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Google to Salvage its Stadia

Punished Miku

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Gameplay Gods Bless said:
Do you guys actually subscribe to all these news sites? If not how can you read the paywalled articles.
Click to expand...
Read the actual articles and not just the headline?

willem-dafoe-laugh.gif
 
jshackles

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
What Google actually needs to do to fix Stadia:
  1. Offer full resolution 4K streaming to customers who have purchased games. Asking customers to buy a full price game that's streaming only is already bad enough, making them also buy a subscription service to play it in 4K is just a slap in the face.
  2. Revamp their Pro subscription so that it's more like Game Pass, where games can rotate in and out but there's a bigger variety. They already have like 30+ games in Pro right now, many that have been there for months. I personally have like 122 games in my "Pro" library, so subscribing for me gets me a Game Pass like experience - don't punish customers just because they haven't been subscribers long term. They've already shown they can score big name titles, for example the new Life is Strange remasters are both there Day 1.
  3. Pick 2-4 games per month to give away to Pro members to keep. Bonus points to Google if you get to keep these games even if your subscription lapses. If Epic can afford to do it to create market share, surely Google can too.
  4. Build a fucking Stadia PC client. Give users the option to install their games locally. If you want to keep the service streaming-focused, you could call it a "caching client" or "buffering client" or something, but give people with poor internet connections the ability to buy into your service too. In fact, calling it a caching server might be good - because then Google could let people "stream" from their PC to, for example, their TV without having to go all the way to the internet and back. Even adding an "internet required" (check-in system / DRM / "can this user play this game?") when launching a game would be fine for most people.
Doing the above would leverage their existing streaming tech (which is excellent) and allow them to keep their cloud-focused features without locking out giant swathes of the population that have decent PCs but terrible internet connections.
 
Nikana

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
jshackles said:
What Google actually needs to do to fix Stadia:
  1. Offer full resolution 4K streaming to customers who have purchased games. Asking customers to buy a full price game that's streaming only is already bad enough, making them also buy a subscription service to play it in 4K is just a slap in the face.
  2. Revamp their Pro subscription so that it's more like Game Pass, where games can rotate in and out but there's a bigger variety. They already have like 30+ games in Pro right now, many that have been there for months. I personally have like 122 games in my "Pro" library, so subscribing for me gets me a Game Pass like experience - don't punish customers just because they haven't been subscribers long term. They've already shown they can score big name titles, for example the new Life is Strange remasters are both there Day 1.
  3. Pick 2-4 games per month to give away to Pro members to keep. Bonus points to Google if you get to keep these games even if your subscription lapses. If Epic can afford to do it to create market share, surely Google can too.
  4. Build a fucking Stadia PC client. Give users the option to install their games locally. If you want to keep the service streaming-focused, you could call it a "caching client" or "buffering client" or something, but give people with poor internet connections the ability to buy into your service too. In fact, calling it a caching server might be good - because then Google could let people "stream" from their PC to, for example, their TV without having to go all the way to the internet and back. Even adding an "internet required" (check-in system / DRM / "can this user play this game?") when launching a game would be fine for most people.
Doing the above would leverage their existing streaming tech (which is excellent) and allow them to keep their cloud-focused features without locking out giant swathes of the population that have decent PCs but terrible internet connections.
Click to expand...
You are asking Google to do work.

Their response would be:
Meme Spongebob GIF by MOODMAN
 
Lone Wolf

Lone Wolf

Member
yenside578 said:
Watch Sony will buy the tech to expand on its cloud infrastructure.
Click to expand...
This is not a bad idea. The tech is definitely better than Microsoft’s solution right now. Stadia on its own is going nowhere. It has a couple hundred games compared to thousands on the consoles.
 
JimboJones

JimboJones

Member
Fredrik said:
It’s such a shame they didn’t go all the way. For me it had the best streaming quality, least frame drops, most functional user experience. But the worst games library… Steam on Stadia without the login crap would’ve been awesome.
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Yeah the few times I tried their streaming it worked far better than Xbox streaming.
I could just never bring myself to buy a streaming only copy of a game, I never understood why we couldn't download locally aswell.
 
Fredrik

Fredrik

Member
jshackles said:
What Google actually needs to do to fix Stadia:
  1. Offer full resolution 4K streaming to customers who have purchased games. Asking customers to buy a full price game that's streaming only is already bad enough, making them also buy a subscription service to play it in 4K is just a slap in the face.
  2. Revamp their Pro subscription so that it's more like Game Pass, where games can rotate in and out but there's a bigger variety. They already have like 30+ games in Pro right now, many that have been there for months. I personally have like 122 games in my "Pro" library, so subscribing for me gets me a Game Pass like experience - don't punish customers just because they haven't been subscribers long term. They've already shown they can score big name titles, for example the new Life is Strange remasters are both there Day 1.
  3. Pick 2-4 games per month to give away to Pro members to keep. Bonus points to Google if you get to keep these games even if your subscription lapses. If Epic can afford to do it to create market share, surely Google can too.
  4. Build a fucking Stadia PC client. Give users the option to install their games locally. If you want to keep the service streaming-focused, you could call it a "caching client" or "buffering client" or something, but give people with poor internet connections the ability to buy into your service too. In fact, calling it a caching server might be good - because then Google could let people "stream" from their PC to, for example, their TV without having to go all the way to the internet and back. Even adding an "internet required" (check-in system / DRM / "can this user play this game?") when launching a game would be fine for most people.
Doing the above would leverage their existing streaming tech (which is excellent) and allow them to keep their cloud-focused features without locking out giant swathes of the population that have decent PCs but terrible internet connections.
Click to expand...
What it truly needed was PC hardware, the streaming tech is fantastic but the platform was doomed the second it was clear that devs needed to port their games. Many devs never bothered doing ports or did it badly. And buying those ports at full price was never appealing. I just claimed the free games.
 
Fredrik

Fredrik

Member
JimboJones said:
Yeah the few times I tried their streaming it worked far better than Xbox streaming.
I could just never bring myself to buy a streaming only copy of a game, I never understood why we couldn't download locally aswell.
Click to expand...
Yeah I claimed the free games. I bought Crew 2 cheap, got it refunded when I saw it was 30fps when it was 60fps on Geforce Now. Weak hardware combined with needing ports was a really bad combo. And there was rumors of upgrades but it never happened. Imagine if they had upgraded it above PS5 and XSX before those launched. Would’ve changed so much.
 
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DaGwaphics

DaGwaphics

Member
Lone Wolf said:
This is not a bad idea. The tech is definitely better than Microsoft’s solution right now. Stadia on its own is going nowhere. It has a couple hundred games compared to thousands on the consoles.
Click to expand...

I don't think Google is looking to sell their technology or the Stadia operation outright. I think they just want developers/publishers to rent the streaming capability as needed, would probably not be cost effective for Sony. Google would still be running the service from Google DCs and handling the hardware/software, they would simply no longer be consumer facing.
 
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Roxkis_ii

Roxkis_ii

Member
It's one thing to sell games, but to add a subscription price to access the games I have to buy is crazy.

One could argue a sub is cheaper then a console, but not being able to access games I've paid full price for, because my isp has an outage, or some cloud provider has an outage, or stadia has an outage, is not going to work for me. It's to many things between me and the game I paid for.

With all that said, I did like the controller. It just to bad you cant use it wireless with anything else. You would think that google would make the controller fully usable on other device to lure people in with it.
 
Robb

Robb

Gold Member
I’m surprised they’ve kept it going for as long as they have. Feels like it has been dead since launch.
 
KingXtreme81

KingXtreme81

Member
It was destined to fail by anyone paying even the least bit of attention. Google didn’t have the right idea(s), at the right time, with the proper execution. Pathetic, really, considering their supposed “brain trust” and, of course, their money/influence.
 
ChuckeRearmed

ChuckeRearmed

Member
GhostOfTsu said:
But Phil was supposed to buy more publishers to protect us from bogeyman Google? While they are actually getting out of the gaming business. Phil pulled the biggest con with Nadella
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When Microsoft announced in 2020 that it would acquire the "Elder Scrolls" studio Bethesda, it "scared the crap out of Google executives," a former employee close to those conversations said. After Stadia shuttered its in-house games division, insiders said any appetite among Google executives to own any studios completely went away. It also had trouble luring studios to develop for the platform;
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Now imagine what ATVI acquisition will achieve :messenger_fire:
 
spookyfish

spookyfish

Member
For those that loved it, sorry,.

Can't say I'm surprised, though. And I'm sorry for the studios that left sure things to try something new here.
 
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T

TwinB242

Member
Stadia's tech is really cool and I think it succeeds on that front, but as someone who has access to every other platform it just served no purpose to me.
 
S

StealthGoblin

Banned
I still don’t understand why they didn’t launch this thing with exclusive games. They had more than enough time to plan for the development or buy a publisher etc.

Sony started by buying Psygnosis.
Microsoft started by buying Rare and others.
 
trikster40

trikster40

Member
I tried the trial version to unlock something in Immortals Fenyx Rising. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the performance but would never subscribe to it.
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
Google ready to give up on another service after it failed to instantly become successful?

Oh No Reaction GIF by The Great British Bake Off


dotnotbot said:
Cool idea, we could also see some cloud games on Switch using Google Stream

Click to expand...


For stuff like demos it seems like a double edged sword.
On the one hand it's quick and easy and they eliminate the risk of data mining.
On the other hand though it wouldn't be a good demonstration of how the game actually runs on consoles or your specific PC build
 
PropellerEar

PropellerEar

Member
Banjo64 said:
Everything in gaming is loosely associated in some way, doesn’t make it on topic. Talking about bait when your post was nothing but an attempt to derail 🤡
Click to expand...
detective id GIF by Investigation Discovery

Google now knows what Sony knows, there is no money in game streaming. Cannot justify throwing billions on service no one wants.

Who's next?
 
xrnzaaas

xrnzaaas

Member
I always find it funny how Google didn't even try to make any big studio purchases to make Stadia seem like an interesting choice to play exclusives. But maybe it's for the better, because it would've buried those studios when it closed down.
 
Azelover

Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
Captain Toad said:
The shame is that the actual streaming tech is the best there is. But, they have no idea what they're doing to market it to gamers.

Asking people to pay full price to stream games, with no option to play games natively, is ridiculous. Adding a monthly fee to play the games at the best resolution is worse.

Then, they close their studios, ensuring the platform won't have a single game that you can't play elsewhere.
Click to expand...
They needed to have a game made from the ground up specifically for their technology, day one. This is how every successful platform is. They tried to do it backwards. Of course it's not gonna work, even if they did a decent cost structure(which they don't). It still wouldn't be enough. Games first Google!
 
Jaybe

Jaybe

Member
Just bury all the unsold Stadia controllers in a New Mexico desert already and be done with it
 
BadBurger

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
"Save it"? Like most of their endeavors these jackasses gave up on it before it even had a chance.

*Google attempting to drown their new born creation, then suddenly yanks it out of the water right before it expires*: "Why were you trying to kill yourself Stadia? Hmm.... how can I salvage you?..."
 
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