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Google is closing down its Stadia cloud streaming service.

Valedix

Gold Member
A cloud gaming console fails, who could've seen this coming?

Coffin Dancing GIF
 

HoldTheAir

Member
I remember years ago when Phil Harrison presented PlayStation Home at E3. It died a short time later. Everything thus far that Phil Harrison has touched has went down the pooper.
 

A.Romero

Member
how is that confusing? only so many ways to butter a piece of bread, home slice.


Google could have snatched up bluepoint, Housemarque, Bungie (who they were really tight with and pushing with Destiny 2), Bethesda, Activision etc and it would have been a whole different story for consoles.
Oh wow, that's an interesting opinion.

Don't see how is that possible considering microsoft did buy the studios and it's not steamrolling the competition.
 

ahtlas7

Member
Even with all the experience of Phil ‘I used to be in a big hair band’ Harrison and Jade ‘Ezio used to be my lover until I ran him over with my car for cheating on me with my husbands sister’ Raymond.
queue i didnt see that coming GIF
 

Shubh_C63

Member
Shame because the concept was pretty cool.
And as average internet speed are always going up I thought sooner or later they will break into mainstream. 10 years too early maybe ?
 

Grechy34

Member
Despite its flaws, Wii U is pretty awesome as a homebrew machine and a Xenoblade X machine. I can't think of one redeeming quality about stadia.

Wii U wasn't even that bad. Just an ordinary console where the tablet idea didn't catch on. It had many redeeming features.

Stadia was a disaster and many predicted it's downfall from the outset. Surprised Google themselves didn't see the writing on the wall.
 
Did actually not expect that, but google seems to be as clueless as MS (phones, Kinect) in many matters. Just trying it, even with probably considerable investments but not judging it right how long it takes to take off and aim marketing at the right people, supporting and riding it out. Imo dumb decision or rather dumb execution of the entire adventure, but their competition is certainly happy. Especially MS who were fantasizing about and anticipating google and apple as their actual competition in entertainment instead of Sony.

Time to finally sign up for the one month trial or whatever it was on my TV then, before it's gone.
 

mitchman

Gold Member
Google history of shutting down services doomed Stadia from the start. Everybody kindof expected it to fold, it was just a matter of time, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact that not many are surprised about this and maybe even expected it to happen earlier says it all.
 

mrMUR_96

Member
The tech was genuinely impressive, the engineering team clearly did good work, google just doesn't have the focus or strategy to actually make the most of it.
For a company that makes so much money from advertising, they are really shitty at selling their own products.
 

A2una1

Member
Shame because the concept was pretty cool.
And as average internet speed are always going up I thought sooner or later they will break into mainstream. 10 years too early maybe ?
The internet speed isn't going up. Just the amount of data you can send/receive in a set amount of time. Or you can say it like this: Just because your Street gets more lanes, a car that can drive 200km/h can't drive faster. There are just more cars driving at the same time.

It is actually not that easy to mitigate the problem with Latency in game streaming.
 

UnNamed

Banned
Netflix had success because cheapness and tons of content.

Stadia had expensive games, few titles, useless free service, expensive 4k contents.

When you know your business.
 

ZoukGalaxy

Member
So many notifications. 😎
Hey, at least of lot are thinking of you, it isn't that nice from us ? 😘💖💖💖

I wish some people in this very forum would understand that. The future of digital/sub services- own nothing and be happy. Fuck this bullshit. Glad to see Stadia fail miserably. Fuck this streaming only bullshit.
Very sadly, they will get this too late when everything will be already dead.
bruce willis i see dead people GIF
 
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01011001

Banned
Good. Streaming/cloud gaming deserves to die.

it will eventually, it will eventually become obsolete as hardware becomes more and more powerful while also getting smaller and smaller.

we have tiny mobile hardware nowadays that can deliver PS4 quality,
the leaked Tegra from Nvidia can almost reach Series S performance at Tegra X1 clock speeds,
now imagine what small mobile hardware will be like in 10 years.

eventually we'll be able to play Series X quality games natively on a phone, at that point why play on a cloud service?

and soon enough even giant AAA dev studios will be more limited by talent and development time in terms of utilising any given hardware than by the hardware itself, at which point downporting to mobile hardware will be really simple
 
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TransTrender

Gold Member
LoL fucking Phil

This is just like that rug pull he did early 2021 when days earlier he boasted about Stadia game studios doing great work but then shut them all down... Also only letting the staff know minutes before a public announcement was going to be made.


What a fucking asshole.
Either this guy is a sociopath or Google really didn't give a single shit about this experiment and let him run wild.

At least the game studio closure freed up some talent.

I hope this guy crawls under a rock somewhere and stays there forever.
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
LoL fucking Phil

This is just like that rug pull he did early 2021 when days earlier he boasted about Stadia game studios doing great work but then shut them all down... Also only letting the staff know minutes before a public announcement was going to be made.


What a fucking asshole.
Either this guy is a sociopath or Google really didn't give a single shit about this experiment and let him run wild.

At least the game studio closure freed up some talent.

I hope this guy crawls under a rock somewhere and stays there forever.

And BTW, on a sidenote, this is also the same guy that went on a press-spree predicting the death of single player games - Back in 2009. Lol.
 
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CeeJay

Member
That’s like saying book shops should have been better competition with Amazon. Google is a billion dollar company, that was attempting to compete with Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo. They released a platform where you have to pay a monthly subscription fee AND pay for any games you want to own on top of that.

So if you stop paying the subscription. You lose the games that you paid potentially £50 - £60 a pop for. It’s really not hard to understand why this business model was not going to last. Gamepass and dare I say it even PS plus’ different tiers now offer way better value just at a base level. RIP Stadia, at least you tried…. Well you didn’t really.
Not really the same, Google and Microsoft are well matched on paper. Both have similar revenue, similar strength, reach and offerings with their cloud infrastructure. Although Microsoft had a head start Google should have been able to look at Microsoft's model and potentially one-upped them with a slicker model.

It's not a great comparison, the entire brick and mortar bookstore sector made up of a few biggish chains and thousands of small single stores against a single disruptive tech startup. With Google and Microsoft they were both coming at it from a similar starting point (although MS did already have a console business) and both had a similar destination point in mind.

With Google and Microsoft it was more like a battle between two similarly matched heavyweight fighters. Only one of them was not prepared, didn't put in the training, pulled a muscle getting out of the corner and had to retire before the first round really got under way.
 

Kenneth Haight

Gold Member
Unlikely with the refunds, but yeah I don't like the idea of making one-time purchases that are associated with recurring costs. Better for cloud streaming to be offered as a recurring service with games being true digital purchases that can be utilized outside the cloud service (or just included as a library with the service). At you that point, if the service closes you've only lost access to the service itself and not your content.

I'm not sure how much legal standing there would be, a lot of what ifs. What if steam closed shop, or epic, or playstation or xbox you could say the same thing about your digital purchases. What if Apple suddenly took the digital music store offline, etc.
This is what I’m interested to see.

Fat Frog Fat Frog how much money are you losing with this news? It’s understandably why some people are resistant to digital only services.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
LoL fucking Phil

This is just like that rug pull he did early 2021 when days earlier he boasted about Stadia game studios doing great work but then shut them all down... Also only letting the staff know minutes before a public announcement was going to be made.
Google is a public listed company, thus any news regarding its operations affects stock price. There is no other way to do it, you drop the news almost at the same time to everyone.
 

StueyDuck

Member
Like all cloud gaming services they refused to support anyone except the US essentially so i am not surprised they failed, maybe that grew over time but first impressions last.

if you are gonna do this you gotta come out the gate swinging, Even MS is doing a piss poor job with Xcloud support. it's not the same as a tv streaming service.

I would of tried all of them if they had all launched in my region, hell I even would of tried PS version.
 

Kenneth Haight

Gold Member
Not really the same, Google and Microsoft are well matched on paper. Both have similar revenue, similar strength, reach and offerings with their cloud infrastructure. Although Microsoft had a head start Google should have been able to look at Microsoft's model and potentially one-upped them with a slicker model.

It's not a great comparison, the entire brick and mortar bookstore sector made up of a few biggish chains and thousands of small single stores against a single disruptive tech startup. With Google and Microsoft they were both coming at it from a similar starting point (although MS did already have a console business) and both had a similar destination point in mind.

With Google and Microsoft it was more like a battle between two similarly matched heavyweight fighters. Only one of them was not prepared, didn't put in the training, pulled a muscle getting out of the corner and had to retire before the first round really got under way.
I know it wasn’t a great comparison. I was being facetious.

Saying Google “should” have put up a better fight isn’t a great argument either. I “should” have probably done more with my life professionally and personally but I haven’t. I do understand what you mean though, but this is google we are talking about. Sometimes you’re best sticking to your lane and this is a hard lesson for them. Haven’t they already got enough money and services or do they need to take over every aspect of our lives and make more money in gaming. I’m talking about Amazon/Google/Facebook in particular. These are tech companies who are trying to encroach in to space that isn’t theirs and they’re trying to change the rules, that’s fine. All is fair in love and war. But they have failed miserably at this attempt.
 

CeeJay

Member
Good. Streaming/cloud gaming deserves to die.
Personally I think Streaming/Cloud is excellent as part of a wider and balanced offering. I have an Xbox and PC yet I still find a use for Xcloud from time to time. Just yesterday I was playing on my work laptop during a quiet period in a regular Edge browser window. The laptop is locked down and managed centrally by SCCM yet I was able to connect my controller via Bluetooth and get a bit of gaming in, carrying on a game of Slime Rancher 2 I am playing on my other devices. The save files sync perfectly and the latency nowadays for me isn't noticeable, I can get fully immersed same as when playing natively. The only time that immersion was broken was for the occasional bit of artifacting. Streaming gives me the opportunity to get a quick gaming session in where I otherwise wouldn't be able to. I also use streaming on the console itself for trying out games on GP without having to commit to a lengthy download, it's also good for when one of my friends suggests that we play something in the moment that I don't have downloaded, we can all just stream it and also set it to download so it's there for the next time we play.

Streaming is pretty awesome when it's supplementary and not the only way to play. The reason that Stadia failed was because the market currently rejects streaming only and Google didn't have native hardware and a decent subscription model with lot's of high quality games included.
 

Fat Frog

I advertised for Google Stadia
This is what I’m interested to see.

Fat Frog Fat Frog how much money are you losing with this news? It’s understandably why some people are resistant to digital only services.
Gamers were wrong on this one though:

"You'll loose all your money"


I'll have full refund.
I played for free for several years and google offered me free controllers and CCU.

Not bad, huh ? 😜
 

CeeJay

Member
I know it wasn’t a great comparison. I was being facetious.

Saying Google “should” have put up a better fight isn’t a great argument either. I “should” have probably done more with my life professionally and personally but I haven’t. I do understand what you mean though, but this is google we are talking about. Sometimes you’re best sticking to your lane and this is a hard lesson for them. Haven’t they already got enough money and services or do they need to take over every aspect of our lives and make more money in gaming. I’m talking about Amazon/Google/Facebook in particular. These are tech companies who are trying to encroach in to space that isn’t theirs and they’re trying to change the rules, that’s fine. All is fair in love and war. But they have failed miserably at this attempt.
Indeed, it's good that it failed. It would have been awful if they had gone out, bought some big publishers and then locked their games behind a "streaming only" model. It's one thing for a company to buy a publisher and make the games only available on a particular console and PC it's a step too far to shackle them to a model that doesn't work for everyone and at the very best is similar to playing natively on a console. I know MS are getting a lot of hate at the moment but you can choose to purchase any of their games and play natively on a console or get a top tier experience by having a powerful PC. Clearly people have rejected a really restrictive model. Google I think looked at tapping into new markets and bringing new people into gaming without considering that they first need to cater to what the existing market wants.

First you have to appeal to the hardcore and get them on side before the casuals will follow. Then and only then can you begin to tap into previously untapped markets. Google tried to go straight to desert.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Do you guys think someday the internet connection/speed will be so advanced that there will be no quality difference (resolution, frame rate, stability, and input response) between a streamed game and one running on a console? Because if that never happens then consoles are here to stay (hopefully).
In terms of latency (i.e. input response) it's physically impossible, unless they put servers in the backyards of everyone who wants to use it. Doesn't matter how good your internet connection is, the latency to a server X km away will always be higher than to a console two meters away.

The rest, sure.
 
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EDMIX

Member
Wii U wasn't even that bad. Just an ordinary console where the tablet idea didn't catch on. It had many redeeming features.

Stadia was a disaster and many predicted it's downfall from the outset. Surprised Google themselves didn't see the writing on the wall.

Agreed. Wii U's biggest issue wasn't even the system, it was simply that 3DS existed at all lol

If they never had a portable, they'd probably sell a shit ton, but even with me liking those games, I still got a 3DS as shit, that is where all of their top content was going, the fact that porting Wii U games to Switch moved massive units proves nothing was wrong with those games, simply that the community was just done with home console and Portable was their current beast.

Throw me a fucking HDMI for free and I could give 2 shits if its a portable so long as I'm not left behind lol If you owned a home console from Nintendo while they also had a portable, you were treated like a second class citizen lol I still wonder how that system would have turned out if all games on 3DS by default was BC to Wii U.

It had 2 screens, they could have just made some slot to put the game in or something. I feel like the Gameboy player, it could have worked, but Switch like PSP before it works better with some tv out, but I digress.


With Stadia? Who knows, that fucking set up isn't even a "was ahead of its time" nahhhhh it fucking makes no sense as is. You get the service to pay to stream games, that cost full price? The fuck? lol Where is the deal? How the fuck is anyone saving time or money with this...?


smh...the fuck?
 

Rykan

Member
Stadia struggles with the exact same issue that most other streaming service deal with: Who is this for? Cloudstreaming is a solution that is looking for a problem to fix. The fact of the matter is that video game consoles are, all things considered, not that expensive. If you are someone who has access to the high speed internet required to play streamable video games, then the price for a console probably isn't a big issue for you.

Streaming video games just isn't as good of an experience as playing them locally, and the few perks that streaming games do bring simply don't outweigh the compromises you have to make.

That said, another issue is the fact that the server blades for Stadia were fairly underpowered. They were more in the ballpark of PS4 pro and Xbox One X, rather than PS5/XSX. That said, Stadia port of Cyberpunk 2077 was quite good, actually.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
I tried Stadia on my LG once. I wasn't impressed. Destiny 2 looked like a PS4 Pro game, but at 60fps.

Streaming technology didn't feel good to me, worse than xCloud. other issues it had were

-purchases on top of a sub
-no compelling reason to get it; everything is available elsewhere.
-Purchases in general; this is streamed content lol. Who the fuck is going to pay 50 bucks for a streaming license?

Google just had no idea. They could've done better. Signed exclusives, studios, a better cloud service or even better; download options. And no purchases on top of a sub lol.
 

CeeJay

Member
In terms of latency (i.e. input response) it's physically impossible, unless they put servers in the backyards of everyone who wants to use it. Doesn't matter how good your internet connection is, the latency to a server X km away will always be higher than to a console two meters away.

The rest, sure.
That's not strictly true if you take into consideration the total latency from the entire stack (controller to your eye).

What is an acceptable latency for the entire stack?

I won't put a number on it because it will differ from person to person and game to game.

You get latency from the controller, through the console, latency from the game that's running and probably the largest from the TV itself. We went from superior CRT response times to LCD flat panel and not too many people complained that the games got less responsive even though it was a considerable increase.

If you can reduce the latency in these other areas whilst also improving latency from the stream itself then there is always the possibility that the total latency from the stack when streaming can get to a similar level to what we all find acceptable currently with native hardware. Ok, you could argue that if they can improve latency with controllers, consoles and TVs then native will always be superior and that is very true but it's about getting it down to a point where it's acceptable for the vast majority and I believe that this is possible.
 
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