Stadia

Alex

Good piece.

Amazon and Google are in games for the wrong reasons

Brave

Oh dear

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-10-23-google-distances-itself-from-suggestion-streamers-should-pay-publishers-of-games-they-broadcast

Brave

Ok. Now it’s getting interesting. This is what they should have done day one.

https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2020/11/18/destiny-2-new-light-beyond-light-google-stadia-free-to-play/

I wonder if Phil is out the door…

Disastrous launch number 3 innit?

Fumanstu

Actually, I’ve been meaning to post about how I’m playing AC:V for a while but kept getting distracted. Not quite the right thread but close enough. If you’ve got a Ubisoft+ subscription, you can play all the games on that service via Geforce Now as well as on your local PC. You need to bung Nvidia a fiver to get the proper service (the free option is pretty hobbled but useful if you want to test your network) but it’s jaw droppingly impressive. I can play AC:V at 1080p 60fps (the max my laptop monitor supports) with Ultra High settings. That’s nearly next-gen performance for the price of a few coffees. Which is just nuts. I know Ubi are going to be offering the same option to Stadia (and Luna) soon too. I would qualify this by pointing out that I do have fibre connection hovering around the 60-70mbs mark (which is quick but hardly state of the art) and in the evenings when the intertubes get busy (especially last tuesday when CoD, AC and Series S/X completely knackered the internet) the service does suffer, so it’s not perfect and certainly not a replacement for a PC or console yet. In my experience it agonizingly close though, certainly (with the appropriate expectations) good enough that I’m playing AC:V on it quite happily. It will be very interesting to see how the 5g roll out goes and how quickly we can standardise on decently quick connections so the services work for everyone, rather than those who are lucky to have quick interpipes. I think it’s still in early adoptor territory and all these competing services need to sort out their offerings to appeal appropriately but in a year or two it could be a completely different ball game. I know I’ve gone from being completely skeptical to playing one of my favourite games of the last few years entirely in the cloud in a matter of weeks.

Alex

Brave

Never ever bet on Google to stick with anything. I’m on the verge of just jumping over to Apple and I never ever thought I’d say that.

It’s just unbelievably predictable. Frustratingly so. They could fix it, but naaaa

Fumanstu

Brave It’s not so much the loss of the studios (although clearly for the people working there, it’ll suck), I don’t think Stadia needed exclusive games to be honest. The problem is that it just reinforces the fact that Google will shut down anything that doesn’t meet expectations. I mean, at this point, who’s going to be prepared to buy (expensive!) games on Stadia when all indications are it’s a dying service? Which would be a real shame as the tech is really really good. I think in general there’s a typical snooty dislike of cloud tech in the wider gaming sphere and I don’t think we’re going to get past that with Stadia’s current model. Will be interesting to see how xCloud takes off and whether Sony beef up PSNow to compete or let it wither and die (from a cloud perspective, I doubt they’re going to ditch more straightforward GP side of it).

I’m still really pleased with Geforce Now btw it’s a lovely service, just a bit slow at adding games. Pretty much play all my larger games on it now.

Brave

Fumanstu Honestly, the fact that people (myself included) really like the implementation and potential of xCloud and Geforce Now, I believe, indicates that it’s always been the business model; and quite frankly, Phil Harrison’s consistent belligerence and arrogance* when it comes to pretty much anything that he touches, that were/are the problem with Stadia. There’s never been a sound argument for paying full price for something you stream from a server that could be switched off the minute the higher-ups lose interest. It was a really really daft model especially when it was on top of a subscription.

I don’t think most people have an issue streaming as long as there’s an acknowledgement that you shouldn’t pay full whack for a lower quality, potentially temporary product. There’s already a good model out there for this, and xcloud have copied it. The Netflix one.

*I still remember the interview where he basically said folk were crazy for thinking the stadia model was unfair.

DrDamn

Brave

DrDamn It’s crazy. He’s practically been invisible for the last 18 months.

Fumanstu

Brave Yeah, that’s the bit I don’t get really, why they ever thought their model was going to fly. I mean it’s pretty clear for many reasons that following the Netflix model is the way to go, that’s what people want. But they wanted to pretend like it was some clever new platform. I wonder if this will give them the dose of realism to change things up or whether they’ll completely can it.

Brave

Fumanstu sadly I think Harrison sent it on one path the minute he stood on the stage, and Google’s record means that path is not going to branch out. Even if they wanted it to, nobody will commit to paying money for a service like that run by a company with a record like Google’s.

They are almost literally a self fulfilling prophecy at this point.

edit: fixed grammatical weirdnesses.

Fumanstu

Brave Yup, sadly I think you’re 100% right. I mean, maybe they could sell it off to Epic or someone but it’s hard to imagine there’s many out there with the amount of cash it would require.

Brave

https://killedbygoogle.com/

There’s actually a couple of things that Google’s killed in the last few weeks that don’t seem to be there yet. Tiltbrush and iirc another 3D VR asset creation tool, both of which had very active communities.

The latter service actually was a key tool for the 3D asset creation industry and sent people scrambling to find a new service that could replace it. And we all know how that feels here.

Add to that the current rumours that they’re about to ditch Wear OS ( I’ve had a number of wear os smartwatches over the last few years) in favour of Fitbit and I think I might be done with them.

Unless MS really kick ass with the next double screen, I’m thinking of moving over to the dark side.

BritishBean

Brave

Gammerz

I think Google, like MS are looking for the next “big thing”, like the Google.com search engine and maps, Facebook, AWS, Xbox etc, which is a tall order. They’re experimenting and discarding anything that’s not as successful as these products. It’s simply not worth their time unless it’s going to make them billionaires.

DrDamn

Gammerz I think Google, like MS are looking for the next “big thing”, like the Google.com search engine and maps, Facebook, AWS, Xbox etc, which is a tall order.

It’s not simply that, a lot of stuff they’ve done then shelved is clearly not going to be the next big thing, it’s just they don’t seem to always grasp the point made by @Alex …

Alex With MS it doesn’t matter if some smallish product isn’t bringing in the mega bucks because it all enriches the central core.

That’s a really good point. There are some notable examples where they have ended up dropping something because it didn’t work (Mixer and Zune for example) - I think with these they understood they weren’t offering anything enriching and more trying to do something someone else was doing better already, so integration with those would be more valuable to their customers.

Alex

I think Google’s corporate structure is lots of little teams with a focus on innovation. A team will come up with something cool and then Google with try to turn it into a product. However there’s no real management buy in on a lot of these things, as soon as something isn’t making money it gets canned. With Google there doesn’t seem to be a central vision around which products are based, a reason for the product to exist rather than someone wanted to make it.

Compare that to Microsoft’s current vision and their whole unified platform backed by Azure where it doesn’t really matter what hardware you have. Every product decision Microsoft have made for the last few years can all be tied back to that singular idea. Windows as a Service, Office 365, Game Pass, Cross Saves, Cloud Gaming, it all ties in. All these Microsoft products will be around until they change direction, which given they’re making $$$ seems unlikely for many years/decades. With MS it doesn’t matter if some smallish product isn’t bringing in the mega bucks because it all enriches the central core.

Just my random thoughts.

Brave

Alex I think Google’s corporate structure is lots of little teams with a focus on innovation. A team will come up with something cool and then Google with try to turn it into a product. However there’s no real management buy in on a lot of these things, as soon as something isn’t making money it gets canned. With Google there doesn’t seem to be a central vision around which products are based, a reason for the product to exist rather than someone wanted to make it.

This is pretty much it. The issue seems to be that everyone sees that the route to promotion or at least getting noticed in Google is to start a new innovative project (this is what I’ve been told by someone in the tech industry).

Then that person either gets promoted away from the project or the person gets bored/frustrated and gets a job somewhere else. Either way, the product itself is left high and dry because nobody gets kudos for finishing the damn thing (edit: or simply keeping it running). They get noticed by the higher ups by “innovating” new products.

So you end up with lots of small teams making exciting new things but with no impetus to push it to completion because the boring bit isn’t the route up the ladder.

Brave

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-02-23-stadia-struggling-to-fix-journey-to-the-savage-planet-bug-after-firing-developer

Jesus, Phil. You utter cock.

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