[HN Gopher] Ubisoft+Bungie Scrambling to Evacuate Players Games ...
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Ubisoft+Bungie Scrambling to Evacuate Players Games from Capsizing
Google Stadia
Author : metadat
Score : 122 points
Date : 2022-10-02 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.forbes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.forbes.com)
| predatorian3 wrote:
| If Bungie and Ubisoft would just allow Proton capability, they'd
| get money back.
| [deleted]
| drexlspivey wrote:
| I am happy that Stadia is gone, maybe now all the stadia
| exclusives can come to Geforce Now. Presumably not much
| development work is needed to port your game to GN, it just needs
| to run on Steam.
|
| Stadia business model was flawed from the start, people want to
| own the games they buy, they might buy a new expensive computer
| in the future and don't want to pay for the game twice. With
| Geforce Now you play the games that are already in your steam
| library.
| Matl wrote:
| > I am happy that Stadia is gone
|
| Yes, everything that I don't personally like shouldn't exist
| because there's no way it could work for someone if it doesn't
| work for me, right?
|
| I am not a fan of cloud gaming, but Stadia as a service wasn't
| bad. As for owning games, you don't own your Steam games
| either, unfortunately.
|
| As glad as I am for Valve supporting Linux, the real practical
| difference between Steam and Stadia is that Valve has proven it
| will keep it around. But in terms of ownership there's hardly a
| difference.
| athorax wrote:
| Hey now, let's leave the strawmen in the fields shall we?
| TillE wrote:
| Love the colorful headline which actually helps illustrate the
| situation in a relatively terse manner. Don't see that very
| often.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Writing good titles is pretty difficult. There's lots of SEO
| advice on title crafting, but not a lot of advice on writing
| titles with standalone narrative value, since that doesn't
| generate ad revenue.
| syspec wrote:
| Bit of an odd title, makes it sound like they're in in a war
| zone, and physically airlifting players out of Stadia
| dougmwne wrote:
| This is a great insight into why Google completely failed to
| compete with established game industry titans. They don't get the
| industry, don't get the customers, don't get their partners.
| Doing a rug pull on another company's monthly active users pretty
| much guarantees that no game publisher will ever take them
| seriously ever again. That bridge is torched.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Reminds me of Intel. Back in the day they had a huge contract
| with Panasonic to supply flash chips. And then they decided to
| renege on it. Panasonic put Intel on their banned suppliers
| list.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It was a very good way to prove everyone right in not trusting
| any kind of Google's products.
|
| Even Android, only succeeded because OEMs also like free beer
| instead of paying licenses and the day Android stops being, they
| can anyway carry on with the last AOSP code drop.
| noasaservice wrote:
| I never knew any real human that thought Stadia was anywhere near
| a good idea, or even used it.
|
| All of us techies around me thought this was yet another
| dillettanting around by Google that they were going to dismiss
| any day now.
|
| And we were not wrong.
| detaro wrote:
| And I know several real humans that did use it and liked it.
|
| People playing games is a wide demographic, with very different
| priorities and limits.
| nicd wrote:
| As a digital nomad, Stadia was far more portable than a
| traditional game console or PC, and I bought and played through
| a few full-length games. (I did understand that it was likely
| to get canned, though.)
|
| So- there's at least one real human out there! I suspect there
| are dozens of us!
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| What do you think about Xbox Cloud Streaming?
| morbia wrote:
| Depends if you mean the product or the tech.
|
| As a product I agree Stadia was dead on arrival, there was no
| chance people were going to buy games again on a brand new
| platform at full price with the potential for a poor experience
| every time your wifi flaked a bit.
|
| The tech behind it though I find fascinating. I would _love_ to
| have the ability to stream my games to a chromecast that I can
| attach to my TV downstairs, or take with me travelling. Most of
| the games I play aren 't fast paced so the odd latency blip for
| the convenience wouldn't bother me personally.
|
| I think the way google should have played it is gotten into bed
| with Valve. I feel like there is a market fit for steam link
| without the local streaming faff. Use google's infrastructure
| to stream your back catalogue of steam games for $XX/month,
| maybe throw in the odd free game like the game pass and I can
| see it gaining some traction. Certainly it would have more
| chance of success than going in to a mature market solo.
| TechnoWomble wrote:
| It's always going to a substandard experience for latency
| sensitive games. Can't change physics.
|
| I don't see the problem with owning a physical machine for
| your back catalogue. There's no real problems there that
| aren't created by greedy companies.
| morbia wrote:
| > It's always going to a substandard experience for latency
| sensitive games. Can't change physics.
|
| Couldn't agree more, but personally I'm old and my days of
| playing quake or CS1.6 are over so I don't care about
| latency. I totally understand streaming games is never
| going to cover all gamers though.
|
| > I don't see the problem with owning a physical machine
| for your back catalogue. There's no real problems there
| that aren't created by greedy companies.
|
| My physical machine isn't in the same room as my TV and is
| far from portable.
|
| Don't get me wrong, this isn't wouldn't be a lifechanging
| experience for me and I don't see this as a huge gap in the
| market. However if the tech behind Stadia was going to fit
| anywhere, leveraging an existing ecosystem felt like the
| best way.
| NavinF wrote:
| > My physical machine isn't in the same room as my TV
|
| Fiber DisplayPort cables are pretty cheap these days and
| can go across the house with 99%ile latency in the
| microsecond range (0.7ft/ns speed of light in fiber)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Latency isn't just about having a competitive advantage.
| Playing with high input latency is mentally fatiguing.
| Apple understands this; that's why they put so much
| effort into low latency touch controls. Touch control
| existed before the iphone but it almost always felt like
| crap until Apple figured out that reducing latency was
| key. Latency is the difference between merely usable and
| comfortable.
| monlockandkey wrote:
| But it was not a substandard experience. It was pretty
| flawless. Yes there is latency but it was imperceptible.
| You got used to it after 5 minutes and then you got sucked
| into the game, totally forgetting you are STREAMING a game
| to your machine. The tech is amazing, right on time in
| fact. The physics works out perfectly. Issue is that they
| chose Linux rather than Windows. Porting games is a pain.
| AJRF wrote:
| From the outside looking in with this move Google have alienated
| Ubisoft, Bungie & Rockstar from any and all future product
| launches. Google seems to have become a mediocre company over the
| past ~5 years.
| twawaaay wrote:
| I believe Google is completely blind that these kinds of moves
| cause people to not want to invest themselves in their new
| products. Why would I want to pioneer using new something if
| there is good likelihood it will get unceremoniously killed with
| very little reason / advance notice.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Anyone who pays out of their own pocket to launch anything on a
| newly introduced google product moving forward is an idiot.
|
| Google is going to need to dig deep into their wallets to build
| an ecosystem in any new market in the future.
|
| Then again, Stadia is too early and costing them too much money.
| More people need fiber internet before it's practical. Good thing
| Google killed their fiber internet rollout years ago...
| dmitriid wrote:
| It's not too early. They just had exactly zero proposition and
| understanding of the market.
|
| It was early when OnLive started the whole thing. Now? It's
| already a market. One that Google doesn't understand.
| dmix wrote:
| Stadia is not too early? Cloud gaming is getting mature now.
|
| I've heard people say there is lag but apparently the platforms
| have optimized them heavily in recent years and I've personally
| never experienced any problems after hundreds of hours on both
| Xbox cloud and Paperspace, with maxed out graphics.
|
| 100-250mbps connection is probably more than enough. And those
| connections are becoming the standard in the western world.
| monlockandkey wrote:
| You only need 25mbps? Why does everyone think you need
| gigabit. It is not the size of the pipe, rather the latency
| to the nearest datacenter.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| One of the things hiding behind the gigabit recommendation
| is that there are lots of terrible ISP decisions that might
| have been made upstream of you, but that symmetric gigabit
| providers haven't made by and large. It's not actually that
| you need gigabit, but rather that you need an ISP good
| enough to offer it.
|
| Back in the day, FiOS offering gigabit at your address was
| a handy shorthand for being on a more modern ONT, not using
| DSL to deliver it to your apartment over crappy copper,
| etc.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The business model made no sense.
|
| You don't get a big library of games for free to stream, and
| you don't get to use existing licenses of games you already
| own, now you have to double dip the full price of a game to
| play it on Stadia.
| x0x0 wrote:
| It made sense for me -- I own no gaming devices, and my only
| computers are macbook pros with shoddy graphic cards. There
| are occasionally games I'd love to play, but I don't want to
| pay $500+ (ps-latest, xbox X) or $2.5k (computer with $1k
| graphics card).
|
| Unfortunately, this outcome was easily predicable to anyone
| who follows google.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Fortunately the companies that understand gaming have
| similar-but-better solutions that are still perfectly
| viable. Assassins Creed games on xcloud have been a
| delight.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Yep. It's like if Netflix made you buy all of their movies
| and TV shows.
| ccouzens wrote:
| Google and iTunes allow you to "buy" films and TV. I don't
| think they're as successful as Netflix, but they're not
| unsuccessful.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes, iTunes introduced buying films and TV in 2003 when
| the state of the art was an iPod. Very few people still
| do it and Apple is all in on streaming and has many
| affordances to seamlessly support first and third party
| streaming services through various APIs like supporting
| TV Anywhere globally, supporting third party apps in the
| Tv app, etc.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| A song is $.99 or $1.29, a game is easily $40-60.
|
| I don't think movie purchases at any one retailer drives
| the kind of numbers Google was hoping to get out of
| Stadia.
| ccouzens wrote:
| I meant movies not songs.
|
| Eg https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-
| martian/id1039586890
|
| Which is the same price as some games
|
| Eg https://stadia.google.com/game/human-fall-flat-stadia-
| editio...
|
| That's the game I brought when I dipped my toe in to try
| it out (although I remember it being cheaper than that).
|
| > I don't think movie purchases at any one retailer
| drives the kind of numbers Google was hoping to get out
| of Stadia.
|
| I have no idea, but it's notable that movies don't need
| porting to a platform, but each game will need at least a
| little work.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I think I've seen a number thrown around where Google
| doesn't like businesses making less than a billion in
| revenue.
|
| According to this, 2021 electronic sales of movies
| totaled $737M. https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?suba
| ction=showfull&id=...
| skykooler wrote:
| Amazon Prime does that as well.
| krzyk wrote:
| Fiber is not needed. 50mbps is enough for 1080, 60fps. You just
| need lowish latency, so no radio, no wifi.
|
| Worked fine for me on GFN, Paperspace and Shadow.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| No wifi damns the premise completely, wifi is so ubiquitous
| that it has become synonymous with internet access itself.
| Cafes and hotels advertise having "wifi", not "internet
| access". College libraries label ethernet cables as "wifi
| cables" so that young students understand their purpose. The
| average laptop on the market doesn't have an ethernet port,
| nor do any of the low power tablets/phones on which Stadia
| might otherwise make sense.
| TechnoWomble wrote:
| There's no such as an Ethernet cable. That's just the "WiFi
| cable" of a different generation.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Yeah yeah, Cat 5 with 8P8C connectors. The shift in
| terminology is not the point, the shift in terminology is
| the evidence of wifi's ubiquity.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Virtually all devices that don't possess an Ethernet port
| merely need an adapter.
|
| At some point in time we can't fix the entire universe
| because people don't the know the fuck what they are
| talking about.
|
| Here's what people want. They want to plug their gig
| service into their 11 year old cable modem that supports
| 250Mbps and plug in their 12 year old "g" router which if
| their service is "good" or "strong" enough it will somehow
| make radio waves burst through walls like the kool aid man
| screaming "oh ya" as it drives gigabit speed to all devices
| on multiple floors of the house simultaneously somehow
| defying both common sense and the laws of physics.
|
| Meanwhile people will drop $3000 a year on cable TV but not
| the cost of installing decent hardware. It is perfectly
| normal for at least some devices sometimes MANY devices
| with a connection in the neighborhood of 10Mbps with random
| interruptions.
|
| Good wifi would mean a router per floor with a wired
| backhaul with additional wireless extenders as needed if
| you expect to have actual fast internet away from the main
| router.
| jefftk wrote:
| I mean, the whole thing clearly didn't work out, but not
| having a built-in ethernet port is easily solved with a $10
| adapter.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Most people would have to buy the cable too, and either
| run it through their walls, under doors, or restrict
| their play to whatever room their router is in.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Normal users are not _that_ helpless so as to give up
| when faced with this problem.
|
| I maintain contact with several non-tech people. When
| they realized that e.g. Valorant will work better with a
| cable they very quickly deciphered the USB-to-Ethernet
| adapters market and asked a father or a friend to run
| their cable properly. Took each of them 2-3 days and
| they're much happier casual gamers now.
|
| Where there is a need, a way is found. When the need
| arises, people learn. Seen it happen several times.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I'm not saying people can't figure it out. But I do think
| it substantially negates the appeal of the product.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| Exactly. Once you decide to route cables in your walls,
| that can become quite an investment. Not necessarily
| exclusive, but why not also just invest in a PC then,
| rather than stop at a half-measure...
| t-writescode wrote:
| In the walls? I've seen plenty of places with just lots
| of wires all about, usually tactfully hidden against
| walls. Rich people wire things in the wall, everyone else
| just has cables strung about the place.
| Animats wrote:
| > The average laptop on the market doesn't have an Ethernet
| port
|
| Fortunately, USB-C to Ethernet adapters start at $16.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Wifi works fine for it, honestly. As noted elsewhere, the
| biggest problem is latency-based. Using WiFi will probably
| add ~30-50ms of latency to your setup, which is bad, but
| also consider that both the PS5 and Xbox Series X have over
| 100ms of input lag alone. Once you do the math, Stadia over
| Wifi isn't any less responsive than playing on console. As
| long as your Wifi connection is half-decent and you aren't
| playing some Chinese MMO, your experience _should_ be fine.
| vel0city wrote:
| If your WiFi connection adds 30-50ms of average latency
| you seriously need to stop living in a microwave oven or
| upgrade to something after 802.11b.
|
| With an Intel AX201 WiFi chip connecting to a UniFi6 Lite
| my average latency is 1ms to the router.
|
| Even a cheap and somewhat compromised WiFi
| chipset/antenna can do way better than 30-50ms latency.
| Here's an original Pi Zero W connecting through the same
| AP hitting the local router:
|
| 64 packets transmitted, 64 received, 0% packet loss, time
| 156ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.293/6.699/63.116/7.364 ms
|
| This is while I've got streaming music playing on my
| phone on WiFi connected to Bluetooth headphones,
| streaming video on the WiFi TV, and other wireless
| network traffic happening.
| jimmydorry wrote:
| >64 packets transmitted, 64 received, 0% packet loss,
| time 156ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev =
| 2.293/6.699/63.116/7.364 ms
|
| A 63ms delay on some packets can totally ruin the user
| experience even if the average is relatively low... and
| this is the best a near-optimal (in the real world) setup
| can do.
|
| If you left your test running longer than 64 packets, I'm
| sure you would see at least a 100ms max. GP wasn't far-
| off with their assertion that running on WiFi can easily
| add 30-50ms of latency. Their wording was a bit loose
| though.
| vel0city wrote:
| That 63ms packet was one packet. It's way out of the
| standard deviation. You don't point to the max and state
| that's the typical experience of the network.
|
| If we only looked at max values then Amazon isn't 2 day
| shipping it's like 1 month because some delivery sometime
| took that long, even though like 95% of deliveries are
| within two days (just an example, don't know what their
| actual rates are)
|
| And on top of that, that's with an extremely cheap chip
| with a compromised antenna inside a network closet with a
| TCXO literally right on top of the antenna running on
| 2.4FHz. My 5GHz example with a nice AX chip and decent
| laptop lid edge antenna never experienced any pings
| higher than 1ms.
| josefx wrote:
| > You don't point to the max and state that's the typical
| experience of the network.
|
| The test uses 64 packages which is a tiny sample size for
| streaming use. If we blindly scale that up you would hit
| the max several dozen times per minute.
|
| > If we only looked at max values then Amazon isn't 2 day
| shipping it's like 1
|
| A better example: Imagine your tongue just stops moving
| once every minute and then tries to catch up with what
| you where doing, imagine this will happen for the next
| two months. It is just a minor annoyance, right?
| wtallis wrote:
| A relevant ping test should also be sending packets far
| more often than once per second (more like once per frame
| at a minimum), and should be sending larger packets than
| the default for ping.
| vel0city wrote:
| Here you go, 1 thousand byte payload ping sent every 0.02
| seconds on my Pi Zero W. ping -i 0.02 -s
| 1400 router.home.lan . . . lots of pings . . .
| 6203 packets transmitted, 6203 received, 0% packet loss,
| time 128938ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev =
| 2.023/3.397/43.075/1.785 ms, pipe 2
|
| The previous ping had the Zero W way overloaded, I
| realized that after. Single core running with a load
| average of 2.8, still managed to be decently interactive
| and have the previous pings. This ping was happening
| while having 1 minute load average of 1.2. So only kind
| of overloaded ;)
|
| This kind of latency is achievable on a $10 board with
| only 2.4GHz Wireless N. Suggesting WiFi adds 50ms latency
| on average is _extreme_ hyperbole.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| An important aspect that I think is overlooked: even if
| the latency is so subtle that it's overlooked,
| subconsciously you may have a feeling that something is
| off, your perception of the product will be worse, you
| will perhaps become frustrated without even knowing why.
|
| A person I know was diagnosed with tinnitus. And it (the
| diagnosis) made him happy. For over a year he was
| frustrated, nervous, but he didn't know why. Turns out he
| was hearing noise all that time, but just didn't realize
| it. Sounds (pun not intended) ridiculous, but that's how
| the mind works.
| NavinF wrote:
| > 64 packets transmitted, 64 received, 0% packet loss,
| time 156ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev =
| 2.293/6.699/63.116/7.364 ms
|
| So if a video frame consists of 64 packets, the whole
| frame will be delayed by 63.1ms.
|
| Yes there are ways around this (FEC), but getting 1ms
| 99%ile latency over wifi IRL is nontrivial.
|
| Btw fat-client PCs have much smaller latency spikes, but
| even those spikes are noticable and make games feel
| jittery. That's why we compare GPUs based on "1% lows"
| instead of average FPS. Also see frame pacing.
| [deleted]
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| You probably live in the literal woods.
|
| Over here in the urbanized world it's a whole different
| world of pain.
| Groxx wrote:
| By far the bigger issue with wifi is periodic bursts of
| noise _and wifi scanning_ introducing stutter. Wifi
| latency is low enough to be a complete non-issue, the
| only place you 'd care is with VR (and even then it's
| probably fine, but you're much _much_ more sensitive to
| that stutter, so it 's worth doing something special).
| michaelmrose wrote:
| People's wifi ISN'T half decent though. They use 10 year
| old hardware stored in a closet to service their two
| story house then connect all the devices furthest from
| the router to the 5 ghz network and get 10Mbps
| intermittent service partying like its 2002 instead of
| 2022.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| > Using WiFi will probably add ~30-50ms of latency to
| your setup
|
| Uhm... What?
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm assuming the worst here. I've seen people rocking
| decade-old Netgear routers that struggle to work with
| their media center, much less an entire household of
| devices.
|
| That's a pretty catastrophically high estimate though,
| you're right.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Hot damn son your WiFi must be poorly configured. I got
| sites w WiFi aps about the 4th hop after a ptp WiFi link.
| Adds about 2ms latency the furthest you can get from the
| main router. Bout half a ms per hop.
|
| 30-50ms per hop is absurd.
| msbarnett wrote:
| > Using WiFi will probably add ~30-50ms of latency to
| your setup, which is bad, but also consider that both the
| PS5 and Xbox Series X have over 100ms of input lag alone.
|
| This is absolute nonsense. Average end-to-end input-to-
| rendered-frame latency is half that at 60fps and more
| like a third of that in 120hz mode in Gears 5 on the
| Series X https://www.neogaf.com/threads/xbox-series-x-
| input-latency-r...
|
| Lots of similar results abound. Here's Multiverse on the
| PS5 averaging 31ms end-to-end latency at 60fps:
| https://twitter.com/noodalls/status/1552942081014132738
|
| "100ms of input lag alone" (before the engine even has
| the input? c'mon mate) is a preposterous idea.
| kmac_ wrote:
| There's no 100 ms. Current generation made a huge leap
| forward. Controller and whole input stack add 2-8 ms. TVs
| with 120Hz, VRR and low latency mode add 6-10ms in 4k HDR
| (no idea about DolbyVision HDR).
| fwip wrote:
| Wifi is fine too. I played a good bit of Destiny on it, and
| the latency was barely noticeable most of the time. I'd only
| notice it for maybe 2-3 seconds out of a 2 hour play session.
| sofixa wrote:
| WiFi works fine as long as it's 5GHz.
| [deleted]
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| I played OnLive like what, 10+ years ago on a trash AT&T DSL
| connection and it was a great experience. Stadia was not too
| early. Google is just stupid.
| cafed00d wrote:
| Yup, I played the entire "Last of Us" campaign on Sony's PS
| Now service in 2015 on cheap Comcast internet on my 2014
| MacBook Pro. Display was great and the streaming quality was
| great! Don't remember if it was 4k; very very unlikely.
| Perhaps it was 1080p or 720p. Anyways great experience!
|
| Never tried Stadia; _even though_ I got their controller &
| chrome cast 4k for free in some promo offer! It was just too
| much work to end up paying full price for games I already
| owned! Such a bad bad product. The most greatest of
| technology/engineering! And yet, such a waste!
|
| Google really has fallen in my eyes. As a software engineer,
| I would be so scared to go there to work on something new.
| ansible wrote:
| > _Never tried Stadia; _even though_ I got their controller
| & chrome cast 4k for free in some promo offer!_
|
| As I understand it, the Stadia controller can be used like
| a wired USB game controller on a PC.
| monlockandkey wrote:
| I played Stadia over 20mbps Wifi. It was flawless. I finished
| Tomb raider 1&2 and Metro exodus. Completely forgot I was
| streaming a game to my laptop after the first 5 minutes.
|
| Google killed fiber rollout because they were forced out by
| other ISPs...
|
| Issue with Stadia was Linux. Linux choked the entire platform.
| You had to get developers to port their game. If they used
| Windows they would have a solid platform with thousands of
| games. Instead they are at the mercy of "bribing" devs to port
| their game to Stadia.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| If Linux was the issue, how do you explain the steam deck's
| library of games?
|
| This is really simple: people no longer trust Google.
| lmm wrote:
| Valve put a whole lot of work over several years into
| making that possible (including the failed Steam Machines).
| monlockandkey wrote:
| Proton is the explanation to the steam deck library. Stadia
| came out 2019 and probably has been in development for a
| few years prior. Proton is relatively a recent thing.
|
| The issue is in a low latency environment, translating
| directx to vulkan may have overhead.
| SXX wrote:
| Proton is just pre-built Wine with Valve patches. Wine
| existed for years and DXVK wasn't Valves' own project.
| They just sponsored some open source project and driver
| improvements and integrated it into Steam.
|
| I seriously doubt that if you count every single
| developer that Valve hired to work on it as well as
| sponsored 3rd-party developers there likely gonna be
| 25-30 people or less.
|
| I pretty sure that more people worked on Stadia within
| Google than all people working in Valve on all of their
| projects.
| lnanek2 wrote:
| I bought the founder's edition Stadia hardware and I'm thrilled
| with what I got out of it, personally. I got a free game system
| for years since they are giving everyone refunds. Played
| several AAA games I had no access to otherwise. Still going to
| have the, now free, Chromecast Ultra 4k with ethernet cable
| power adapter afterward too. It works fine even if I don't pair
| Stadia controllers with it.
|
| This Ubisoft initiative to transfer licenses to PC is actually
| worthless to me since my PC doesn't have a GPU capable of
| playing games anyway and I have no intention to buy one.
| BakeInBeens wrote:
| I'll echo your sentiment. I got to game free for nearly three
| years and I get to keep any hardware I purchased to do so. I
| personally grew tired of Stadia due to the lack of public
| support and negative sentiment any time it was brought up so
| I'm happy to be getting my money back (especially seeing as
| some games are providing second licenses on top of refunds)
| which can go towards a GPU while being given time to finish
| any games in the coming months.
| onion2k wrote:
| _I got a free game system for years since they are giving
| everyone refunds._
|
| This will be a common attitude in the future as far as
| Google's consumer products go. People will buy them expecting
| them to shut down in a few years, but now they'll also expect
| a refund.
|
| If you're a Googler who dreams of heading up a project to
| make something consumer-facing it'll be _a lot_ harder to get
| buy-in from the board now that it 'll cost so much more to
| shut it down (in dollars if a refund is given or in good will
| if it isn't) anything that's not a massive success.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Keeping services stable on life support is a muscle Google
| needs to build if they want to be relied on. Maybe that
| will happen when there's an overt price tag on neglecting
| it.
| Hnaomyiph wrote:
| Considering more people are reading these headlines than
| experiencing a round of google freebies for their shutdown,
| this is only going to work to limit consumer buy-in on
| whatever google decides it needs to do next.
|
| Google is panically trying to find another unicorn, as it
| knows its current cash cow, ads, is holding almost all its
| eggs and could be facing its demise as online regulation only
| continues to strengthen.
|
| Not to mention google's perverse promotional incentives that
| ignore supporting products long term, focusing on launching
| new things instead.
|
| Google, as it is right now, is a dying company. They need
| basically a complete overhaul, starting with firing the
| entire C-level, especially the true CEO, Ruth Porat.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| > they are giving everyone refunds
|
| Not the developers who poured millions into porting games.
| danhor wrote:
| Few developers ported to Stadia out of good will, Google
| paid _very_ handsomely up front.
| somenameforme wrote:
| As an aside about GPUs, things have changed a lot over the
| years. In the early 2000s games were being released that were
| impossible to run on high settings with current hardware, and
| your hardware was outdated after 3 months and obsolete after
| a year.
|
| Today An RX580 (released in 2017) can be had for $100-$200
| and is enough to comfortably run any modern game at quite
| nice settings. It's been a while since I looked as well, it's
| entirely possible the Ethereum swap is pushing card prices
| down even lower.
|
| You only need the silly priced cards if you want to do
| something like play games on maxed out settings in 4k at a
| locked 120fps.
| zeppelin101 wrote:
| But consider the cost of power. For many people, especially
| Europeans, the power bill from running a gaming PC might be
| substantially higher than that of running a laptop + Stadia
| or GeForce Now monthly subscription.
| morsch wrote:
| 500W average power draw while running a game
|
| 2h average a day playing games
|
| 40c/kWh for power
|
| 30 * 0.4 * 2 * 0.5 = 12 EUR/month
|
| Stadia Pro was 10 EUR. So you're not wrong, though it's
| easily within the margin of error for this ballpark
| estimate (e.g. I wish I still had 14 hours a week for
| gaming; the power draw could be off by a factor of two in
| either direction, ...). And in winter, using power for
| computing is just a roundabout way of heating your living
| area, so in a way, it's free. I wonder if increased
| electricity costs were a factor in shutting down Stadia.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Running a mini pc like the Minisforum UM560/UM580 at full
| tilt is equivalent to running an incandescent light bulb.
| amluto wrote:
| Which indicates that something is wrong with the
| residential electricity markets. Google should not be
| paying substantially less for marginal electricity than
| Google's customers.
|
| (This is a major problem with California's energy
| planning. On the one hand, CA (IMO fairly sensibly) wants
| users to switch from gas to electricity. On the other
| hand, CA's electricity prices are so egregiously inflated
| that people have an economic incentive to switch from
| electricity to gas.)
| zeppelin101 wrote:
| > Which indicates that something is wrong with the
| residential electricity markets. Google should not be
| paying substantially less for marginal electricity than
| Google's customers.
|
| In a more perfect world, that would be the case!
| kjeetgill wrote:
| Not at all. We want companies to leverage economies of
| scale. Efficiency should bring competitive advantage.
| Google often invests in datacenters in places based
| around where it's cheaper to power and run them, often
| owning the energy production.
|
| This is a good thing
| cinntaile wrote:
| Often using subsidies and tax advantages so whether it's
| cheaper overall for society will depend on the cost of
| these venefits.
| amluto wrote:
| But of limited value for a service like Stadia. Power may
| be cheaper 1000 miles away, but those 1000 miles cost
| latency.
| sofixa wrote:
| Google have some datacenters with dedicated renewable
| power generation (e.g. Belgium) they set up themselves,
| so it makes sense sometimes their electricity is cheaper.
| wbobeirne wrote:
| Their efforts should also allow you to transition to GeForce
| Now or other cloud gaming providers, so it's definitely not
| worthless.
| [deleted]
| a1371 wrote:
| It's funny because Ubisoft+ was just announced, and you could
| play all Ubisoft titles for a monthly fee. Sounded like a huge
| effort.
|
| I wonder if the sudden cut is part of Google preparing for a
| recession.
| cronix wrote:
| I would think gaming would go up during a recession. Gaming can
| be very cheap entertainment once the hardware is purchased.
| Like for the price of 4 movies in the theater at $15 a pop that
| might be 6 or 7 hours long in total, I can play a game for 40x
| that long over months for the same price and not leave my
| house.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The stock market is not the economy. There is no recession.
| Unemployment is super low.
|
| A recession is what we say in 2008.
| seabrookmx wrote:
| It's fair to say we're in a unique/different position than
| 2008.
|
| But the definition of a recession has always been two
| consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, and that has
| in fact happened.
| surfpel wrote:
| That is one specific definition of a recession.
|
| It's funny to me because if we're resorting to semantics
| and nitpicking to prove whether or not there is a massive
| and broadly defined societal issue going on, then it
| probably isn't really happening... at least not enough to
| write home about.
| maxfurman wrote:
| Recessions can move very slowly. Many of the more obvious
| effects of the 2008 crisis didn't happen until 2009 as
| the contagion spread outward. It is possible that the
| recession has already started even if the worst economic
| effects are yet to come. At the very least we are in the
| downward part of the cycle, and we have yet to see the
| next bottom.
| seabrookmx wrote:
| It's not semantics or nitpicking.. it's a fact. It's
| literally the Oxford dictionary definition of recession.
|
| It may not be a severe recession. It may not affect our
| quality of life all that much. Media may be blowing it
| out of proportion. It's not my goal to argue either way
| (I'm honestly not qualified to do so and it seems most
| experts don't know yet).
|
| But saying "it isn't really happening" is just false. We
| don't get to just redefine words based on our feelings.
| metadat wrote:
| Google's behavior alone (or any large company, for that
| matter) doesn't determine whether we're in a recession or
| not. The unemployment rate is still _super low_.
| sofixa wrote:
| Just announced? Ubisoft+ on Stadia was released like in
| mid-2021.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I think there's probably a sentiment of "Oh Google is really
| messing Ubisoft and Bungie around". But I think the truth is
| probably slightly different. Google was offering something
| different, and I don't think any game studio was jumping at the
| chance to get on Stadia - especially given Google's reputation.
| So any work going on to support and develop for Stadia was almost
| certainly backed by Google money, not Ubisoft money. So yes, it's
| sad that engineering effort was wasted (but let's be real, 90% of
| engineering effort is wasted), in reality, it probably isn't a
| big hit for the game studios. This isn't a case of Google luring
| naive game companies into developing for Stadia and then pulling
| the plug, this is a matter of big spending Google trying to spend
| its way into a new industry and failing, probably it was quite
| lucrative all round. Yes, they'll have to do a bit of work to
| save face with their customers, but all-in-all this was probably
| free money for them.
| Kye wrote:
| Microsoft did the same with Xbox, but they stuck with it
| through all the years the division was a huge money sink.
| Google could have taken a lesson from that: even Microsoft's
| existing presence in gaming with Windows, DirectX, and a long
| list of well-respected development studios wasn't enough for a
| quick entry.
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| Yeah, shortly after Xbox 360 launch Microsoft had to
| repair/replace something like 20% of them because the red
| ring of death, and their internal estimate at that time was
| around $1.1 billion. I don't Xbox and am not a Microsoft
| apologist but they have managed to ride this Xbox thing out.
| Unlike Games for Windows Live :)
| juunpp wrote:
| "It had also not been shared with longtime Stadia partners, big
| devs like Ubisoft and Bungie...But Google didn't even tell their
| own Stadia team until the day it was announced, so really, no one
| knew at all."
|
| Hard to tell if this is incredible mismanagement or sheer
| arrogance.
| justapassenger wrote:
| It's pragmatism. News like that will leak. If it leaks, it's
| same as no one getting a heads up.
| miohtama wrote:
| Is there more clearer way to send a message "Working with
| Google does not pay off?"
|
| Google can roll in its arrogance as long as there is no
| credible search engine competitor or it is chopped to pieces
| with competion laws.
| [deleted]
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Hard to tell if this is incredible mismanagement or sheer
| arrogance._
|
| Yes.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Given that Google thought that their gaming division should
| be headed by a guy who has been booted from multiple gaming
| companies for completely fucking them up (most recently the
| XBox One and PS3 launches), both.
| juunpp wrote:
| I guess they conveniently left that part out of the
| marketing.
| returnInfinity wrote:
| oh wow, if google does not create ways to export save game data,
| then destiny 2 players will lose thousands of hours of grind and
| possibly season exclusive items which they can never get back.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Destiny 2 has "Cross Save" (characters playable on any
| platform) if you enable it, so there should be no issues.
| ccouzens wrote:
| You can use Google takeout to export your game saves. I've used
| it to export my cyberpunk 2077 save but I haven't yet tried
| importing it into the Steam version.
|
| I would have thought that because destiny 2 is an online game,
| the save files would be kept on bungie's servers. Perhaps the
| issue with the game is more that players need to link their
| identity to their account on a second platform.
| cvs268 wrote:
| > I've used it to export my cyberpunk 2077 save but I haven't
| yet tried importing it into the Steam version.
|
| He he. :-)
|
| Reminds me of the folks who ran daily backups, but never
| tried to restore until they had an actual disaster (and
| discovered that their backups were corrupt).
|
| Hopefully, these Stadia-exported game saves can be used by
| other platforms like Steam.
| michaelmior wrote:
| For me, Stadia was by far the best gaming experience I've had in
| recent history. I'm a very casual gamer so I don't really want to
| invest a lot in hardware or buying games. Stadia made it very
| cheap for me to easily jump into a game session whenever I wanted
| with minimal upfront investment. I'm most disappointed to see
| Ubisoft+ on Stadia gone since several franchises I like were
| Ubisoft and now I have no easy way to play.
|
| I'll probably check out GeForce NOW at some point, but I
| currently don't have a way to use my only controller (Stadia)
| with my TV.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Do you have amazing internet?
|
| These services are basically unusable to everyone I know, and
| we have pretty decent connections. The input lag is just
| horrific.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Probably depends on where you live as much as how fast your
| connection is. Hard to get adequate ping. 100ms ping means
| the equivalent of a 6 frame input delay at 60 fps. That's
| very noticeable.
| arcticbull wrote:
| And that's on top of USB input delay (up to 40ms [1]) or
| Bluetooth 5.0 (20-100ms), plus your monitor (4ms+).
|
| [1] https://epub.uni-
| regensburg.de/40182/1/On_the_Latency_of_USB...
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah dude, if you're playing on a TV as well, one that
| doesn't have a way of disabling its postprocessing, you
| may be slapping another 250 ms on that.
| pdimitar wrote:
| If you don't care about graphic performances or photo-realistic
| quality then I can't recommend the Switch enough.
|
| Some find find the initial 300-400 EUR investment a bit steep
| but after you go through that they have sales _all the time_
| and you can easily amass a collection of 50+ games for a
| maximum of 200 EUR. I did that over the course of 2 years --
| less than 10 EUR a month. Now I can 't decide which game to
| play because I have so many, lol.
| brnt wrote:
| The price of a Switch got you 3.5 years of Stadia. That's not
| bad, if they had sales too.
| michaelmior wrote:
| I really don't care that much about graphics. Sure, I don't
| want something that looks awful, but I care more about just
| taking a break and having a good time. The Switch is
| definitely something I've considered, but the cost relative
| to how much I would expect to use it makes it a more
| difficult choice for me than it was to pick up a Stadia
| controller.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > If you don't care about graphic performances or photo-
| realistic quality then I can't recommend the Switch enough.
|
| Or just performance in general, or a game library not made
| entirely by Nintendo, or hardware that doesn't have problems
| after a few months of usage, or, or, or...
|
| The Switch is good for people that specifically want the
| Nintendo Switch games, for anyone else it's the absolute last
| choice any day of the week.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Uh pretty sure Nintendo didn't make several thousand of the
| 4418 Switch games...
|
| The Switch is good for anyone that wants a portable console
| that can also easily be played on a TV with friends and
| family. Sure if you're a PC Master Race Snob who absolutely
| can't stand if a game is remotely under 1080p 60FPS maybe
| it's not the console for you but IME at least everything is
| playable except for a handful of awful ports.
| wielebny wrote:
| There are several gems - my family easily spent 1000+ hours
| on Wittcher 3, Zelda, Hades or Animal Crossing - but most of
| the games are just too bland.
|
| I'm a fan of cloud gaming and have used both Stadia and Xbox
| Cloud Gaming. It appeals to me, as I don't have to invest in
| a gaming rig and can play on almost everything.
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