Stadia shutting down their in-house game development

[IAmAndre]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

But the MMORPG has to be designed for that kind of latency, which most MMORPG's are tolerant of, but you'll still have people in Australia and Europe unable to play with Americans and Japanese friends, and some countries like Brazil and Russia will continue to be ignored

This applies to pretty much any game actually, whether is latency-sensitive or not. I live in Africa and I knew from the beginning that Google wouldn't bother install gaming servers here so I literally LOLed when they talked about playing games from YouTube and stuff.

 

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

if a game is very cinematic, there's likely no point in purchasing the game once you've seen it. There has to be enough interactivity to justify doing more than "press X to win". So something like Kingdom Hearts (which is very cinematic) and "Last of Us" (which uses environmental storytelling and engine-rendered cutscenes) has a lot of gameplay to it, make less sense to play on a Stadia-like service.

I think these are very nice games so there aren't that many people playing these. Also these games don't need that much horsepower so I don't see why the people interested in such games would want a subscription on the first place.

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

my opinion, Google perhaps had the right idea, but the wrong business model. Stadia Pro is more like Epic Game Store, only it costs money.

It's actually worse imo because there is the subscription and then you need to pay for AAA titles. Any console would be a better investment 

[IAmAndre]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

If you just assume everyone has fiber optics at insane speeds. You do realize there is still HUGE number of people still on crappy copper connections? It'll run like crap on that. Plus, the way Stadia is being operated is just rubbish. GeForce Now if anything makes more sense. You're just renting GPU compute power, you need to already own games and prove ownership by connecting your Steam profile with GeForce Now (which makes the outrage of developers/publishers from the past weird). Where with Stadia, you're expected to invest in a thing by buying games AGAIN and hoping Google doesn't shit it down like everything they make that isn't search engine...

This and not everyone lives in the US or in the EU so they still need to deal with distance-related latency if not just the availability of the service as a whole.

[Taf the Ghost]

@KisaiGoogle didn't have a clue what they were doing. They clearly wanted a GPU Compute Infrastructure and came up with this as a justification for something else to do with it. Obviously, "game streaming" has been a big tech R&D thing for 2 decades, but notice how far it still has to go. That wasn't exactly hard to predict.

 

What was surprisingly hard to predict was how stupid Google was going to be. They literally chose the absolutely worst game approach. They should have had every F2P game they could, along with the ability to play Android titles, along with every Turn-Based or VN-style game imaginable. The bankrupt remains of Telltale would have been the easiest place to start. Have the entire catalog on the service with the Fee. That move alone would have ensured the future existence of the platform, along with massive good press and a strong place to start from.

 

Nintendo must be thanking their lucky Mario hat that Google aren't very smart. Google could have basically put a Switch into 1/2 the world's home if they knew what they were doing.

[Doobeedoo]

Good

[SADS]

I just don't want to stream my games. At least not most of the games i play, which are usually fast paced or competitive.

Fair enough if it was a total war game, or something slow paced/single player. But then... why would i also want to have to subscribe to yet another service?

 

Pretty sure that I heard TV/movie piracy was on the up again because there were now SO many streaming services that people don't want to pay for them all when they only want 1% of the content from each service. People don't want to have a service/signup for every single product they want.

 

I don't even like being forced to install multiple games clients (steam, origin, lol client, blizzard client, client client client client).

I like it when my PC is the client and i can pick and chose my own applications.

[D13H4RD]

The only good thing that happened to Stadia in the past few months was the messy debacle that was the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. Unless you own a beefed-up gaming PC or one of the new consoles, the other way to experience the game without the well-document clusterfuck of issues on the base 8th-gen consoles (assuming you have decent-enough internet) was Stadia.

 

That being said, Stadia's business model meant that it was doomed to fail from the start. The Netflix-like model that Microsoft has been pushing with Game Pass Ultimate + xCloud makes much more sense in today's world. Stadia was positioned as something that could eventually replace a home console, with its pricing, business model and whatnot. With the benefit of hindsight, Google was absolutely dumb in how it could ever think this model would work.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

@KisaiGoogle didn't have a clue what they were doing. They clearly wanted a GPU Compute Infrastructure and came up with this as a justification for something else to do with it. Obviously, "game streaming" has been a big tech R&D thing for 2 decades, but notice how far it still has to go. That wasn't exactly hard to predict.

Out the door, it was half baked, which is typical of a Google product. Most google products are perpetual-beta. Google also doesn't ever seem to have the foresight of Amazon and make their "premium" services all one fee. Like if I'm paying for Stadia, why am I paying again for youtube premium, or extra storage for google drive/gmail, etc. I've been willing to pay for it just to see if anything worthwhile came out of it, but it's been disappointing when nearly everything is more expensive to buy, so why buy anything. ON top of a service fee? Geez.

 

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What was surprisingly hard to predict was how stupid Google was going to be. They literally chose the absolutely worst game approach. They should have had every F2P game they could, along with the ability to play Android titles, along with every Turn-Based or VN-style game imaginable. The bankrupt remains of Telltale would have been the easiest place to start. Have the entire catalog on the service with the Fee. That move alone would have ensured the future existence of the platform, along with massive good press and a strong place to start from.

 

Well I wasn't expecting them to have everything, but what they really should have done was put out a SDK for it, encourage Android devs to also make a Stadia build for controllers for software that made sense to. Not go down the Ouya route.

 

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Nintendo must be thanking their lucky Mario hat that Google aren't very smart. Google could have basically put a Switch into 1/2 the world's home if they knew what they were doing.

Doubtful. Nintendo has always had a hardware gimmick since the SNES that even makes modern software emulation not very straightforward. Sony and Microsoft on the other hand, their consoles have basically been PC's in all but name only since the PS2 era, with Sony having official linux kits for the PS2 and PS3. The PS4 and PS5 are essentially AMD PC hardware. AMD has been producing the GPU parts for the Nintendo consoles before Sony and Microsoft started to also use them. The Switch is basically a cousin of the nVidia Shield.

 

Like any developer not tied to exlusivity to Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo, had no reason not to at least recompile their game to run on Stadia, and for whatever reason Google tried to pretend they were Sony.

 

Like look at their site.

https://stadia.dev/about/

 

If your game was made with Unreal or Unity, the game engine already supports it, you just just had to go through the bother of upgrading to a version that has it, and because of the coderot in both of those engines, that can be almost as daunting as rewriting it.

 

Click apply at the bottom.

 

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Before applying, you will need the following:

• If you are based in the US, a corporate entity and an Employer Tax ID Number (see www.irs.gov)

• A company domain email address (Gmail, Hotmail, etc. are not acceptable)

So automatically all the indies are thrown out. This is the kind of thing you see when you look at Sony's application. Basically, if you haven't already shipped games, buzz off.

 

Compare

https://partners.playstation.net/

 

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1. A corporate entity or Employer Tax ID number (see www.irs.gov).
2. Proof of the legal status of your business which also identifies all of your directors and officers. This could include one or more of the following:
   • Certificate of Incorporation
   • Latest Annual Return / Financial Statement
   • Copy of your entry on Commercial Register (or equivalent) within your country or region
3. Your static IP address (IPv4 format). Note: 10.x.x.x, 162.49.x.x or 192.168.x.x IP addresses are invalid as they are private network IPs.
4. Non-public domain email addresses (Gmail, Hotmail, etc. are not accepted).
5. Your product pitch - either a GDD (Game Design Document) or a sheet detailing your planned projects for PlayStation platforms.

Meanwhile, Steam, doesn't even hide the documentation.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/faq

 

So you could quite literately, plan ahead for Steam without doing all the paperwork and only do it at the time your product is ready for sale. For Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo/Stadia, you pretty much have to beg them to take your game by going "hey I've made successful games, I own a million dollar company as a result", and Sony pretty much doesn't anyone who isn't big enough to own a class C internet address IP block and website. 

 

Even after that, you don't get to see the SDK unless approved, so unless you were already large enough like EA, SquareEnix or Ubisoft, chances are nobody has access to the SDK or development hardware at all. Stadia doesn't require "dev hardware" so why pretend like it exists?

 

[CTR640]

19 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Dead on arrival

You meant: Dead before on arrival

[Pc6777]

good, game streaming is dumb anyway, you dont own any hardware and when everyone decides to play at once theres a wait to get in "line" or you get horrible fps/graphics. plus streaming takes the fun away about building your own stuff and learning. I would rather use a gtx 950 and an fx cpu than stadia. 

[Entropy.]

21 hours ago, SpiderMan said:

Never really believed in these game-streaming services anyway and hope to see them disappear in the coming years. By cutting exclusive titles, this will hopefully accelerate my hypothesis/wish. 

I mean how come? 
I guess I have a bit of a better impression of these services, especially geforce now. I used to have a pc that wasn't capable of playing basically anything, and Geforce now  was one of the only ways that I could go out and play games I wanted to play. Sure, the screen was always fuzzy, the input latency was pretty bad and the free queue to "wait for an available rig" was absolutely scummy, but It at least gave me access to play games that I wasn't able to previously enjoy. What's your take? 

[CommanderAlex]

1 minute ago, Brok3n But who cares? said:

I mean how come? 
I guess I have a bit of a better impression of these services, especially geforce now. I used to have a pc that wasn't capable of playing basically anything, and Geforce now  was one of the only ways that I could go out and play games I wanted to play. Sure, the screen was always fuzzy, the input latency was pretty bad and the free queue to "wait for an available rig" was absolutely scummy, but It at least gave me access to play games that I wasn't able to previously enjoy. What's your take? 

I'll quote myself from the an early post here...

 

19 hours ago, SpiderMan said:

Don't get me wrong but this service is ok if you don't use your computer a lot for other things and need the performance by shelling out hundreds, if not, thousands and you just want to play some games. Other than that, I think there are issues with it, especially input lag. 

I don't believe these services will replace gaming rigs and the such on PCs. Its a nice feature to have for like what you said and I earlier in my quote above. You will still need computing power at the ready without having to connect to servers that will do this for you.

 

I felt that this service could actually get rid of gaming computers/high performance computers. But I feel it takes away the creativity, the DIY, and the customization of your own computer. 

[D13H4RD]

While I don't think it is totally unreasonable to expect game-streaming to catch on when internet speeds and reliability improve enough to the point where it becomes more feasible, Google's business model for Stadia seems to be done with the expectation that;

• There is enough of the general population who have the quality of network connectivity able to handle continuous high bandwidth streaming without excessive latency.
• Said level of network connectivity is available on a broad scale at a price which makes it relatively accessible.
• People would be willing to pay full price for a game that they will lose access to if they do not renew their membership fee.
• People would be willing to pay around a similar price for the hardware alongside the service as a gaming console with an online subscription (note that many modern gaming consoles are essentially entertainment HTPCs as they also support many popular streaming services)

Essentially, a model like Stadia may work if all those were true. Unfortunately for Google, that's just not how it is even in 2021. There's just far too many compromises and issues with the model as it pertains to today's market and environmental conditions. Microsoft's xCloud combined with Game Pass model is much better suited to today's market environment as it isn't positioned as a console replacement but as a supplement, alongside being generally more like Netflix in the sense that the membership fee includes access to the entire Game Pass library, with one con being that some games do not stay in Game Pass forever, with some being de-listed after a while.

[Spindel]

OnLive will welcome you to the land of the dead when you finally give up Stadia.

[Thaldor]

Firstly game streaming services are still marginal customerbase business, the equation for needing one is just too specific. You need to have access and money for good internet service in location that the streaming service actually wants to support (bye bye the third world) but you cannot afford any kind of gaming PC or last gen console but you must have enough money to buy AAA games or pay for more expensive service. So basicly you need to be piss poor to have need for Stadia (cannot afford even the cheapest PC that is able to play games or console) but you cannot be that piss poor to afford Stadia (good enough internet connection in most of the world isn't cheap, Stadia itself if you get the bundle for TV isn't cheap or you need some kind of PC or one of the few phones which aren't cheap phones, AAA games aren't cheap).

So, in game dev perspective, making exclusive game for Stadia is stupid. You would probably have potential for better playerbase if you made your game GoG exclusive and aimed hardware was C64 or good old i386 (as in even modern potato is overkill).

 

Secondly, this late? For real, if Google was really developing exclusive Stadia games by themselves, why the hell they are now bringing that up by dissolving those studios. Like if you had internal game dev studio for your own platform, wouldn't you make them create exclusive game for that platform as a launch title. Most likely Google knew from the beginning Stadia isn't going to be anything big and so didn't want to waste 2-3 years to develop a game for its launch and some people inside Google Stadia team just wanted to make a game and so the studio became a thing but highly secondary and highly depended on how well Stadia does and now was the time to pull the plug.

[Taf the Ghost]

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

Out the door, it was half baked, which is typical of a Google product. Most google products are perpetual-beta. Google also doesn't ever seem to have the foresight of Amazon and make their "premium" services all one fee. Like if I'm paying for Stadia, why am I paying again for youtube premium, or extra storage for google drive/gmail, etc. I've been willing to pay for it just to see if anything worthwhile came out of it, but it's been disappointing when nearly everything is more expensive to buy, so why buy anything. ON top of a service fee? Geez.

 

 

Well I wasn't expecting them to have everything, but what they really should have done was put out a SDK for it, encourage Android devs to also make a Stadia build for controllers for software that made sense to. Not go down the Ouya route.

 

Doubtful. Nintendo has always had a hardware gimmick since the SNES that even makes modern software emulation not very straightforward. Sony and Microsoft on the other hand, their consoles have basically been PC's in all but name only since the PS2 era, with Sony having official linux kits for the PS2 and PS3. The PS4 and PS5 are essentially AMD PC hardware. AMD has been producing the GPU parts for the Nintendo consoles before Sony and Microsoft started to also use them. The Switch is basically a cousin of the nVidia Shield.

 

 

I don't disagree with your points, but there was a bit of a missed message with the Switch point. I'm not talking about Google getting Nintendo on their platform. I'm talking about Google making the entire Android Mobile Ecosystem into a true Handheld Console platform. All you need is Android Version X.Y and a Wifi connection. That was the real power for getting both Subs and driving more Microtransactions. Google could have even run a premium discount to encourage people to subscribe.

 

If Google wanted this to fail, they did a damn good job at it.