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Stadia unquestionably one of gaming's most abysmal flops of all time from a major company, possibly surpassing Wii U

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Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Yup.
Many people overestimated Google during the first presentation: " It's Google, they have billions, Youtube, the virality of click to play trailer will be insane"

And now, many are underestimating them.

It's a company that can possibly buy EA, Take 2...(they won't) and the simple integration of Stadia in the Google search engine could be massive.(they're testing it)

For whatever reasons stadias lack of popularity was caused by bonehead decisions. Their tech is the best 2nd only to geforce now, their controller is excellent and their Ui seems very good.

If they have a subscription, intergrate better with youtube, Android and google search and partner with publishers I dont see why they cant be successful.
 
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GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
For whatever reasons stadias lack of popularity was caused by bonehead decisions. There tech is the best 2nd only to geforce now, there controller is excellent and there Ui seems very good.

If they have a subscription, intergrate better with youtube, Android and google search and partner with publishers I dont see why they can be successful.
Freudian slip?

oh_i_get_it_chris_farley.gif
 
Those are all passive media. It's not equivalent. Gamepass took off because of downloads. Not streaming.
I explicitly stated:
Look at how successful Game Pass has been for MS. This shows you that people are already onboard with the idea of subbing to a games service,
I never stated it took off because of streaming.

It doesn't matter if those forms of media are passive and videogames are not. If the tech improves to the point where you can't tell the difference then it won't matter to the consumer, they will flock to where the best value is and if that is game streaming then it will in fact be a major success.

There was a time when Netflix didn't even had HD movies and tv shows, when music streaming services were lossy and buggy. The tech improved, adoption rate skyrocketed, and now that's how most people consume the media. If game streaming follows the same path the end result will not be different.
 

Fahdis

Member
What's desperate about it?

A dig on Cloud. Most people talking shit are clinging hard to something that isn't in danger so I don't understand the hostility against another channel of play. To each their own. This is the same digital vs. hard copies of games bullshit again.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
It was always an incredibly unattractive proposition. Pay full price to stream games, that might get taken away whenever? Hell no. (For the same reason I don't understand why anyone would "buy" those cloud-only games on the Switch).
 

OmegaSupreme

advanced basic bitch
A dig on Cloud. Most people talking shit are clinging hard to something that isn't in danger so I don't understand the hostility against another channel of play. To each their own. This is the same digital vs. hard copies of games bullshit again.
I'll continue to do so. It's objectively the worst way to play games. It offers no value. It offers no solution. It's biggest cheerleader on this forum is literally paid to be so.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Movies, tv shows, music, all moved to streaming as the dominant way in which they are consumed and technically speaking there are few trade offs in quality compared to consuming them via local media, especially the kinds of trade offs that 99% of the public even cares about, which is important. Eventually game streaming will mature to where there is little difference between it and local hardware in regards to image quality and perceptible input lag. Our infrastructure is still a ways off but under best case scenario I can already play Stadia with nearly imperceptible input lag. Another ten years of advancement and for the average user they'd likely not be able to tell if they were streaming or playing locally in a blind test.

Look at how successful Game Pass has been for MS. This shows you that people are already onboard with the idea of subbing to a games service, now fast forward another decade when the tech is caught up, why wouldn't people flock to streaming games online the same way they did for movies and tv shows?

yea, the most popular gaming platform is phones. it's convenient and you already have them for other reasons. the same way you already have a TV. it's going to be good enough for most people. people with gaming PCs etc will just be like the weirdo audiophiles who buy expensive equipment or the people with massive blu ray collections.

i have never personally tried stadia but the free luna games on prime run quite solid for me. made me fuck around and buy Ys 9 a few weeks ago.
 

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.
It offers no value. It offers no solution.
The solution it offers is not having to download / install games and or game updates. The value it offers is not having to buy a gaming PC or game console to play these games. And while these aren't massive problems for most (especially us here), it's still solving a problem.

The issue isn't the value of the service or the solutions it provides, it's that the value proposition is not there. While it solves these very specific problems, it introduces others (latency being chief among them, uncertainty about your library existing in the future, DRM concerns, etc. etc.) that make Stadia a bad overall value. When the same product exists and can be bought from Steam or Xbox or Playstation for the same price, then something's not right.

To balance the scales Stadia needs to either offer an "offline" (download and play) option to their games, or they're going to have to cut their prices across the board - like, for example, getting rid of Stadia Pro entirely and offering all users 4K streaming without an additional subscription. Or dropping the price of their games down to $50 instead of $60 or $70. Or both. If Google can't make it work in the current games publishing environment, it means that it's either impossible or that Google isn't trying hard enough and isn't willing to throw the resources at this platform that it'll need to grow.
 

Three

Member
For whatever reasons stadias lack of popularity was caused by bonehead decisions. There tech is the best 2nd only to geforce now, there controller is excellent and there Ui seems very good.

If they have a subscription, intergrate better with youtube, Android and google search and partner with publishers I dont see why they cant be successful.
Not trying to be a grammar Nazi but it's "Their". I read 'there' three times so just trying to hopefully be helpful rather than a dick.
 

Fahdis

Member
I'll continue to do so. It's objectively the worst way to play games. It offers no value. It offers no solution. It's biggest cheerleader on this forum is literally paid to be so.

That's your opinion. Offers no value to whom? People like you? Not everyone is YOU. And no, I am also one and no one pays me. If you're so secure why advocate against something that isn't a threat?
 

Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
You all are going to look like utter buffoons after tomorrow. I have it on good authority, from a guys who is in the know. LATAM launch is going to make the US launch look like a middling service with a short lifespan. Mark my words.
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
It outlast the Playstation Vita though. That handheld was a stillborn
 

yurinka

Member
If you consider Google's worth, and them thinking they actually had a chance to take over the gaming....
Well, in the ranking of top grossing public gaming companies Google is the top 5. They make a lot of money with Google Play.
 
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Stadia wasn't a flop or failure because it had zero expectations or user base.

Mega CD/Saturn, Wii U and Xbox One are the biggest flops in gaming because they went from big user base and big expectations to just fucking it up in a spectacular fashion.

Stadia is on the same level of flop as the Phillips CDI.
 

Knightime_X

Member
Streaming only = instant fail

Streaming will only start to work once internet is very fast, very cheap and no data caps for everyone across the globe.

Also games should be dirt cheap.
Like $3 cheap to rent for 7 days, or have a game pass like service.
Buying games should cost no more than $15 tops and MUST be available to play and download for the next 25 years minimum for the purchaser.

This will never happen and thus why streaming will never be successful.
 
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Stadia wasn't a flop or failure because it had zero expectations or user base.

Mega CD/Saturn, Wii U and Xbox One are the biggest flops in gaming because they went from big user base and big expectations to just fucking it up in a spectacular fashion.

Stadia is on the same level of flop as the Phillips CDI.
Revisionist history. Just like with every other cloud gaming services that flopped there was plenty of expectation of it being disruptive.
 
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jigglet

Banned
No, as a big Nintendo fan, I think Wii U was the bigger flop.

Google had no background in gaming and everything looked shit from day 1. Expectations were low.

With Wii U, they just came off the juggernaut Wii, which was one of my favorite systems ever. Fucking up the successor to that was the bigger fail IMO.

It's not like I can even look at Wii U and say well it sold poor but I still love it. I fucking hated it irrespective of commercial performance. Horrible sluggish OS, shitty controller, so many weird / stupid decisions. Yuck. Fail fail fail fail.
 
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TheKratos

Member
While I agree in general principle, considering Google didn't have to manufacture consoles and had zero history in the gaming market, it's not quite the same kind of failure. They also had zero exclusives.......
That makes it even worse imo! Had they went in hard and failed I could at least say they tried and it's a difficult market to enter but they came up with a half-assed approach.
 

Rykan

Member
Revisionist history. Just like with every other cloud gaming services that flopped there was plenty of expectation of it being disruptive.
From the gaming community itself, there absolutely was not. Stadia hype was gone when it became clear they were full priced games that required a Chromecast purchase and not a subscription model.
 

Lunarorbit

Member
I don't understand the joy and weird rage its perceived failure gives to some people. They invested some money in the hw in some centers I guess, but running costs are probably low and they might make little but constant money and eventually grow. Maybe they cooperate with GeForce and or provide those Switch streams and other steam services which names i can't remember.
MS offers it, Sony offers it, neither as a huge selling point, but both might also see it as little investment but slow growth over years.
Everyone "flops" with it terribly but no one gives up on it... the math does not work out! if it really burns money, all would have dropped out already. They don't, so it probably has not flopped at all!
I love that it flopped. It's another example of Google shitting out a new hardware and then almost immediately abandoning it. It was obvious to me that it didn't stand a chance with the wack lineup it had and the weird restrictions it placed on consumers.

So you're wondering why I loved that it flopped? I feel empathy for the devs and architects who worked on it. But this was a product put out solely for greed with no legs. They only had 2 exclusives for it which never came out.

Sometimes I just shrug at the hubris of these companies. It's pathetic and it was an insulting product to me as a gamer. It took up a lot of oxygen in the gaming space when it released and in hindsight didn't deserve any of the coverage it got.

Fuck Stadia for life dawg. And I say that laughing at those suckers
 

leo-j

Member
Tbh they should have followed the ps plus / gamepass model offering a catalog of games for the price of a subscription and allowing that to be played anywhere with a dedicated handheld/handheld adapter but their pricing plans were atrocious when they launched.
 

AmuroChan

Member
It's not even comparable. There are WiiU games that sold 10+ million copies. Stadia had multiple teams working on 1st party games and exactly ZERO game has been released.
 

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
Wii-U is worse because it came from Nintendo, after a massive success... and they legit had to discontinue the hardware right away and pay back retailers for unsold games.. OOF.

I see Stadia as a much larger failure because of its scope and how comprehensively it failed. They barely attracted any customers, and yet still have all of that hardware spun up across their data centers burning money. According to reports the hardware design of their platform was a dead-end and can't be easily or quickly upgraded or replaced. And of course the way they had to immediately halt any studio plans they had and just dissolve that side of the service.

Nintendo may not have sold many Wii-U units (like 13m right?) and had to abandon it early, but knowing Nintendo they probably still made a little bit with each sale, and they did manage to move a decent amount of their games considering how few consoles they sold. The Wii-U managed to give Splatoon to the world as well. Small victories sure but it's better than anything Stadia managed to accomplish.

Edit: Oh wow OnLive - I completely forgot that ever existed. Blast from the past.
 
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01011001

Banned
Stadia is so bad,
OnLive which launched more than 10 years ago wipes the floor with it in terms of features and innovation.
and OnLive failed as well, so how does Google think a worse product would be viable? 😂

 
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A streaming only device where you had to pay actual money to STREAM games that were available on other consoles where you normally got to keep those games and play them natively had failure written all over it. Imo, paying to stream games was one of, if not the worst idea ever.
 
The cloud gaming future is bullshit. It will never exist because people are not interested in playing games that way. How many more fails do we need for that to be accepted?

Also, wii u has a decent library of games.
 
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THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
That makes it even worse imo! Had they went in hard and failed I could at least say they tried and it's a difficult market to enter but they came up with a half-assed approach.

But you have to keep in mind how little risk they have taken too. I mean as crappy as adoption seems and as much as we make fun of it, do we know if it makes money or loses money? It must not cost much to actually run. They sure seem to be keeping it around ......
 
Revisionist history. Just like with every other cloud gaming services that flopped there was plenty of expectation of it being disruptive.
Not revisionist. The only expectation expectation it to be good came from marketing fluff pieces passed off as gaming journalism.

No real gamer expected stadia to work or even be half decent. Streaming is a pipe dream until we all have 1tb/s internet, cap free connections AND companies don't cheap out on servers and horsepower on their side. None of that will ever happen.

Ouya and stadia were built atop a mountain of their own farts, not real expectations.
 

kubricks

Member
WiiU at least produce some great games, masterpiece even.
Stadia is a solution for problem that doesn't exist.
 

SCB3

Member
In Nintendos defence, had the Wii U been called something else, it may not have flopped so hard, people were confused as it felt like a new add on to the Wii like Wii Fit was

Also 2 Million users on a experimental delivery, thats not too bad really
 

acm2000

Member
it works well, but people dont wanna pay full price for games only in the cloud, gamepass ultimate killed the competition.
 
They sure seem to be keeping it around ......
google did not even market it, at all. They could blaster it all over youtube and have it as the first result in every google search that has anything to do with gaming. But they seem to have a long slow plan (or maybe just don't know how to get rid of it, actually don't want it anymore and just maintain it until the hw falls apart... who knows)
As much as some gamers, like the OP, wish those services flopping, the question is: has even one actually shut down? Actually flopped? gaika and onlive became PS Now and then PS+. Stadia, Luma, Xcloud, Switch Streaming, GeForce Now and also some services I fished out of google now eg. Shadow.tech, AntStream... continue to exist because it's the inevitable future, and are already part of gaming, not substituting it, but offering another way of access.
Meta is testing streaming to Quest. Apple considered streaming for Apple Arcade. Netflix dabble on adding more gaming to their company and them streaming in the near future would not surprise anyone, I guess.
As much as snoppy gamers hate it and want it to fail, it will not fail, flop even less. There is zero reason they would step back even if adoption is not as fast as some suit might have wanted. It will get better, mostly because the internet will get better, but I guess new codecs and faster decoders will help too. Imho playing RDR2 on consoles is at least subjectively more laggy than stream sessions I had. They will sell it in some way, price + subscriptions, ie. cheap easy to use, probably, because they want it to succeed and download subscriptions and streaming are close relatives for the all digital future. No whining and pretentious imaginary ha-ha will stop that.
 
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CeeJay

Member
When people project that cloud is inevitably going to take over they don't seem to consider that smartphones and other devices are also quickly evolving. Imagine how powerful a smartphone or basic notebook with an iGPU is going to be 10 years from now.
Multi billion dollar companies don't consider the future?

Maybe you haven't considered that mobile technology by it's nature has to be both physically way smaller and and also requires to draw way less power than a mains connected full size device. This means that mobile will always lag behind in tech and power regardless of how far you want to project into the future. Another thing to consider is how the size of GPUs is going up rather than down to get better graphical power, look how much bigger the current gen consoles are to previous gen. We are getting to the point with node processes where miniaturisation over time is no longer guaranteed, at best it has slowed and will continue to slow looking at current trends. If anything the trends point to a future where we have huge hyperconverged graphic and compute farms in data centres and the cutting edge games are only possible to be run at scale via streaming. It probably won't even be feasible to have native hardware in your home run the best games in the future let alone run those games on a tiny mobile device.
 
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