'Signs of a change of strategy for Stadia first emerged alongside news of Google's game studio closures last year, when the company announced it would begin selling its technology to third-parties. Business Insider says this is now leadership's main priority for the Stadia division, and that the vast majority of the team is focussed on securing white-labels deals for its tech - targeting companies both within and outside gaming - under the new name Google Stream.
As part of these conversation, Google is said to have discussed supplying its technology to Capcom, enabling the publisher to stream demo titles from its own website, and the company had reportedly also made "considerable headway" with Bungie regarding a similar back-end deal. However, Business Insider's sources says it's unclear how Sony's recent $3.6bn acquisition of Bungie will affect these plans.'
A bit uncouth, but I'm most interested in seeing the fallout of a digital storefront/service dying and what that means for a consumer who "bought" products on said service.
I don't actually think even google could get away with just saying "lol, all your shit? Gone. Byeeeee"
I feel like every tech company that starts getting into media has to learn the same lessons - nobody comes to your platform for the infrastructure, they come for the content. It doesn't matter how good the infrastructure is if there's no content there.
TBH I kinda doubt that running Linux was the real problem. According to Ryan Gordan (the SDL guy) the Stadia SDK was great and it was way easier to port games to it than any of the proper consoles. I mean, it seemed like Google was initially trying to position this thing as a fourth major console. If "requires a non-zero amount of effort to port games" is the major showstopper for your console, you have problems.
Meanwhile all the competing cloud services require zero porting. Geforce Now doesn't even need the studio to do anything at all (which is why they had stuff up without permission for a while.)
Stadia thinking it was on the level of a console was a major problem, yes. Because the cloud streaming audience is just that small at the moment. Reduce the "porting" cost to zero or near-zero on the publisher's end and you will see quite a few more sign up.
I'm shocked they are actually giving full refunds for hardware and game purchases. Better than on-live. The way that is worded makes it sounds like they aren't refunding the stadia pro subscription though, which might have been most of their revenue.
Bless them for trying but their business model never made a lick of sense. Eight figures for games readily available everywhere else was just bananapants.
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Due to negative latency it was actually shut down a month ago
Bless them for trying but their business model never made a lick of sense. Eight figures for games readily available everywhere else was just bananapants.
I gave the trial a shot and was generally impressed - I made some decent progress in Thumper, a rhythm game, which I considered the genre least likely to work.
But yeah, the business model was just all wrong. This tech best supports a subscription style service where you just hop into anything - make the hardware disappear as a factor. The whole pitch is to draw in people who like to play games but don’t want to think about any of the other stuff that’s involved with that.
As delivered it was more of a weird standalone console with solid tech behind it.
Yeah when I tried it ~6 months into release it was more responsive than expected, but playing it on Chrome on a 1440p monitor forced my resolution as 720p.
There was absolutely no way to change it within the software at the time -- a 3rd party plugin fixed it. But like, come on.
Guess I need to figure out how to get my cyberpunk save off there
If you do a Google Takeout all the save data is there under Takeout/Stadia/GAMING/GAME_SAVE
I haven't tried recovering a save game yet, but the names of the files in the cyberpunk save game zip files match filenames I'm seeing of save games people have uploaded to nexusmods
Bless them for trying but their business model never made a lick of sense. Eight figures for games readily available everywhere else was just bananapants.
I gave the trial a shot and was generally impressed - I made some decent progress in Thumper, a rhythm game, which I considered the genre least likely to work.
But yeah, the business model was just all wrong. This tech best supports a subscription style service where you just hop into anything - make the hardware disappear as a factor. The whole pitch is to draw in people who like to play games but don’t want to think about any of the other stuff that’s involved with that.
As delivered it was more of a weird standalone console with solid tech behind it.
Either GeForce Now (games you already own) or XBox Ultimate (a rotating collection of games) are models that work great.
(Re-)buying games on a platform that is handled by Google (who kill projects like it's the only way they get off) never seemed like a good value proposition.
Bless them for trying but their business model never made a lick of sense. Eight figures for games readily available everywhere else was just bananapants.
I gave the trial a shot and was generally impressed - I made some decent progress in Thumper, a rhythm game, which I considered the genre least likely to work.
But yeah, the business model was just all wrong. This tech best supports a subscription style service where you just hop into anything - make the hardware disappear as a factor. The whole pitch is to draw in people who like to play games but don’t want to think about any of the other stuff that’s involved with that.
As delivered it was more of a weird standalone console with solid tech behind it.
Either GeForce Now (games you already own) or XBox Ultimate (a rotating collection of games) are models that work great.
(Re-)buying games on a platform that is handled by Google (who kill projects like it's the only way they get off) never seemed like a good value proposition.
Playsation Now is obviously dead, but isn't the Gaikai feature set (the streaming aspect of Playstation Now, which was never particularly popular on the few remaining platforms it worked on) integrated into the new Playstation Plus? It seems to be following the same general model, but with a different catalogue since PS Now was discontinued.
Sony does support streaming (and a pathetic retro selection) at the premium PS+ tier now. They reportedly have the absolute worst streaming quality though.
Sony does support streaming (and a pathetic retro selection) at the premium PS+ tier now. They reportedly have the absolute worst streaming quality though.
They did under Playstation Now; entire genres were basically unplayable in markets like Australia. I guess I assumed it was improving. But that's just the latency--I have no idea what kind of hardware they're using on their end either. Xbox Game Streaming had a (pretty overdue) switch from server blades basically equal to XB1 to Series X, complete with the Series X performance modes. Of course, things like 120 hz gameplay are bottlenecked by the bandwidth (and in fact, probably useless for any game streaming anywhere). I assumed Sony was doing server blades equivalent to Playstation 5, but I don't actually know that.
Eh, I thought the service was fine, performance wise, but ultimately there wasn't enough included in Pro to keep me subscribed, and there was no point that it made any sense to buy full priced games on the service.
It's good of them to do refunds. I don't expect any Pro sub fees to be refunded, I knew it wasn't something I was "buying" and I had access to the games it offered when I had it.
Even if I needed the Pro money back, there's not really any logical reason that I can think of to argue it should be refunded. You wouldn't ask Sony for a refund for previous years PS+ if they ended the service tomorrow. It doesn't even make sense to make that argument. I don't think anyone is, but I suspect someone will (not necessarily here).
If PS+ ended tomorrow, your non-online games would presumably be playable. Stadia is set to be completely dead. Legally, they are likely not required to do this, but it's surprisingly good faith in a way they often are not.
Right, but that's not the part that I was talking about at all. If you canceled PlayStation Plus you would not be able to access any of the games that you get when you have an act of PlayStation Plus subscription. That's just expected. That's how the service works. Stadia Pro was no real difference, you could access the pro games when you had a pro subscription, but when the subscription ran out you couldn't play those games anymore.
My point is just that for a life service that requires you to have an act of subscription to access things that are only available with that active subscription. There's no call to have that subscription price refunded if the program ends, because you had access to it while it was active.
That's why they are refunding hardware and purchases in DLCs, but unless they announce otherwise, I think it's safe to assume they won't refund any subscription fees. People who have the subscription while it was active had access to the things that provided at the time and there's no justification to refund that.
I was pretty supportive of Stadia early on since the tech was (and still is) super impressive. It's still the best quality game streaming imo. However, the marketing and business decisions started out bad and only just...got worse as they clearly stopped funneling money into it. A few days ago when Ubisoft announced AC Mirage would be on Luna but not Stadia after they were probably the last big AAA company to support them was pretty big warning sign. I wonder if they at least knew.
Pretty cool that they're doing refunds, it's probably the only way they'd maintain any good will though so I expected as much. What sucks and needs to be brought up more is that they closed down the store etc without telling devs that were planning to release games soon. Literally they're finding out TODAY that a port they spent some money on to make isn't gonna release.
Yeah small studios are gonna bear the brunt of this, and that fucking sucks.
Can they sue Google for uprooting the platform like this, or is it just a "welp *slaps knee*" situation and those studios are gonna have to eat it?
My hope is that Google will reach out to these studios and make it right in some way, just like they're trying to do with their users.
Failing that, well, even if they could sue these companies aren't going to have the resources to take on someone like Google. If it comes to this though, I'd think any good will Google recovered with the refunds is basically toast though. I also think companies outside of gaming would be wary about partnering with Google on other things if they're just gonna drop them like this, so to be honest I don't think this scenario is good for the devs OR Google.
Yeah small studios are gonna bear the brunt of this, and that fucking sucks.
Can they sue Google for uprooting the platform like this, or is it just a "welp *slaps knee*" situation and those studios are gonna have to eat it?
My hope is that Google will reach out to these studios and make it right in some way, just like they're trying to do with their users.
Failing that, well, even if they could sue these companies aren't going to have the resources to take on someone like Google. If it comes to this though, I'd think any good will Google recovered with the refunds is basically toast though. I also think companies outside of gaming would be wary about partnering with Google on other things if they're just gonna drop them like this, so to be honest I don't think this scenario is good for the devs OR Google.
After they fucked all their internal studios before they even shipped anything? Press X for DOUBT.
Yeah small studios are gonna bear the brunt of this, and that fucking sucks.
Can they sue Google for uprooting the platform like this, or is it just a "welp *slaps knee*" situation and those studios are gonna have to eat it?
My hope is that Google will reach out to these studios and make it right in some way, just like they're trying to do with their users.
Failing that, well, even if they could sue these companies aren't going to have the resources to take on someone like Google. If it comes to this though, I'd think any good will Google recovered with the refunds is basically toast though. I also think companies outside of gaming would be wary about partnering with Google on other things if they're just gonna drop them like this, so to be honest I don't think this scenario is good for the devs OR Google.
After they fucked all their internal studios before they even shipped anything? Press X for DOUBT.
fwiw it sounds like the studio still landed on its feet
Yeah small studios are gonna bear the brunt of this, and that fucking sucks.
Can they sue Google for uprooting the platform like this, or is it just a "welp *slaps knee*" situation and those studios are gonna have to eat it?
My hope is that Google will reach out to these studios and make it right in some way, just like they're trying to do with their users.
Failing that, well, even if they could sue these companies aren't going to have the resources to take on someone like Google. If it comes to this though, I'd think any good will Google recovered with the refunds is basically toast though. I also think companies outside of gaming would be wary about partnering with Google on other things if they're just gonna drop them like this, so to be honest I don't think this scenario is good for the devs OR Google.
After they fucked all their internal studios before they even shipped anything? Press X for DOUBT.
fwiw it sounds like the studio still landed on its feet
Don't put it in the newspaper that we got owned. You might think getting acquired by a dead end company project that then abandoned their customers and partners without warning was bad, but it was super good actually!
Some people are mentioning that this was THE perfect environment for Stadia to launch in. Right before an event forcing a majority of people in their homes all day for two years alongside chip shortages and increased gpu demand that placed even more hurdles to buy a good gaming pc.
There is never going to be a more ideal period to have launched a cloud gaming network, and Google found a way to fuck it up. We’ll still see it in the future, but it’s going to be more modest stuff like Sony’s premium service or what Amazon is doing.
Yeah small studios are gonna bear the brunt of this, and that fucking sucks.
Can they sue Google for uprooting the platform like this, or is it just a "welp *slaps knee*" situation and those studios are gonna have to eat it?
My hope is that Google will reach out to these studios and make it right in some way, just like they're trying to do with their users.
Failing that, well, even if they could sue these companies aren't going to have the resources to take on someone like Google. If it comes to this though, I'd think any good will Google recovered with the refunds is basically toast though. I also think companies outside of gaming would be wary about partnering with Google on other things if they're just gonna drop them like this, so to be honest I don't think this scenario is good for the devs OR Google.
After they fucked all their internal studios before they even shipped anything? Press X for DOUBT.
fwiw it sounds like the studio still landed on its feet
Don't put it in the newspaper that we got owned. You might think getting acquired by a dead end company project that then abandoned their customers and partners without warning was bad, but it was super good actually!
Heh yeah honestly his phrasing comes off as a bit Trumpian, but hard to tell for sure.
Some people are mentioning that this was THE perfect environment for Stadia to launch in. Right before an event forcing a majority of people in their homes all day for two years alongside chip shortages and increased gpu demand that placed even more hurdles to buy a good gaming pc.
There is never going to be a more ideal period to have launched a cloud gaming network, and Google found a way to fuck it up. We’ll still see it in the future, but it’s going to be more modest stuff like Sony’s premium service or what Amazon is doing.
The biggest problem here was that Stadia wasn't a great gaming PC, it was freaking Vega. My 2060 was already running rings around it, and it barely brought anything over a PS4Pro. Also devs saw this situation and just ran 180 away from next gen for years until like 2023. Cyberpunk was the only game that hit the service that was nearly unplayable on base consoles and benefited from the CPU upgrade on stadia.
And there's still massive strides to be made in crappy internet infrastructure throughout the states and much of the world, plus we're seeing attempts to make dedicated cloud handhelds where its much harder to fit good rendering power into. It might take some time to get there, but we're still far from the ideal conditions for cloud gaming. Of course it's also questionable whether the Stadia business model was ever well suited, plus the demand devs port their games to a custom Linux environment when every other service just runs windows or a console blade.
There were lots of fears from the start about the viability of Stadia's tech but that was never the problem, the tech works well. The problem was their business strategy. They should have partnered with an established player that could provide the game library, like Valve or Epic or something. They were doomed to fail when they decided to start completely from scratch and introduce yet another competitor into the space.
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They're not salvaging the Stadia brand or console, they're salvaging the streaming tech and the investment in it by flogging it to third parties:
"Stadia reportedly "deprioritised" as Google focuses on selling streaming tech to third-parties."
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2022-02-04-stadia-reportedly-deprioritised-as-google-focuses-on-selling-streaming-tech-to-third-parties
'Signs of a change of strategy for Stadia first emerged alongside news of Google's game studio closures last year, when the company announced it would begin selling its technology to third-parties. Business Insider says this is now leadership's main priority for the Stadia division, and that the vast majority of the team is focussed on securing white-labels deals for its tech - targeting companies both within and outside gaming - under the new name Google Stream.
As part of these conversation, Google is said to have discussed supplying its technology to Capcom, enabling the publisher to stream demo titles from its own website, and the company had reportedly also made "considerable headway" with Bungie regarding a similar back-end deal. However, Business Insider's sources says it's unclear how Sony's recent $3.6bn acquisition of Bungie will affect these plans.'
I don't actually think even google could get away with just saying "lol, all your shit? Gone. Byeeeee"
Stadia thinking it was on the level of a console was a major problem, yes. Because the cloud streaming audience is just that small at the moment. Reduce the "porting" cost to zero or near-zero on the publisher's end and you will see quite a few more sign up.
I gave the trial a shot and was generally impressed - I made some decent progress in Thumper, a rhythm game, which I considered the genre least likely to work.
But yeah, the business model was just all wrong. This tech best supports a subscription style service where you just hop into anything - make the hardware disappear as a factor. The whole pitch is to draw in people who like to play games but don’t want to think about any of the other stuff that’s involved with that.
As delivered it was more of a weird standalone console with solid tech behind it.
There was absolutely no way to change it within the software at the time -- a 3rd party plugin fixed it. But like, come on.
If you do a Google Takeout all the save data is there under Takeout/Stadia/GAMING/GAME_SAVE
I haven't tried recovering a save game yet, but the names of the files in the cyberpunk save game zip files match filenames I'm seeing of save games people have uploaded to nexusmods
Either GeForce Now (games you already own) or XBox Ultimate (a rotating collection of games) are models that work great.
(Re-)buying games on a platform that is handled by Google (who kill projects like it's the only way they get off) never seemed like a good value proposition.
Playsation Now is obviously dead, but isn't the Gaikai feature set (the streaming aspect of Playstation Now, which was never particularly popular on the few remaining platforms it worked on) integrated into the new Playstation Plus? It seems to be following the same general model, but with a different catalogue since PS Now was discontinued.
They did under Playstation Now; entire genres were basically unplayable in markets like Australia. I guess I assumed it was improving. But that's just the latency--I have no idea what kind of hardware they're using on their end either. Xbox Game Streaming had a (pretty overdue) switch from server blades basically equal to XB1 to Series X, complete with the Series X performance modes. Of course, things like 120 hz gameplay are bottlenecked by the bandwidth (and in fact, probably useless for any game streaming anywhere). I assumed Sony was doing server blades equivalent to Playstation 5, but I don't actually know that.
It's good of them to do refunds. I don't expect any Pro sub fees to be refunded, I knew it wasn't something I was "buying" and I had access to the games it offered when I had it.
Even if I needed the Pro money back, there's not really any logical reason that I can think of to argue it should be refunded. You wouldn't ask Sony for a refund for previous years PS+ if they ended the service tomorrow. It doesn't even make sense to make that argument. I don't think anyone is, but I suspect someone will (not necessarily here).
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My point is just that for a life service that requires you to have an act of subscription to access things that are only available with that active subscription. There's no call to have that subscription price refunded if the program ends, because you had access to it while it was active.
That's why they are refunding hardware and purchases in DLCs, but unless they announce otherwise, I think it's safe to assume they won't refund any subscription fees. People who have the subscription while it was active had access to the things that provided at the time and there's no justification to refund that.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Pretty cool that they're doing refunds, it's probably the only way they'd maintain any good will though so I expected as much. What sucks and needs to be brought up more is that they closed down the store etc without telling devs that were planning to release games soon. Literally they're finding out TODAY that a port they spent some money on to make isn't gonna release.
Just absolutely nuts.
Can they sue Google for uprooting the platform like this, or is it just a "welp *slaps knee*" situation and those studios are gonna have to eat it?
I'm assuming devs are still getting paid for their sales...?
My hope is that Google will reach out to these studios and make it right in some way, just like they're trying to do with their users.
Failing that, well, even if they could sue these companies aren't going to have the resources to take on someone like Google. If it comes to this though, I'd think any good will Google recovered with the refunds is basically toast though. I also think companies outside of gaming would be wary about partnering with Google on other things if they're just gonna drop them like this, so to be honest I don't think this scenario is good for the devs OR Google.
As of the official post earlier today the Stadia Store has gone down, you can no longer make purchases/sub to pro/etc.
Likely to avoid the above scenario heh.
After they fucked all their internal studios before they even shipped anything? Press X for DOUBT.
fwiw it sounds like the studio still landed on its feet
Don't put it in the newspaper that we got owned. You might think getting acquired by a dead end company project that then abandoned their customers and partners without warning was bad, but it was super good actually!
There is never going to be a more ideal period to have launched a cloud gaming network, and Google found a way to fuck it up. We’ll still see it in the future, but it’s going to be more modest stuff like Sony’s premium service or what Amazon is doing.
Heh yeah honestly his phrasing comes off as a bit Trumpian, but hard to tell for sure.
The biggest problem here was that Stadia wasn't a great gaming PC, it was freaking Vega. My 2060 was already running rings around it, and it barely brought anything over a PS4Pro. Also devs saw this situation and just ran 180 away from next gen for years until like 2023. Cyberpunk was the only game that hit the service that was nearly unplayable on base consoles and benefited from the CPU upgrade on stadia.
And there's still massive strides to be made in crappy internet infrastructure throughout the states and much of the world, plus we're seeing attempts to make dedicated cloud handhelds where its much harder to fit good rendering power into. It might take some time to get there, but we're still far from the ideal conditions for cloud gaming. Of course it's also questionable whether the Stadia business model was ever well suited, plus the demand devs port their games to a custom Linux environment when every other service just runs windows or a console blade.
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