems like the only way to go.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Did amazon build their own engine? I thought they licensed
| cryengine and slapped their brand on it?
| wlesieutre wrote:
| They didn't really build their own engine, they bought a re-
| licensable license to CryEngine, rebranded it to Lumberyard,
| and started their engine work from that.
|
| https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160209005740/en/Ama...
|
| This sale is speculated to have saved Crytek from bankruptcy,
| as they were failing to pay their employees at the time. Lucky
| for Crytek, and Amazon was probably thinking "man, we got a
| great deal on this!"
|
| http://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/source-crytek-i...
|
| Unfortunately the engine they got a great deal on was
| CryEngine, which has made some cool games, but by a lot of
| accounts is not great to work in. Much like the issues reported
| at EA's studios (with Frostbite), if you're working on a game
| in it you want to be working closely with the engine devs.
| They're the ones who know how to make it work, or can fix it
| when it doesn't work.
|
| A number of CryEngine developers left to join Cloud Imperium's
| Frankfurt office working on Star Citizen. That office basically
| exists to pick up the ex-Crytek people who wanted a job where
| they'd get paid. I don't know if Amazon snagged any of them, it
| would've been a harder sell to relocate to the US, but with the
| amount of money they were pouring into this, not impossible.
| Arelius wrote:
| > They didn't really build their own engine, they bought a
| re-licensable license to CryEngine, rebranded it to
| Lumberyard, and started their engine work from that.
|
| If you start to dig in (source-code is one available source)
| What actually is clearly the story is they started building a
| game engine, some higher-up bought a license to CryEngine and
| told them "Here! Use this!" Then they packaged that up as a
| module in the Engine they started building initially, and
| spent the next 5 years slowly deleting bits of CryEngine and
| replacing it with the engine they wanted to build in the
| first place.
|
| Not that that's much better, but I think it clearly speaks to
| the politics at play in the environment.
|
| edit:
|
| To add links to the code:
|
| ly framework, clearly core engine systems unrelated to
| cryengine: https://github.com/aws/lumberyard/tree/6b8dd98ad0e
| 59b1817a79...
|
| Gems, the non crytek plugin system: https://github.com/aws/lu
| mberyard/tree/6b8dd98ad0e59b1817a79...
|
| A big dump of cryengine: https://github.com/aws/lumberyard/tr
| ee/6b8dd98ad0e59b1817a79...
|
| Which we can see has been dramatically shrunken in the time
| since the initial commit: https://github.com/aws/lumberyard/t
| ree/master/dev/Code/CryEn...
| offtop5 wrote:
| I never understood why Amazon rolled another engine.
|
| Unreal and Unity are both fantastic. Let your dev teams pick
| from one of those two and be done with it.
|
| Unless your doing something really special theirs no reason
| to build an engine( if your goal is shipping games )
| LegitShady wrote:
| > I never understood why Amazon rolled another engine.
|
| For the same synergistic effects as Epic and their game
| store + their engine. If you use epic's engine, they charge
| you less to sell your games. It's basically trying to
| incentivize selling on their platform and using their
| platform tools at the same time.
| Lammy wrote:
| > If you use epic's engine, they charge you less to sell
| your games.
|
| Unless you have a contract dispute with them, in which
| case they bankrupt you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too
| _Human#Unreal_Engine_disput...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| In Lumberyard's case, the engine is free but you're
| locked in to AWS for any cloud services
| LegitShady wrote:
| and I'm sure there would be an incentive (financial) to
| using all amazon services/storefront etc.
|
| The reason they started with lumberyard was because
| amazon does platform thinking. Unlike open source they
| can't just take it, so they bought cryengine to start
| with.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Can you imagine spending tens of millions on a game then
| getting blocked from AWS on a policy violation and not
| being able to move it to another provider?
|
| I can't imagine any sane AAA game dev agreeing to those
| demands.
| senkora wrote:
| I saw a talk about Lumberyard once. The really special
| things they wanted to do were integrate it tightly with AWS
| and Twitch, which enabled some neat features like letting
| people spectate games and move their own camera around the
| field to do so.
| franknine wrote:
| You cannot use service from any other cloud provider as
| your game backend if you use Lumberyard.
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/faq
|
| Q. Can my game use an alternate web service instead of
| AWS?
|
| No. By "alternate web service" we mean any non-AWS web
| service that is similar to or can act as a replacement
| for Amazon EC2, Amazon Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon
| RDS, Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, Amazon EC2 Container Service,
| or Amazon GameLift. You can use hardware you own and
| operate for your game servers.
| brnt wrote:
| AWS. Alternate Web Service. Heh.
| williamdclt wrote:
| I know absolutely nothing of game dev, but adding cameras
| to the scene doesn't sound like it would be the most
| complex aspect of developping a video game?
| senkora wrote:
| Imagine a Twitch livestream with tens of thousands of
| viewers, and each one is able to independently move a
| live camera to get the view they want. The complexity
| comes from scale.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Yeah that sounds like a really expensive feature.
|
| Seems like you'd need an instance of the game with its
| own GPU for every viewer.
| hobofan wrote:
| You could very well tie that to a high-tier subscription
| to any Twitch channel. Depending on the game (e.g.
| Fortnite) you could easily server a bunch of viewers from
| the same GPU.
| hobofan wrote:
| Enabling that for in-browser/mobile spectators without
| needing to install the game wouldn't be exactly trivial,
| though.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Why.
|
| Twitch plays Pokemon worked fine .
| hobofan wrote:
| What does that have to do with anything? TPP was a bog
| standard Twitch stream, with no ability for custom per-
| viewer spectator cameras.
| offtop5 wrote:
| I mean, I could probably figure out how to do that in
| Unity in about a week.
|
| You would basically just need to stream the cameras
| output texture to a web app, and then read inputs from
| from said web app. Regardless there's no reason to try
| and create a whole new engine for this, CryTek has always
| been known as one of the worst engines to work in, just
| because it's not supported very well.
| hobofan wrote:
| Yes, that would be the low-tech way to achieve this, but
| if you want to scale that up to Twitch subscriber level
| of users, you would certainly want engine support for
| such a feature. That CryEngine was a bad choice is a
| valid point, though I guess there weren't that many
| public engines to choose from at the time that were that
| desperate for money.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Yes and no, if Amazon really wanted to do this they could
| have bought a source license from Unity and made whatever
| modifications they needed. It feels like an absurdly
| niche feature to focus on though.
|
| The way I would personally do it I would maybe create a
| multiplayer game and for each ten cameras spin up a game
| client instance.
|
| According to the other comments here it looks like Amazon
| wanted to create some type of bizarro system where if you
| use their engine you had to use AWS as your cloud back
| end. Which does sound pretty horrible, like I can't even
| do a HTTP request to get weather data unless it goes
| through AWS ?
| Thaxll wrote:
| UE is a generic engine, it's not good at specialized games
| like open words.
|
| Unity is pretty much none existent in AAA, it's mostly a
| mobile engine.
| offtop5 wrote:
| HDRP begs to differ
|
| https://youtu.be/cQvW0SdprQE
|
| I'm currently building a game in HDRP and it's easily
| looks just as good as anything I could do in Unreal. I'm
| only limited by my own time at this point .
| Thaxll wrote:
| Name a single AAA game in Unity? Everyone can do a shiny
| scene with good lighting, making a $50M game with it is
| another story.
| nexthash wrote:
| For context: given Google's reputation with shutting down
| products and the struggles that Stadia and cloud gaming have been
| for Google in general, there exists a countdown to when Stadia is
| predicted to be axed: http://stadiacountdown.com/
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| We all knew this was going to happen. All Google products outside
| of Gmail/Drive/Youtube are monetized side projects.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| Fundamentally these big tech companies just don't understand game
| development.
|
| AAA games cost a lot of money, so these companies think that if
| you come with a bunch of money, you will end up with a AAA game.
|
| My company was pitched by both Google (for stadia) and Amazon to
| create games for them and it was totally clear they had no idea
| what they were doing, and no idea what they were even trying to
| achieve.
|
| The funny thing is that in both cases we felt that their attitude
| was also "These guys have no idea what they are doing" about us
| too.
|
| It's just a total ideological mismatch.
| ketzo wrote:
| I think this might get the "oh, Google shuts down another area
| after a few years, color me surprised" crowd going, but for me
| this is totally the right move.
|
| There are a LOT of videogame developers out there. Many of them
| are quite good at what they do.
|
| The cloud gaming space, while much better than it used to be, has
| plenty of room for improvement -- it's not remotely mainstream
| yet, and there's still time yet to mint the cloud gaming
| household name.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Game development is terribly fickle, and it's very much a space
| where Google is better positioned to sell pickaxes to miners
| than to try and seek the motherlode itself. TBH, I'd forgotten
| that they'd started up an in-house game dev team in the first
| place.
| bootlooped wrote:
| If for no other reason, having their own first-party studio
| working on Stadia games demonstrates at least some commitment
| to the platform.
|
| There is a widespread and well founded suspicion that Google
| will just get bored and shut it down one day. This
| exacerbates that fear.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| As a gamer, I'll buy a console for the exclusives that I can't
| experience elsewhere. Having solid AAA content that's exclusive
| seems to come from having solid first party development
| studios.
| mywittyname wrote:
| PS Now is great. It has most (all?) Sony exclusives and they
| run great on your desktop or laptop. The only issue is that I
| don't think it is available for OSX/iOS.
| [deleted]
| hn8788 wrote:
| I think the reason this is a big deal is that one of the
| selling points of Stadia was that "cloud gaming" would enable
| things that consoles and PCs didn't, like huge persistent
| worlds with a ton a players in a single area. With no first
| party support, Stadia is just going to be a way to stream ports
| of games designed for consoles and PCs. Imagine if Valve
| released the Index, then announced that they aren't making VR
| games any more. That's basically what Google is doing by saying
| it isn't worth it to develop games specifically for Stadia.
| drusepth wrote:
| I agree, but I do think they've been doing a good job lately
| getting partners to dip their feet in the "cloud-only"
| functionality Stadia enables. For example:
|
| - GRID added a 40-car race mode that's "just not possible on
| consoles". (Unfortunately there were rarely enough Stadia
| players playing GRID for matchmaking 40-car races to work
| well!)
|
| - Orcs Must Die 3 added Stadia's "Stream Connect" feature,
| which is basically like screensharing with people in your
| party. They also apparently increased horde sizes on Stadia
| compared to other platforms.
|
| - The Hitman series added Stadia's "State Share" feature,
| which lets players set up scenarios and create customized
| game states that they can share with others to play.
|
| - Dead by Daylight and Baldur's Gate 3 added "Crowd Choice",
| which lets streamers create polls for in-game choices that
| automatically selects an outcome based on viewer votes (e.g.
| choosing whether the streamer is a killer or survivor in DbD)
|
| - Outcasters uses Crowd Play which lets stream viewers
| instantly jump into games with the streamer they're watching
|
| - etc
|
| There's a lot of cool stuff that can be enabled when the
| hardware runs on beefy cloud servers. Although it would be
| cool to see what novel functionality Google's internal studio
| would have showcased, I also think it's pretty important to
| focus on getting "real" games and encouraging devs to take
| advantage of cloud-specific functionality.
|
| There's probably something to be said for the Ubisoft+ model
| (basically a separate, smaller streaming service on top of
| Stadia/Luna/etc), but I don't think cable-like "channels"
| bundles are the way to go for streaming of any kind.
| ketzo wrote:
| That's a pretty interesting thought, I hadn't at all
| considered the "cloud native game" angle.
|
| Based purely on my own experience with games, I tend to think
| that for the best results, you'd need a really good game
| studio to learn how to make a cloud game; I'm not sure you
| want a really good cloud company to learn how to make a game.
|
| But it's still a really good point. Was the Stadia studio
| explicitly for these kind of cloud-gaming-enabled games?
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Cloud native is another concept that's grossly oversold.
| It's just GaaS with an extra step.
| alach11 wrote:
| To me this pivot makes a lot more sense. They're sticking to
| their core competency. Gaming as a service, without a
| dedicated device or powerful machine, already has big appeal.
| If they nail that, they can always try some first party
| offerings to push the boundaries.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I don't know about that. Google has even less skin in the
| game now, with a game studio you could be convinced they
| were in it for the long haul, but now they can pull the
| plug almost effortlessly.
|
| IMO the single business decision that doomed it from the
| start was the fact that you had to buy Stadia game to play
| on Stadia. Nothing from Steam/Epic/Ubisoft, and no cross-
| play.
|
| I would not at all be surprised to hear within a year that
| they stop taking new subscribers, with a sunset a year
| after that.
| A12-B wrote:
| When google tries to make a product that is new and could go
| either way, i forgive them for dropping it. You have to make
| mistakes and some products just don't work. But stadia is
| different. You could see it was never going to work, the
| infrastructure is just too wonky. I don't respect them for
| taking on a project they knew they couldn't do, or for deluding
| themselves into thinking they could.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I agree that they didn't need this in the first place, but this
| is the venture they started last March [1]. What changed for
| them in those 10 months that wasn't an obvious trend before?
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/4/21164801/google-stadia-
| sha...
| ketzo wrote:
| That... is very interesting. I didn't realize the timeline
| was that short; I was assuming the game studio had started
| around the same time Stadia had (multiple years ago).
|
| First thought: it's probably pretty hard to start a new game
| studio during COVID? That article is dated March 4, oof.
|
| But yeah, that's weird.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| I presume that they came out of the gate with the sensible
| perspective that if you build it, and there aren't any games
| on it, the players won't come. My guess is what changed is
| that the infrastructure is now viable as infrastructure, they
| don't need to prop it up with their own game releases.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| IMO, it would be better to take the Nintendo approach and
| build out a couple generic games that highlight the best
| features of the system. Wii tennis and wii bowling ended up
| being my favorite Wii games.
| throwaway98249 wrote:
| It seems a generic game to demonstrate new hardware is
| more difficult than we might assume... anyone for Kinect
| Sports?
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Likely it's the other way around and Stadia isn't doing
| well enough to think that first party titles released in a
| few years time will pay development costs or necessarily
| have a platform to launch on.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Until you can play your Steam game library (and perhaps Epic and
| Unisoft and GOG) on Stadia, I think they'll struggle.
|
| I have paid for Geforce Now which does let you play Steam et al
| games (although not everything is available which is annoying) -
| it is about PS4 a month currently (or free if you can spend time
| waiting to play) and the experience feels largely the same to
| Stadia to me in terms of latency and quality. Many happy hours
| playing high-end PC games on a super cheap and lightweight
| Chromebook that starts up instantly and runs silently compared to
| my weighty, expensive, and noisy gaming laptop that needs to boot
| into windows (although that only takes 5-10s these days to be
| fair)
|
| Feels like nVidia (...and Xbox? Not tried that) have eaten
| Google's own lunch in the stream-to-chromebook context.
| liaukovv wrote:
| Imagine buying health insurance from someone for whom it's a
| hobby.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I get the point you're trying to make, but actually your
| example is one where I wouldn't mind. I'd rather my bad
| health not be the central profit driver for someone...
| sagarm wrote:
| Health insurance companies are allowed to make a certain
| percentage of profit, so they actually don't have a strong
| incentive to keep payouts down.
| eecks wrote:
| Aren't health insurance companies losing money by paying
| out? It's in their interest that their paying customers
| stay in good health.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| alternative, it's in their interest to make paying out as
| difficult and byzantine as possible.
| liaukovv wrote:
| Perharps amateur stock broker then?
| hobofan wrote:
| Yeah, Google doesn't offer enough of an edge that would justify
| ignoring Steam.
|
| Similar to your experience with Geforce Now, I had a great
| experience with shadow.tech, where you can bring your Steam
| library, and I'm sure there are many more competitors.
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| How long until an article title is simply the first four words of
| this one's?
| mkl wrote:
| Well, this has been going since it launched:
| http://stadiacountdown.com/
| dartdartdart wrote:
| Makes their controller promo video look like a joke now:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYDSZnjvSH0. Looks like they
| spent $10 million to create a PS3 controller in 2020
| jonas_kgomo wrote:
| What technology is required to compete with this, mostly i notice
| that it is based on open-source Linux and Vulcan graphics
| rendering?
| lxe wrote:
| > Google will close its two game studios, located in Montreal and
| Los Angeles. Neither had released any games yet.
|
| Were there any games currently in the works in these studios?
| klipklop wrote:
| I don't believe Google has the right culture to make compelling
| video games anyways. Maybe at best a super safe mario clone for
| children. Anything remotely controversial will have half the
| staff protesting threatening to quit.
| rodgerd wrote:
| That is true. Google alt-righties would riot at anything that
| was controversial in a gaming sense (like having women as
| protagonists).
| s3r3nity wrote:
| More likely, people losing their minds over what the
| protagonist in a Star Wars game looks like. [1]
|
| https://etcanada.com/news/548672/star-wars-jedi-fallen-
| order...
| shmageggy wrote:
| Why does a game need to be controversial to be compelling?
| psyc wrote:
| Compelling to a significant demographic maybe?
| "Controversial" can include violent. Seems like those games
| tend to be technically amazing, as well as particularly
| entertaining / humorous if that's your thing.
| klipklop wrote:
| Exactly. Some of the best selling games are games like Call
| of Duty, GTA or Mortal Kombat.
|
| Any game like that would have a full on employee revolt as
| people demanded the team involved to be fired.
| evanextreme wrote:
| Google sells all of these games on Google Play without
| any form of "revolt" from their developers. So im not
| sure where you're getting this idea, other than baseless
| conjecture
| malwarebytess wrote:
| It's not a novel idea that all great art is in some way
| disruptive or transgressive. If you're aiming for art with
| cultural relevancy you've got to push some kind of boundary,
| mechanical, technical, or social.
|
| If you have an culturally oppressive environment, whatever
| flavor, you're going to struggle to make great art.
| Jyaif wrote:
| Yeah, it's simpler to just take a percentage of all purchases
| that happen on their platform than to actually create the
| content.
| nikolay wrote:
| Microsoft shutdown Invoke - I got a $50 voucher and I still can
| use the device as a bluetooth speaker. What happens with my
| Stadio investment in hardware when they shut it down soon?! How
| many times we need to say: "Not again!" investing any time with a
| new product/service from Google?! My daughter got a Pixel 3a - it
| has so many issues and Google won't fix saying it has to do with
| my carrier. Their forums are flooded with people from different
| carriers having the same issues, but, not, they blame Bluetooth
| problems to T-Mobile! Same with Google Home Max - I bought one
| wanted to buy another until it's gone (when it was $179) just to
| be brought back at full price ($299) and then be gone again! Same
| with Google OnHub - I bought it, then it became unsupported and
| gone!
|
| Google cannot run a business, they really don't know how to
| protect their brand, and never fail to piss off everybody and
| especially their early adopters!
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| > What happens with my Stadio investment in hardware when they
| shut it down soon?!
|
| My guess: Hardware, they say "it's still a Bluetooth game
| controller and a Chromecast, they can be used as those things".
| Software: They give you some Steam codes for the games you
| bought on Stadia.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Hardware, they say "it's still a Bluetooth game controller
| and a Chromecast, they can be used as those things".
|
| IIRC, it only works as a bluetooth controller with Stadia
| (either supported Chromecast or Chrome web app); otherwise,
| it is only a wired USB controller.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| ...lol.
|
| Well, I guess it's a USB controller at least. I would hope
| standard Bluetooth game controller compatibility could be
| pushed as an update though.
| sneak wrote:
| Is there anywhere one can gamble on the month and year that
| Google shuts down services?
| dharmab wrote:
| The service isn't shutting down; they're closing their internal
| game dev studio that never released a game.
|
| You might get a kick out of https://killedbygoogle.com/
| liaukovv wrote:
| So they are cancelling the part that actually costs money and
| creates draw to the platform? Sounds like tey are putting
| service on life support with no plans of expansion
| sneak wrote:
| I read the article. I'll bet real money that Stadia is
| cancelled within five years.
| josefresco wrote:
| It depends on how much they want to compete with Sony &
| Microsoft in this space. So far so good, IMHO, as an early
| Stadia adopter.
| anxman wrote:
| Same here and I worked on Stadia
| xeromal wrote:
| Did you have any fun working on it?
| neillyons wrote:
| What are your thoughts on market fit for Stadia? It seems
| like Nintendo made something that people really want with
| the Switch [1]. Do you know if Stadia is being used much?
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/1/22259836/nintendo-3
| q-2020-...
| tjalfi wrote:
| You could register a prediction on Long Bets[0]. If someone
| disagrees with your prediction you can turn it into a bet.
|
| [0] https://longbets.org/
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Phil Harrison's (VP of Stadia) blog about the subject:
| https://blog.google/products/stadia/focusing-on-stadias-futu...
| [deleted]
| hnburnsy wrote:
| GraceFromGoogle at r/stadia...
|
| "Hi everyone, I completely understand your emotions surrounding
| the news, so I wanted to chime in with a couple more thoughts.
| Please note that Stadia.com, Stadia Pro, and your games aren't
| going anywhere. In fact, we'll keep bringing more games to the
| platform and Stadia Pro. We had an exciting launch with Cyberpunk
| 2077 back in December, and the Stadia team is dedicated to
| bringing even more titles to the platform this year."
| m4rtink wrote:
| http://stadiacountdown.com/
|
| (Maybe that's actually a bit too optimistic. ;-) )
| [deleted]
| Jabbles wrote:
| Maybe it's best that Google only owns the platform, not the
| content.
|
| The EU seems to be tired of tech companies owning both:
| https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/platform-busin...
| deadmutex wrote:
| There are a lot of examples of companies owning both though:
|
| 1. Microsoft: https://kotaku.com/microsoft-now-has-23-first-
| party-studios-...
|
| 2. Nintendo owns many successful games on their platforms:
| Zelda, Mario based titles, etc.
|
| 3. Sony:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sony_Interactive_Enter...
| Jabbles wrote:
| True, but, in other areas this has been abused:
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-
| its...
|
| https://www.computerworld.com/article/2468760/apple--
| steals-...
| deadmutex wrote:
| Yeah, I think it is a bit tricky to draw the line. Consider
| brick and motor pharmacy stores putting generic brand
| white-labeled items next to name brand items. This has
| helped the consumer (IMO). But, at the same time I can see
| how it can be abused. The tricky part is coming up with a
| way to get best of both worlds. Unfortunately, I have
| personally seen the pendulum swing from one extreme to the
| other (based on rushed outrage driven legislation) too many
| times.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| The EU? That tax machine... its a wonder these companies still
| sell there at all. Seems like they should double down on Asian
| markets instead of bothering.
| readyoubestbook wrote:
| Google seems to be best in creating - or buying and scaling - a
| platform to let "creatives" make "things". They simply time after
| time seem to confirm that they just can not be "creative"
| themselves but they do build great technologies.
|
| And from a technical perspective Stadia does makes sense, you
| just seem to be making an interactive YouTube?
| ilamont wrote:
| Anyone have insights into how Apple Arcade is doing? It seems to
| have a lot more games than Stadia, but the variety is limited and
| it's hard to see the compelling reason is to use it as opposed to
| simply getting games in the app store.
| mlex wrote:
| @dang I think that while this is the exact title from Kotaku, it
| misses the context (given by what site it's on) that they're
| shutting down specifically their _gaming_ studios.
|
| I feel like it would be clearer if this said "Google Stadia shuts
| down internal game studios, changing business focus".
|
| Quote from the article: Google will close its two game studios,
| located in Montreal and Los Angeles. Neither had released any
| games yet.
| [deleted]
| minimaxir wrote:
| > Said one source familiar with Stadia's first-party operations,
| citing another tech giant's widely publicized failure to create
| video games: "Google was a terrible place to make games. Imagine
| Amazon, but under-resourced."
|
| "Google" and "under-resourced" in the same blurb is very funny.
| riku_iki wrote:
| By looking at how many projects/products they run, some
| individual niche team can be under-resourced.
| ngold wrote:
| I would like to know which projects are not under sourced?
| That's not adsense.
| gman83 wrote:
| This will probably be an unpopular opinion here, but I love
| Stadia. I have a gaming pc, but my GPU is getting old so the
| newer games don't run well. So I gave Stadia a go. My internet is
| good enough and the fact of not having to download a game before
| playing is just fantastic. Also I can play on my tablet in bed.
|
| I definitely think this is the future, if it's not from Google,
| then it'll be Amazon, Microsoft, or Epic/Tencent.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| I don't think many people have a problem with the concept of
| game streaming or even google implementation. It's the fact
| that you have to buy games specifically for stadia and that one
| day google will shut down the service and a lot of people are
| going to lose the games they paid for.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I'm very confident Stadia will shut down, but I'm also
| confident Google will give some offramp for people who bought
| games, either by refunding the full price or offering a
| digital key for some storefront.
| krick wrote:
| I don't know how HN feels about Stadia, so a honest question:
| why is it unpopular? I personally find it absolutely astounding
| that anyone can question that this _is_ the future.
|
| I'm absolutely confident this is the future. Except, unlike
| you, I don't mean it in a positive way: I find it to be a one
| more face of the impending doom, anti-utopian authoritarian
| future, where people will be forbidden to perform arbitrary
| computations without a special permission. But that's that kind
| of wild socio-philosophical predictions that nobody discusses
| seriously, and nobody even thinks you are serious for
| suggesting something as preposterous (but then it happen anyway
| and nobody is really surprised).
|
| On the technical matter, though, it is so much better than
| owning your own hardware, that it's hard to imagine how that
| could fail. I mean, obviously, Google will not succeed in
| making their own games (never could have). And of course
| current state of Stadia may not suit the "real gamer" (always a
| minority), because you can have a better performance on your
| own hardware.
|
| But these problems will be solved, eventually. Better studios
| will make better games for this kind of platform, eventually it
| won't be games only, but the whole workspace. CAD running on
| Stadia will perform better than it could have on your upper-
| middle-range laptop you paid a shitload of money for, and that
| still lags and overheats when running your 100-tab browser on
| it. Your client device will be cheap, completely silent, low-
| temperature and will run on a battery for several days (that
| is, with no power-battery technology improvement). Light and
| portable. It will be unbreakable, compared to your current PC.
| Basically just a good display, a networking card, and some
| input device. There is absolutely no way your software won't
| run better on a shared hardware than you can buy for the same
| amount of money it will cost Google (or whoever will succeed
| with this).
|
| I don't know if latency will ever be low enough for every
| human-use application (which again makes me wonder why are they
| starting with games: probably the most latency-sensitive thing
| an average customer uses), but it is surprisingly good right
| now, and there's still some room for improvement: computation
| servers will be more evenly distributed (CDN-style), and last-
| mile latency (the biggest problem, anyway) will improve in the
| upcoming years, especially on mobile.
| lallysingh wrote:
| > With the increased focus on using our technology platform for
| industry partners, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Google to
| pursue other opportunities.
|
| I'm glad she got out.
| mindfreeze wrote:
| Recently I came across this https://shadow.tech/
|
| They do something promising and better (?)
| cryptoquick wrote:
| I also liked Shadow. I could play Windows games on Arch Linux
| without booting into Windows, their latency wasn't terrible,
| the wait wasn't too long (only about a month for me), it wasn't
| terribly expensive, and best of all, their business model
| actually required them to do their best to make the product a
| success. A novel concept to some large tech companies, it would
| seem.
| hobofan wrote:
| I've had a great experience with their service quite some time
| ago, though I'm a bit worried about their ability to scale up.
| IIRC they had suspended new sign ups for some time, and rollout
| of their Ultra and Infinite offerings seems pretty slow
| (possibly because of GPU shortages?).
| ourcat wrote:
| I was going to mention Shadow. I see quite a few people who
| want to play PCVR games using it if they don't have a PC up to
| the job.
|
| Also with VR, many people use 'VirtualDesktop' to link between
| a PC and the Oculus Quest wirelessly. I can see a future where
| they offer remote PCs to connect via their software too.
|
| And to add to that, in the future too, I can see
| Facebook/Oculus adding 5G connectivity to a next-generation
| headset alongside a future Snapdragon XR2(+).
| bastawhiz wrote:
| I'm dumbfounded at Google's lack of planning on this. I tried
| Stadia, and they had (have?) so few games that they seem to have
| neither search nor pagination on the list that you can play. None
| of the games are ones that I care about.
|
| It feels like they could have--at the cost of short-term profit
| and pride--partnered with Valve and shipped something mind-
| blowing. But instead we're left with a bunch of AAA games that
| feel half-baked (Hitman crashes on first boot and complains about
| a lack of a controller) and a bunch of indie games that feel like
| a sad attempt to squeeze a few extra bucks out of a middling
| title (the Hello Neighbor hide and seek game) and titles released
| half a decade ago (superhot).
|
| Minecraft is on every console imaginable--except Stadia. What
| about Roblox? Fortnite? Factorio? Among Us? Any Sid Meier's game?
| Any Paradox game? Every genre of game that I actually put time
| into is completely absent on their platform. Every game from the
| top 10 (perhaps 20 or more?) on Twitch right now is absent on
| Stadia. I don't know what they're doing, but whatever it is, it's
| wrong.
| pid_0 wrote:
| Google is REALLY bad at marketing. I have no idea who runs
| their product teams, must be college interns, because they have
| no clear goal.
|
| Stadia still is missing basic features like pagination or
| searching, but the EXPERIENCE is great. I don't know why you
| are having issues, but Hitman 2+3 work amazing for me with the
| stadia controller. 60fps, 4k, etc.
|
| They also have Ubisoft+ integration and with this news they
| seem to be pushing for more integrations like that which will
| make the platform even better.
|
| Twitch will never be on Stadia as they compete with Youtube
| Gaming, which has direct integration with Stadia.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Everyone knew this was a bad idea, and the truly curious thing
| is, how does anyone who greenlit this on any level still have a
| job?
|
| Stadia had a narrow set of interesting use cases around
| features deeply integrated with Google products: Zero of them
| were ready for launch, and I think all but one are still
| unavailable today.
|
| The value for gamers is debateable at best, but exclusive
| titles would be the only serious way to draw a bunch of people
| to Stadia outside of that... and if Google is unable to make
| the business justification to develop Stadia exclusives,
| neither will anyone else.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| It's only been a failure because of the lack of games. The
| tech (at least to me) feels fine. Which is honestly the worst
| part--it _could_ be a success but the business side is
| broken.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > It's only been a failure because of the lack of games
|
| Which, to be frank, is the one reason someone would use
| Stadia - to play games.
| serial_dev wrote:
| I get what you are saying, games are essential if you are
| building a _gaming_ platform
|
| But a lot of people expected it would fail due to network
| issues, lag/delay, etc. If the tech was terrible, the
| good games wouldn't have been enough to save the project.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _tech (at least to me) feels fine [...] it _could_ be a
| success but the business side is broken_
|
| ... said no one about any Google side project before, ever.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Right... I thought as an idea, it was perfectly sound. The
| types of technology required to make cloud gaming work
| seemed to play to Google's strengths.
|
| They just really screwed up on the content side. And, well,
| anecdotally I've heard the tech isn't so great either
| compared to Google's peers--no idea how that happened,
| really.
| hmage wrote:
| Google had to solve same problem any new traditional
| gaming console has to solve -- get publishers interested
| in creating for that console.
|
| Good luck with that. The moat is so high that even if you
| have tech from year 2222, the business side trumps
| technology.
| notyourday wrote:
| > It's only been a failure because of the lack of games. T
|
| ... which makes shutting down gaming studio part of it even
| weirder.
| hackcasual wrote:
| Phil Harrison oversaw the PS3, XBox One, and Google Stadia.
| He's like a reverse oracle
| anonymousab wrote:
| It seemed pretty obvious to everyone. Use a gamepass model so
| that less content stretches further, or offer a compelling
| variety of content - especially exclusive content - to make up
| for users paying full price every time.
|
| They did neither and it's utterly boggling. They were clearly
| aware of their shortcomings when they dodged the more direct
| questions in early interviews. I don't know if it was just
| hubris, or an unwillingness at the top to understand. Or maybe
| the project started out too big to steer well and they just
| accepted it because, hey, high level paycheck.
|
| There are probably a lot of now ex-googlers with a ton of
| I-told-them-so stories.
| cryptoquick wrote:
| Why are people still so surprised when Google makes a thing and
| then two years later cuts apart the thing into oblivion? How
| many more times are they expecting their users to be Charlie
| Brown to their Lucy?
| adamc wrote:
| I think this has pretty well cemented that perception.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I thought the same about reader.
| Laforet wrote:
| I sort of get it about reader. It had ways been a high
| maintenance product with many liability issues and
| ultimately proven difficult to monetise. Not to mention
| feed aggregators as a whole has been in decline since so
| the demand is probably not even there.
|
| Stadia, on the other hand, has been a product designed to
| be commercially self-standing. Yet somehow it was never
| that attractive from the beginning. It makes one wonder
| if it was simply a "me too" gesture to please
| shareholders and they simply left it at that.
|
| Now let us make a wager on when gmail and maps will be
| cancelled...
| _zamorano_ wrote:
| I don't think they had the slightest chance of Valve partering
| with them
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Why not? Valve is not in the hardware business.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What's in it for Valve?
| clavalle wrote:
| Access to people that don't want to buy a gaming PC.
|
| Or can't, these days, considering how strangled the GPU
| market is.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| If Valve wanted to do that why wouldn't they build it
| themselves instead? They have the server expertise.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| Valve's customer base is almost entirely semi-serious to
| hardcore gamers: then people with the most to lose and the
| least incentive to adopt stadia.
|
| Partnering with Google on stadia would generate a sizeable
| backlash.
| mdoms wrote:
| Yes they are? Their latest flagship game literally only
| works on their hardware.
| oivey wrote:
| Are you talking about Half Life: Alyx? It works on
| basically any VR headset as far as I know. I think they
| just need to be SteamVR compatible which basically
| everything is.
| mdoms wrote:
| Maybe, as soon as I heard it was VR only I stopped paying
| attention. But the point still stands - Valve is very
| much a hardware business, has been for years.
| filoleg wrote:
| Just to confirm, you are correct, it works on almost any
| mass-market headset (probably on all headsets period, but
| I cannot verify that myself).
|
| So far, I can confirm for a fact it works on HTC Vive,
| Valve Index, Oculus Rift S, and Oculus Quest 1/2 (in
| wired mode connected to PC, just like the other headsets,
| or using VR Desktop for wireless; I tried both and stuck
| to playing it with wireless).
| _zamorano_ wrote:
| A successfull private company, with the best video game
| catalog, already king in PC gaming...
|
| I don't see much for them to gain and plenty to lose if
| they let google build a big customer base.
| asddubs wrote:
| yeah, valve has its own ecosystem it wants to lock people
| into
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Valve has the games and tried to build their own console
| and failed. Google has now effectively built their own
| console and doesn't have the games.
| kenhwang wrote:
| Valve has the Stream Link and VIVE. Steam Link is pretty
| much Stadia using your computer instead of the cloud.
| They're very much in the hardware business.
| hobofan wrote:
| With Steam Link requiring you to own a beefy computer
| it's not really a competitor to what Stadia offers (and I
| don't know anybody who was able to get good performance
| out of Steam Link).
|
| VIVE is by HTC supporting SteamVR, but Valve has their
| own first-pary VR headset + controllers with the Index.
| Jochim wrote:
| Valve have their own VR headset, the Valve Index. Steam
| Link was previously a hardware dongle but has been
| replaced by android/smart TV apps with the same name.
|
| I'm surprised Nvidia didn't attempt to partner with them
| rather than developing GeForce Now as a separate product,
| they could have taken advantage of Valve's developer
| relationship/client/store front and handled the actual
| running of the hardware, which Valve seems much less
| interested in.
|
| Stadia on the other hand is just a demonstration of the
| level of hubris Google is capable of engaging in. They
| thought they could launch a brand new store with the
| twist that people would need to pay a subscription to
| continue playing the games they had bought and without
| the option of using your own hardware should you end up
| purchasing a capable machine.
| easton wrote:
| They are partnered, it's just not exclusive.
|
| https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I think Stadia makes more sense when you frame it against game
| consoles.
|
| The easiest users to steal from the console market are the ones
| that buy only 1 or 2 console games which are traditionally
| reserved for those consoles (NFL Madden is the latest promotion
| and a good example). For these users, there is massive
| experience shift going from buying a ps4, ps online, just to
| play the same game all the time. I am one of these users. If
| they can find these 1 or 2 games that activate each segment of
| users, they will take cohorts from the console market. This
| won't get the entire console gamer market, but it's a great
| place to start.
| m00x wrote:
| It's actually way cheaper to buy the console if you're just
| gonna play one game. You get a PS5 for $550 these days, so
| that's $330 total for a AAA game ($630).
|
| Then instead of $10/m, you have a console for 10 years
| ($120*10 = $1200).
|
| Even cheaper if you go for the PS4.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| You aren't including the network service to play games
| online. Factor in another $60 * 10 years. That nearly
| squares things up. Then you have to think about
| intangibles. Stadia is a live platform that continuously
| improves. The $630 you paid for that ps5 and AAA game is
| frozen in time. You've bought no future value. You can also
| play anywhere without having to carry around a 4.5kg box
| that computes math.
| ksec wrote:
| > Google's lack of planning on this
|
| Seriously, When did Google ever planned anything?
|
| It is only in recent years, they fall out of the Media's
| flavour did people start to look at them rationally.
| adamc wrote:
| To sell me on buying a stadia game -- at full price -- you have
| to convince me that this is the platform of the future, that
| Google is _committed_. Google starts with a handicap there
| because of prior behavior.
|
| This effectively kills Stadia as a service. If they were only
| willing to try for a couple of years... let's just say people
| were right to doubt that Google can be counted on for a
| service.
| 015a wrote:
| > partnered with Valve and shipped something mind-blowing
|
| I tend to agree. In these cloud game streaming wars, Steam is a
| reservoir of totally untapped crude oil. Its the largest and
| most active western game platform, period, its beloved by its
| users, and Valve hasn't even remotely signaled an intention to
| compete. Companies and products like Steam are one in a
| million; Stadia, Luna, GeForce Now, xCloud, PSNow, are not.
| There is no amount of money they could pay Valve to make that
| partnership happen that would not pay dividends.
|
| Valve/Steam is just "behind" in all of this modern gaming crap,
| and the fact that they're still the most popular platform (and
| its not close) speaks volumes about whether the
| CloudStreamingGamePass-way things are going is actually the
| right one. Its reasonable to believe that people who identify
| as "gamers" right now are not interested in that stuff, and the
| strategy Google/Amazon/etc have of "Netflix for gaming, no
| console, convert non-gamers to gamers" won't work. Time will
| tell, but maybe Valve's traditionalism is the right one long-
| term.
|
| You know where Valve is investing their money? VR and Linux.
| God damn do I love that company.
| chaostheory wrote:
| > Valve/Steam is just "behind" in all of this modern gaming
| crap
|
| Valve is not behind in VR
| FredFS456 wrote:
| GeForce Now can be used with Steam quite seamlessly. In fact,
| GeForce Now's value is to play the games you already own on
| various platforms on their hardware. They're not trying to be
| another games store.
| dfgdghdf wrote:
| Valve can do this stuff because they are a private company.
|
| Gabe has publicly stated that he does not believe in game
| streaming services, because he thinks computation is best
| done at the edge.
| ahelwer wrote:
| 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.
| clankyclanker wrote:
| I already have friends for whom it's cheaper to own a
| computer and use streaming systems (Shadow?) than it is to
| own a single Gaming PC.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Valve did build out a lot of features like Remote Play and
| streaming on Steam, but just to a level of ok functionality.
| It's just clearly not their main interest.
|
| So I agree with your point, but it's not like Valve as a
| company is totally unaware of the opportunities. They are
| just... uninterested.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I like NVidia's model. Basically its bring your own game to
| their cloud hardware, but they integrate Steam, Epic store and
| one or two other distributors really well so that it is easy
| for someone to move to their platform rather than replace an
| aging gaming PC. I'm not sure who Stadia is for or how it
| competes with that and PS Now, which has a ton of popular games
| as well as Playstation exclusives (more of a rental model like
| Stadia's).
| enos_feedler wrote:
| The NVidia model sounds like more hassle than it's worth.
| Might as well continue buying PCs. If you could afford them
| before you can probably still afford them. Latency will be
| lower and experience will be better (no waiting in a queue).
|
| The benefit of Stadia is actually it's simplicity. It's about
| bringing in new gamers who may have come from console world,
| but don't have the Steam libraries, etc.
|
| I wrote this in another post, but I think Stadia right now is
| for the game console user who only play 1 or 2 games. This
| makes for a lot of extra hardware and subscriptions just to
| play a game you like. Why not just rent the game as a service
| for as long as you want to play it? When hockey season starts
| every year I buy the new NHL for $60. Thats $5/mo. Why should
| i also buy PLaystation plus, and a hardware console just to
| play the game? it takes 10 minutes from turining on the tv,
| navigating the menus, getting into the game, finding someone
| to play online, etc. Chatting with people is really bad UX.
| Google can make all of this slicker. But the value prop needs
| to focus on the job at hand: playing a _specific_ game which
| happens to be your favorite game you play mostly. Thinking of
| it as some kind of a gaming platform is not the way.
| oivey wrote:
| I'm unsure how Nvidia's approach is worse. On GeForce now
| you can play games from Steam or Epic, right? Isn't Stadia
| the same except you are locked into only Google's store?
| That's pretty significantly worse.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I'll repeat what I said: "the value prop needs to focus
| on the job at hand: playing a _specific_ game which
| happens to be your favorite game you play mostly.
| Thinking of it as some kind of a gaming platform is not
| the way."
|
| By considering Steam and Epic, you are already looking at
| this from the perspective of a platform. I am simply
| saying Stadia is better if the game you love is already
| there. NFL Madden is the latest Stadia promo right now.
| If most of your gaming time is consumed playing Madden,
| Stadia is probably the way to pay for it.
| gsich wrote:
| Xcloud or Geforcenow offer the best of both worlds. You
| "own" (in whatever sense you can "own" the game) the game
| and you have the choice where you want to play it. Not at
| home/cheap notebook? No problem. With Stadia you can only
| stream the game.
| oivey wrote:
| Madden isn't available on GeForce Now apparently, but
| besides that I don't think you've explained why Stadia is
| better. On Stadia and GeForce Now, you pay a subscription
| fee and pay for the game. Is it something about the
| Stadia hardware that makes it better?
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Yes. Stadia does not assume you know how to use a gaming
| PC. Steam and Epic might be fine if you already know what
| those things are. If you don't, it is far too complex.
| Billions of people understand the simple app store model
| that comes with their phone. It's the one stadia uses.
| pkage wrote:
| I signed up for GeForce Now, and truly the killer feature is
| bringing the games you already own. On Stadia, you have to
| buy the games separately on top of the streaming
| subscription, and Luna (Amazon's offering) is similar in that
| you can sign up for game "channels" (iirc). With GeForce Now,
| you can just play the stuff you already own without sinking
| money into games that play on a platform that might not even
| exist in a few years. I bet in another year or so Stadia will
| shut down and all those games that you paid for on the
| platform will disappear.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Stadia supports the UBISoft+ channel just as Luna does.
| It's in beta now.
| partiallypro wrote:
| > I'm dumbfounded at Google's lack of planning on this.
|
| Yes, but apply this to 90% of their new products. Google's
| planning in the current age is about as bad as Microsoft's in
| the 2004-2012 era.
| User23 wrote:
| This has been true for a decade. Gmail had nothing to do with
| management for example. Google has some really smart
| engineers but their management has never been better than
| mediocre.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| At least they are winding things down faster. Google
| announced the studio in mid 2019 and shutting it down in
| early 2021. Microsoft decided retail stores were a good idea
| in 2011, and only closed them off last year. My bet is that
| Google is learning this mistake faster, no doubt with MSFT as
| an example.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Yeah, but Microsoft also shutdown retail stores in part
| because of the global pandemic, a few other companies
| followed.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| And, those retail stores gave people an opportunity to
| play with and become comfortable with their surface form
| factor.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Expensive way to achieve that goal, IMO.
| mongol wrote:
| I am completely out of the loop on games. The only game-related
| thing that is of the slightest interest to me is Microsoft's new
| flight simulator. Is it in the cards that it will become
| available on a streaming platform?
| notadev wrote:
| I bet they just acquire Crayta to have their own Roblox-like game
| with more realism.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Amazon is next, I guaranty you FANG has no idea on how to makes
| game. The smart move is to buy studios, don't start from scratch.
|
| Also lot of people on this thread don't undertsand that it's the
| gamestudio shuting down not Stadia the cloud platform.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| Jade Raymond needs to write a memoir.
| joe_91 wrote:
| Why doesn't good spin off these amazing projects into their own
| companies and have 3,5,10 year goals associated with these
| projects.
|
| Like I get the need to shut something down if there's no product
| market fit but at least when you've got pretty much unlimited
| free money give it a good shot.
|
| The way projects such as Stadia are structured now just shows how
| only incentivising the launching of a new product/project is not
| the right way to go about things. You also need, people with a
| long term vision willing to see a project through and enough
| resources given to a project.
|
| If this was spun off into its own entity it could easily raise
| money and become a proper competitor to Sony/Microsoft...
| devin wrote:
| My friend asked me if I'd tried Stadia.
|
| "What's Google Stadia?" I replied.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| Had Google been willing to invest in some next gen "cloud only"
| titles, we could have seen something truly magical. Imagine a WW2
| game with thousands and thousands of concurrent players, or a
| real time 3D life Sim where people could meet and socialize like
| in real life.
|
| I think it's being realized across the industry that there isn't
| huge value prop in bringing existing games to the cloud and
| targeting low-spec gamers, but rather architecting entirely new
| experiences that simply are not possible without cloud compute.
|
| Jeff Bezos seems to recognize this, his exact marching orders for
| Amazon's game efforts was to make "computationally ridiculous
| games". That to me is the bigger opportunity, because it opens
| the doors to the next internet called the Metaverse.
| Phlarp wrote:
| Seems like Google is really streamlining the process between
| optimistic launch of a new product and it's eventual demise.
|
| Is anyone collecting objective data on the average lifespan of
| google products that aren't search, ads or maps?
| flipcoder wrote:
| Well that didn't last long
| f430 wrote:
| You'd think after OnLive's failure Google might have learned a
| few lessons.
|
| It just doesn't work. Not until we have 6G everywhere at very low
| cost and even then it won't be as good as running games off your
| own machine.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| What's cheaper and more easily distributed:
|
| reliable high speed connections
|
| or
|
| Computing devices with dedicated graphical processors
|
| Survey says... nobody wants what you're selling Google, and
| nobody with half a brain trusts you to maintain services long
| term anyways. Stadia is doomed and riddance.
| Traster wrote:
| I think this just reinforces the fact that Google isn't a content
| company. They aren't producing video games for the same reason
| that Cobra Kai is now a Netflix production. Google doesn't have
| what it takes to adapt to a new market and actually adapt. Can I
| view the exact pixel your eye browses to whilst playing a video
| game and use that to sell you incontinence pads? No. Well then
| Google isn't interested. This is unfortunate, because this is
| exactly what killed Intel. Funneling tonnes of cash into
| businesses they didn't understand and then failed in because they
| had no idea how they were going to capture any more value from
| their core market that share holders had already accounted for.
| Forbo wrote:
| I'm having a hard time finding any info on what "SG&E" is despite
| a lot of searching. Can anyone provide some context?
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| Their in house game development studio. It got started 10
| months ago (if other comments are correct)
| onion2k wrote:
| "Stadia Games & Entertainment." It's Google's in-house content
| dev studio. Shutting it down means Stadia will need external
| support to work. If it's gets that then it'll be great. If it
| doesn't then it'll get killed off.
| yodon wrote:
| And why would any 3rd party studio invest resources into a
| platform the platform owner isn't willing to invest in?
|
| With SG&E shutting down Stadia is dead whether they admit it
| or not.
| paxys wrote:
| Yeah it's weird that they would put that in a public blog post
| without any explanation. I'm guessing it's their game
| development division.
| gbolcer wrote:
| Gamestonk should buy them & raise some Google Ventures funds to
| see how far they can take it. Both Stadia and Geoforce Now, while
| not for most of the games I play, do have their place.
| f6v wrote:
| Mark my words: there's going to be a "Stadia going forward"
| obituary in the next year or two.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Eerie in accuracy http://stadiacountdown.com/
| temp667 wrote:
| Initially I thought some straightforward fun first party games
| would be great. Make them cheap / free with platform, do some of
| the standards (a runner, a platformer, etc etc). Keep them pretty
| simple. That would have been nice - show off a bit what the
| platform can do, but be a fast follower for some popular genres.
|
| What engine was SGE using? When I heard AWS wasn't just going to
| do something like license Epic I thought - uh oh... here we go!
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