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Google Games

Google is Shutting Down Stadia (theverge.com) 117

Google is shutting down Stadia, its cloud gaming service. From a report: The service will remain live for players until January 18th, 2023. Google will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchased through the Google Store as well as all the games and add-on content purchased from the Stadia store. Google expects those refunds will be completed in mid-January. "A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia," Stadia vice president and GM Phil Harrison said in a blog post. "And while Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we've made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service." Employees on the Stadia team will be distributed to other parts of the company. Harrison says Google sees opportunities to apply Stadia's technology to other parts of Google, like YouTube, Google Play, and its AR efforts, and the company also plans to "make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed," he wrote.
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Google is Shutting Down Stadia

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  • by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @11:28AM (#62924111)

    Enough said. Into the graveyard it goes.

    • They're also sunsetting Google Surveys. Add more to the Google Graveyard. https://support.google.com/sur... [google.com]
      • Has Google stayed with any of it's new programs/project, aside from Gmail?

        Heck, I've not looked in awhile...it gmail still in beta after all these years?

        • Gmail is finally out of beta. One has to remember what their core business is. Unless the product allows them to gather lots more user data or show lots more advertising, chances are they're going to abandon it. That's especially true now as they've grown but the market has gotten more competitive and they've had to tighten their belt to prioritize profitable projects, where a decade ago they could afford to throw money at pet projects.
          • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @01:11PM (#62924449)

            t the market has gotten more competitive and they've had to tighten their belt to prioritize profitable projects, where a decade ago they could afford to throw money at pet projects.

            Their net income (profit) begs to differ. [statista.com]

            Now, I understand that companies are operated to maximize profit, so what they might "afford" is not really the point to the shareholders or management.

            However, that was also true of the earlier google. The difference is now they seem to just be turning the screws on their existing cash cows (search, youtube) rather than taking risks and being innovative. Their choice, but it is a different strategy, and is certainly worse for end users.

            • Sundar Pichai is to Google what Steve Ballmer was to Microsoft. Zero interest in innovation. He is only there to maximize the cash cows for (short-term) "shareholder value".

            • The problem with not only Google but many corporations is that business decisions are made primarily on the basis of how stock prices are affected. That a decision makes Google more money is less important than whether some ratio or margin increases.

              As Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC said: âoeYou Americans measure profitability by a ratio. Thereâ(TM)s a problem with that. No banks accept deposits denominated in ratios. The way we measure profitability is in âtons of moneyâ(TM). You us

          • Gmail is finally out of beta. One has to remember what their core business is. Unless the product allows them to gather lots more user data or show lots more advertising, chances are they're going to abandon it.

            See, that's the thing: Stadia *could have been* one of those services where, for once, the end user was the customer, not the product.

            There's a limit to how far data mining can go. By time you have browser history, e-mail data, and the sum total of all passwords (even if Google can't literally log into the accounts, the websites for which passwords are stored which paint a picture by themselves), you've pretty much gotten everything the user is capable of handing over to you as far as an online profile. Wit

            • Add in the niche audience to begin with (people who didn't already have a console but wanted to game while having the above-average internet necessary for Stadia to run reliably), and that was the bigger issue, not the absence of a means to mine data and sell ads.

              This is the big one for me, the cost of the internet connection necessary for streaming games mean's your target audience are people that can already afford to drop money on a console. Although I am interested in seeing what google can do with the underlying tech If they targeted things like rendering or compiling with their Chromebook line it could easily be worth the price of admission.

        • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

          > Has Google stayed with any of it's new programs/project, aside from Gmail?

          I hear their search engine has some traction. But I wouldn't know since I don't use it myself.

    • by CRB9000 ( 647092 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @12:25PM (#62924321)
      Google's new motto: "Don't be stable." Everything is a freakin' experiment with Google so you can't count on anything from them.
      • by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @01:46PM (#62924555)
        Facebooks' motto is "move fast and break things". I work there; everyone is moving pretty slowly because all our tools are broken!
        • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

          I used to have a bit of an inferiority complex knowing that without a university degree I would never get into google... Or any other Silicon Valley giant.

          I've come to the conclusion that every single prestigious employer out there will count the prestige as a mighty part of the fringe benefits.

          I look at Google and Facebook today and all I can think is thank god I never ended up there.

          • My friends and I still look at each other and say, "If I'd gone to work for Microsoft as soon as I got out of college, I'd be a multi-millionaire now." (We graduated in 1982.)
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I have the opposite problem with Google products. Once they are released they often get neglected and not updated.

        Take My Maps, great idea but got zero development after the initial roll out. They couldn't even be bothered to update the app to work on newer versions of Android, so now you have to use the mobile website.

        The many, many chat apps are another example. They get released, and then not updated. After a few years, instead of updating that app, they release a new one.

      • Pretty much this. If the new Google project requires developers, it will be dead and gone in two years or less guaranteed.

        No developer trusts any Google project to be stable at this point. With Google, It's either it will flop and we'll kill it in two years, or it will be successful and we'll kill the API that made it popular in two years. Looking at Daydream View, or their various TV streaming endeavors, or Even Android and Chrome, which have basically been a moving target when it comes to their API change

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I have the Stadia gamepad, got it free. It's actually quite good. Luckily it works as a normal USB device.

      Maybe your can pick one up cheap on eBay now.

    • Aw, and I was just about ready to buy into it, after all it had lasted more than a few months so it felt like Google might finally stick with something.

    • Yeah, real shocker here.
  • That was anticlimactic! Let's move on, people.
  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @11:31AM (#62924121)

    It sure feels like if it's not search or email, any product from Google is made by some disinterested person using the 20% project time they have, but later on they get into ultimate frisbee and just drop it.

    • any product from Google is made by some disinterested person using the 20% project time they have, but later on they get into ultimate frisbee and just drop it.

      To be fair, if I could blow off my projects and play ultimate I probably would too.

    • by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Thursday September 29, 2022 @11:59AM (#62924233) Journal

      It sure feels like if it's not search or email, any product from Google is made by some disinterested person using the 20% project time they have, but later on they get into ultimate frisbee and just drop it.

      It's because Google wants to try new things, but doesn't want to run small-scale products, where "small scale" is defined as "less than hundreds of millions of users". So if products don't get on a trajectory that will clearly take them to "Google scale", they get shut down.

      Unfortunately, this policy actually discourages users from using Google products, making it less likely that a given project will reach Google scale.

      Google is, at least, quite good about protecting users' investments in paid products. As in this case where all purchases will be refunded, so those who chose to use Stadia won't lose money.

      FWIW I use Stadia, and really like it. It's like having a gaming console that takes up almost zero space in my house and is super portable. I wouldn't take an XBox or Playstation on business trips, but I regularly take my Stadia controller and Google TV dongle to relax in the evenings. I'll be sad to see it go. But it apparently isn't an approach to gaming that interests enough people to be the sort of product Google is interested in running. I hope someone else will do it.

      • by LordZardoz ( 155141 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @12:39PM (#62924375)

        My impression is that Google has the money and capacity to indulge trying shit, but they also have an unrealistic expectation of return on investment on it. They will try stuff like Stadia to see if it works, but unless they very rapidly show a massive return on investment, it will get pushed aside as a distraction. The same shit happened with their youtube originals like Cobra Kai; They go far enough to prove they could be successful at it if they commit significant resources to it, but they are not willing to make that commitment, and they are not going to stick around to be a 4th place competitor in the market.

        For Stadia in particular, the technology was there, but the infrastructure for wide consumer adoption was not. Stadia is great for slow playing games where input lag is not an issue (think Civilization, Darkest Dungeon). But they lacked original IP to draw anyone to the platform, their 3rd party support was bought and paid for (ie, they paid to get major multi platform titles onto their platform), and the most popular games of the moment suffer too much if there is any amount of input lag.

        END COMMUNICATION

        • I've been mildly interested in a variety of Google products, but unless they're already huge flagship systems (mail, docs, gcs), I don't want to invest my time in something that might disappear.

          THE GUN IS GOOD.

        • by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Thursday September 29, 2022 @01:40PM (#62924533) Journal

          Stadia is great for slow playing games where input lag is not an issue

          I never noticed any problem with input lag, not even with FPS.

          • by mjwx ( 966435 )

            Stadia is great for slow playing games where input lag is not an issue

            I never noticed any problem with input lag, not even with FPS.

            My friend who lives less than 5 miles from the datacentre and has 100 mbps fibre said the same thing... I told him to try it on his 5G connection and get back to me. His response was hilariously angry as he found out there really is input lag.

            Most of the world lives on slow, laggy internet connections hundreds of miles away from the datacentres they use, if not thousands. That's why OnLive 2.0... erm I mean Stadia never took off. It's useless unless you fit some very specific circumstances.

            Cue the ine

            • Worked fine for me on many different Internet connections, including my home (WiMax for a while, then Gbps fiber), my RV (Starlink), and many hotels in the US, Europe and Asia.
      • You don't need to bring your Xbox on a business trip. Xbox has Cloud Gaming, which has the huge advantage of not being yet another Google boondoggle. It's from a company that actually wants users to be part of it's service for the games- not for the user-data it collects.

        Maybe the Saudi's will buy Stadia- seems like the perfect match.

        • You don't need to bring your Xbox on a business trip. Xbox has Cloud Gaming

          Interesting. Do I have to buy an Xbox to get it? If so, do I have to keep the Xbox?

          • No, you don't need an Xbox at all. You can play on a PC, iPhone, iPad, Android phone or even some Smart TVs. And unlike Stadia, it comes with hundreds of good games as part of the Game Pass subscription. You don't need to pay for a subscription and also pay separately for a bunch of games.

            https://www.xbox.com/en-US/cloud-gaming

            • You can play on a PC, iPhone, iPad, Android phone or even some Smart TVs.

              So... I could play on my phone. I don't have a Windows PC, iOS device, or a Samsung TV. Oh, wait, maybe I could play on my laptop (OS X) or desktop (Debian Linux), since it says it works through Chrome. But I'd really prefer to play on a big screen.

              This was the beautiful thing about Stadia. It also works on PCs, Mac, iOS, Android, etc., but the best is that it works on Chromecast, which means essentially any TV with the purchase of a small, cheap dongle -- that I actually already had anyway because the C

          • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            Interesting. Do I have to buy an Xbox to get it? If so, do I have to keep the Xbox?

            Nope. You just need the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (not the PC Game Pass). It's just a subscription.

            Now, if you want to take full advantage of Xbox Game Pass you should get an Xbox, but it isn't required. If you do get an Xbox later, the cloud saving will mean you can download the game to play locally on your Xbox and the save will transfer, so it's nice in that way.

            You just need to have Ultimate, a compatible device, a compatib

      • FWIW I use Stadia, and really like it. It's like having a gaming console that takes up almost zero space in my house and is super portable. I wouldn't take an XBox or Playstation on business trips, but I regularly take my Stadia controller and Google TV dongle to relax in the evenings.

        Being that it's hardware...can you hack into it and repurpose it for anything useful/fun?

        • FWIW I use Stadia, and really like it. It's like having a gaming console that takes up almost zero space in my house and is super portable. I wouldn't take an XBox or Playstation on business trips, but I regularly take my Stadia controller and Google TV dongle to relax in the evenings.

          Being that it's hardware...can you hack into it and repurpose it for anything useful/fun?

          I'm sure someone will!

      • They sort of need to make these side projects somewhat independent in their own divisions. Let the runm and manage on their own, even if they're just a tiny line on the big accounting spreadsheet. The big giant multinational companies do this, because having lots of small industries under the same umbrella means you end up being big.

      • It's like having a gaming console that takes up almost zero space in my house and is super portable.

        It's like having a Nintendo switch.

        But it apparently isn't an approach to gaming that interests enough people to be the sort of product Google is interested in running.

        An obvious, trivially predictable outcome.

        to be the sort of product Google is interested in running. I hope someone else will do it.

        I hope this is not emulated. It's an insane waste of resources for no reason. The cost of SOC/GPU capable of delivering good enough performance for flat games is negligible and only decreasing so as time moves on.

        On the high end both latency and compression are unacceptable. On the low end there are no shortage of cheap solutions without the latency, quality and ridiculous ownership issues created by this scheme.

        It didn't just f

        • It didn't just fail because it was Google doing it. It failed because there was obviously never a substantive market for it in the first place.

          Apparently Microsoft is also doing it.

      • I regularly take my Stadia controller and Google TV dongle to relax in the evenings. I'll be sad to see it go.

        You can do the same thing with any bluetooth controller and the Steam app on Google TV dongle, though you need to keep a desktop PC running at home with your Steam games installed. Or just get a Steam Deck.

        • I regularly take my Stadia controller and Google TV dongle to relax in the evenings. I'll be sad to see it go.

          You can do the same thing with any bluetooth controller and the Steam app on Google TV dongle, though you need to keep a desktop PC running at home with your Steam games installed.

          I don't have a Windows PC.

          Or just get a Steam Deck.

          I just Googled that. Hmm. Does it run the games on the Steam Deck hardware? What about games that require more horsepower than the device has? The nice thing about cloud-based gaming is that you don't have to worry about that; they provision adequate hardware for the game.

          • Unless you set it up so you can connect to your home PC via VPN or something using Steam Link, the games have to run on the device. The device is pretty fast, but not very fast. Its screen is not too amazing, which helps in the performance department, but if you've been doing full HD on TVs you may be disappointed. It really has been a plus for Linux gamers that it exists though, because it's created a whole new group of users that are motivated to test Proton settings :)

      • by Kisai ( 213879 )

        I've had Stadia since the beginning and I feel it was a missed opportunity:
        1) New releases could be tried without having to install multi-GB "demos", the developers could put the full game on Stadia with a "demo lock" and not worry about hackers cracking it
        2) High budget, cut-scene heavy games can be spoiler-protected from streamers spoiling the game by requiring gameplay to be streamed automatically to youtube or not streamed at all.
        3) Destroy any possibility of data-mining, decompiling or reverse engineer

        • What likely saved Stadia somewhat for the timeframe was the PS5 and GPU shortage, so if your computer wasn't up to it, at least Stadia was an option.

          My computer wasn't up to it because I don't have one. Not one running an OS that all of the games work on, anyway.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rogoshen1 ( 2922505 )

      I'm not sure about that assessment. Google search has become increasingly useless over time (i think it's largely due to going out of their vile little way to try to tie anything you search for some kind of product for you to buy)
      and gmail/hangouts/chat.. nerfing popout windows in whatever they are calling their of their integrated gmail chat (hangouts? google chat? pick a god damn name) was a decided step backwards, as well as castrating any attempt to use third party chat client to avoid the new forced U

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Speaking anonymously. Stadia got a bunch of over-promoted Diversity & Inclusion leaders who butted heads with the senior engineers, who actually knew how to do things, The technical talent moved on our out, somewhere at the end of the first year when the doom was obvious to any technical person. Then it withered and got outcompeted by pretty much everyone. Canceling it was a long time coming. I doubt Google will learn anything from this failure - there will be some excuses how the business was just too

  • The tech just isn't there. When we get quantum connectivity that can do lossless and lagless data transfer, then maybe. But until then a computer in the house beats ten in the cloud.
    • by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @11:33AM (#62924133) Journal

      I think all the console makers and Nvidia have proven the "tech is there". The problem as usual is Google, not the tech.

      • Yes technically the "tech is there", in that it exists.
        • by flink ( 18449 )

          Every other game streaming service treats games like Netflix treats its shows: you pay a monthly fee and can stream anything under that one license. Stadia charges $10/mo and asks you to buy games on top of it. I think that's why it failed. That and you know, it's google and all the coverage I read or heard included speculation about whether they would abandon it within 2 years. They pretty much made their own bed on this one.

          • Yeah okay. And all those other services still offer far less than suboptimal input latency and video compression artifacts.
            • by flink ( 18449 )

              Yeah, but the people consuming these services don't care. You subscribe to one of these things because you either don't have a gaming PC or are traveling with an iPad or something. Slightly laggy game with OK resolution is better than no game. If you want to take full advantage of your 3080ti and 4k monitor, then you buy games ala carte on Steam or you subscribe to Gamepass.

              However, there is a market for streaming games, Google just didn't understand that market, completely whiffed their launch, and ref

      • I think all the console makers and Nvidia have proven the "tech is there". The problem as usual is Google, not the tech.

        Really? I have never heard of anyone having an enjoyable experience with streaming. I certainly am skeptical my local Comcast connection will ever handle it. I tried doing local streaming with an XBox to my iPad on local wifi and the experience was laggy and shitty. Even Apple's sidecar and universal control is painfully laggy and that's doing a tiny fraction over wifi of what stadia is trying to do over the internet.

        For some games, lag isn't a big issue, like Bejeweled or Candy Crush...but then aga

        • My friends have tried Stadia out and had a fine experience with it. Obviously, some games aren't perfect for that: fighting games or other games that require the frame-clock precision, but that isn't most games.

          Also, there are streaming games on the Switch that seem to be doing fine via Nintendo's service, like Control.

          The tech is there, with caveats.

        • I was a casual user of Stadia (and probably would have been a better customer if it had more of the games I like to play). It was perfectly playable; as one example, I played Assassin's Creed Odyssey and it was smooth, lag-free, bug-free, and almost instant-on, much better than Assassin's Creed Origins played on the same computer at a lower resolution and graphics settins. It probably wasn't good enough for competitive gamers, but for running graphics-intensive games that my nearly 7 year old PC would ba
        • NVidia's in-home streaming worked fairly well over a LAN, for what it's worth
          (client computer running moonlight over a gigabit LAN -- Doom Eternal, for example was quite smooth.)

        • I played through Cyberpunk on Stadia and had a great time ... it was nice to be able to drop into it quickly (from a Chromebox) without a power hungry gaming PC up and running.

      • The tech is there, provisionally... if you have a fast connection and happen to live reasonably close to a data center. And even then, it's likely to be a sub-par experience for extremely fast-paced, twitchy games. But for plenty of games (or gamers), it doesn't matter quite so much.

        Honestly, though, the problem was their business plan, which NEVER made sense. The benefit of a streaming service is you can subscribe for a low monthly fee, use your existing hardware, and gain instant access to a large libr

      • I think we have finally come to a point where designers are realizing you have to have at least some local processing power to make these systems appealing to people. Oculus Quest, Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, Nvidia Shield and Sony all offer local and cloud/offloaded rendering of games. Google didnt get the memo apparently.
      • Running a simulation engine in the cloud kind of makes sense. Running the game engine in the cloud kinda no.

        • You could design a game engine that did non-immediate processing in the cloud, and that would work even for people who had mediocre connections. But the bigger problem is that there's a limited market of people who want to rent games. The people who "bought" games on the service get their money back, and the subscription fee wasn't really out of line with the other services, so the only real bummer is for the people who bought the controller. It's even possible that google will release an Android driver to

    • by splutty ( 43475 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @11:42AM (#62924171)

      GeForce Now seems to work pretty well for a lot of people.

      The main difference between the other gaming cloud services and Stadia, is that the other gaming cloud services let you play YOUR games, whereas Stadia requires you to buy your games again, but on Stadia.

      That was always going to be a killer.

      • Yeah, without that caveat, it'd probably have been a moderate success. But I'm sure it would also be some kind of licensing nightmare.

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      I think that no matter how good the connectivity tech is, it's going to be simpler to just have the end device render it. Having access to a big honking GPU over an internet connection is always going to be worse than the 'good enough' gpu that could just sit in the device used to stream the content. Having the control input, network, render, encode, network, decode latencies adding, and the occasional glitches/artifacts isn't worth it when you can just have the local device do a pretty good job. The cur

      • So tell me how say a GT440 or so would be "good enough" to even run a Triple A release. As in start up and get to a menu without massive stutter and tearing. I await with bated breath.

        Meanwhile, one direct example I have is being able to Cyberpunk 2077 from Stadia on a 2013 Macbook Pro with only shitty IRIS GFX at 4K60FPS when output to an external screen. Same exact experience with Stadia on a GTX980 machine. Smooth 4K and framerates never dropped below 60FPS. Same with Stadia and a chromecast.

        Oh, and the

        • by Junta ( 36770 )

          So tell me how say a GT440 or so would be "good enough" to even run a Triple A release. As in start up and get to a menu without massive stutter and tearing. I await with bated breath.

          I'm not claiming that an 11-year old entry card would, I'm saying modern low cost GPUs would be capable to run those releases at some passable detail.

          on a 2013 Macbook Pro with only shitty IRIS GFX at 4K60FPS

          Again, I wasn't saying a 9 year old embedded GPU, I'm talking about modern devices. In fact, it isn't possible that you were playing 4k on a 2013 Macbook, it didn't support that resolution on even external ports.

          Oh, and the GT440 example wasn't hyperbole, Guess what the framerates were with Stadia on that card and the slower processor was as well. Yep, 60FPS at 4K.

          It was necessarily at least some hyperbole, the GT440 couldn't output more than 2560x1600.

          But hyperbole aside, there is not going to be a lot of spen

  • As expected. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29, 2022 @11:34AM (#62924137)

    Google has a bad habit of hiring developers with 4 year vesting schedules and then shutting down projects before they can fully vest; everybody was expecting this to be shut down before the end of the year and I don't think anybody would reasonably expect otherwise.

    Surprised by the refunds, however. They must have found something bad they needed to protect themselves from.

  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @11:51AM (#62924213)
    As soon as Stadia was announced people started Stadia death countdowns. Google is no longer an innovative company, just entrenching its search, advertising and Chrome monopoly.
    • That's not exactly fair. I mean we all knew Google would shut it down because they is their nature, but, there was a lot of effort and innovation needed to get this off the ground.

      One of the things Google discussed at the beginning of Stadia is that there are games that could have been created using this sort of technology that wouldn't be possible on non-streaming platforms, especially in the MMORPG space. That is true. But no one created a game that showed that possibility.

      • But no one created a game that showed that possibility.

        I was trying to create one.

        The working title was "Dental Hygienist Tiffany Lets the Dentists Fill Her Cavities". It was about a dental hygienist, Tiffany, at a dental convention in Las Vegas that was coincidentally being held in a convention centre adjacent to the Adult Video Award show. It was a 3D, MMORPG featuring 16 online at a time. There was even a sequel planned.

        Google didn't seem to be interested.

      • One of the things Google discussed at the beginning of Stadia is that there are games that could have been created using this sort of technology that wouldn't be possible on non-streaming platforms, especially in the MMORPG space. That is true.

        Except it's not remotely true. Google didn't offer any secret sauce that made scaling an MMORPG magically easier. There isn't any such thing. If you're going to build a game that can scale in the way Google was trying to enable, you can and should do it entirely yourself, because you can't trust Google not to pull the rug out from under what is guaranteed to be a 4-5 year development cycle. Everybody in gaming knew Stadia had no chance to survive. Absolutely nobody was going to be foolish enough to com

        • The advantage would have been having all the game clients on Google's network, and then also being able to run the game servers on it as well. Great for reducing latency, even better for Google's bottom line. Ultimately unnecessary. A lot of people are still stuck with shit internet, but it's getting more and more possible to get something pretty good.

  • by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @11:52AM (#62924215)

    I'm pretty sure when they announced it I said something about six months before it gets shuttered. Way to go Google! At this rate you'll make something that sticks around for a few years before shit-canning it. I mean, this one you almost let stick around long enough to develop a userbase to piss off when you killed it. Just stretch a little...bit......further.

  • As always, big tech tried to "distrupt the market" as they say. Guess what, the market doesn't want your latency-plagued, no-ownership, always-connected heresy.

  • Stadia's model was completely wrong. People weren't prepared to pay a premium for a paltry selection of PC games running on midrange cloud servers. Nor pay a monthly sub to play some games which other platforms were practically giving away.

    They should have either offered an all-you-can-eat streaming service with a big library or partnered up with Steam / Epic et al to allow people to play games they already had. Or if they were super ambitious - launch a game in the cloud that could never be replicated in

  • This is the reason why I never subscribed to Stadia. I use GeForce Now and the games come from know virtual store like Steam (you do your purchase on the store). At least, Google refunds everything.

  • Friends don't let friends invest intellectual capital in Google products.
  • (or other google products). Because I know it will last 6 to 18 months and get shut down. Google's stupid idea of making everything a test product is literally why people don't adopt them.

    • by Junta ( 36770 ) on Thursday September 29, 2022 @01:04PM (#62924435)

      Yes, Google has created a problem where their brand on a new venture is a liability rather than a benefit. It may instill confidence in technical capabilities, but it also is pretty much a guarantee that it will go away. Further, they will only try things that require active ongoing enablement by google infrastructure, so it's not like you could even buy a google product and keep using it when google discontinues a service...

    • by GeekBoy ( 10877 )

      Absolutely agree. I wanted to try it, I thought about it very seriously b/c I'm on a Mac, but then I had to ask myself - what happens when Google decides to just turf the whole thing? That ultimately led me to go to nvidia instead.

  • I've been really enjoying Stadia, the writing was on the wall. Just my Deck and now I don't have to worry about it. Nice that they are offering refunds.

  • "We've extracted all the data we want from Stadia users, and we're not making a whole lot of money off them, so screw 'em. This isn't the first thing we've shut down. They should have known."

  • ...another one bites the dust.

    I swear all these half-assed Google projects they've ended up cancelling after a year or three when they didn't become the next YouTube have wasted enough money to completely eliminate global hunger.
  • Google, your streaming gaming service just failed, and if you think its the future of gaming even after that, you might want to rethink your vision especially when consumers are facing tough times and subscription overload, everything is a sub, from your car seat to your video streaming.
  • But as always, this demon will rise again from it's grave as it done many, many times. new forms, new shapes, but the same desire for absolute control, the same alluring promises of infinite power to everyone, many names, many forms, the terminal mainframe dream will never truly die.

  • playing a game rendered offsite in real time via internet w/ practical latency sounded like magic at first. very impressive.

    but personally, i dont want games as a service... though more and more people will be probably be ok with it in the coming decades.
    and google is an odd company whom i dont care to support.
  • Again companies try for absolute dominance and control over the hardware and software, so at any time they can add, remove or modifying anything to maximize profits on a subpar service which has latency that most gamers do NOT find acceptable for their experience no matter if they think it's "not much" and "acceptable".

    Won't stop them from trying again tho.

  • Back in 2019, I was in a course for my college degree and the teacher was such a google fanboi. Stadia was new and he was talking about it like Google was going to revolutionize the gaming industry. I recall pointing out to him the early complaints about the resolution and also how Google was constantly canceling products which I felt at that time was going to keep any serious AAA companies from investing in them. Their reputation was pretty much sullied already at that point in my view. I really need to fi
  • Didn't they just deny that they were going to do that a couple months ago? - https://www.pcgamer.com/google-denies-rumor-that-stadia-is-shutting-down/ [pcgamer.com]
  • My boys LOVE Stadia and I liked the fact all I needed was an Internet connection an my Shield TV to use it.
    (I have a Chromecast it will work with, but I like my Shield better).

  • I wonder why Google/Alphabet kills off their less successful projects instead of selling them off? Especially now with Stadia. Maybe it is not profitable (enough?) for them, but the technology seems solid and someone else could make it work. Also - it will not be a direct competition to any other Google project.
    The only reason, I can think of, is maybe the whole "streaming games from a data center" thing is fundamentally unprofitable.

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