Google shutting down Stadia internal development

Omfg.

I’m still waiting for them to decide they want to shut down Gmail to “refocus”, and roll it all into hangouts chats or something.

This is an odd choice by them. The article title is misleading. They basically don’t want to make their own games anymore - I didn’t know they were even doing that - and just provide the service like any other game streaming app, and/or resell is wholesale so random company X can rebrand it.

okay, I guess? Was anyone really thinking of it as a viable competitor to any actual gaming platform? Even iOS?
 
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It sounds like they are shutting down their own game studios, not the entire Stadia project. Stadia is essentially just going to stream 3rd party games (ala GeForceNow).
 
Stadia has been alright for me, and Cyberpunk on there brought a whole lot of new customers, I don't think they are closing shop.
 
Has anyone here tried Stadia? Does it work well? Everyone says it is bad, but how bad?
 
LFaWolf said:
Has anyone here tried Stadia? Does it work well? Everyone says it is bad, but how bad?
Click to expand...
I mean... at its best it can work fine. So if you have good, stable, Internet and a Google datacenter with Stadia hardware close to you, you can have a decent experience. The "just play a game no downloading" is real for sure and it is playable. Basically video quality is like you are watching a Youtube stream or the like, not bad but there is noticeable compression. There will be more input latency, of course, but if your connection is good it can be fairly minimal, and would basically be the difference between a fast display and a slow one. In terms of in game rendering quality it is kinda all over. Generally pretty good, but usually not equivalent to highest settings on a PC. Varies game by game though, some are more like console settings.

It is not the "everything maxed amazing experience" they sold though. Plenty of games are running below max settings, many cannot hold 60fps, etc. They are not bad, you get results generally as good as the Xbox 1 X at least, but it is not equal to, nevermind beyond, what you see on a high end desktop.

So that's all fine, and for some people they'd be perfectly happy with it. The problem comes when everything doesn't work right. If your net connection isn't fast and perfectly stable, you get dropouts. There's no ability to have a deep buffer, since that would lead to more latency so any time there's a net hiccup you get dropouts. So it requires a much more stable and fast net connection than you are used to with other things. You can have a connection that streams 4K UHD video no issue but won't be good for Stadia. Thus you are going to see real varied results. Some folks won't really see a problem, others will have major issues. All depends on where they live, who their ISP is, how stable their line is, etc.

After that the big issue is just games availability. Since they run a custom version of Linux, games have to be ported to Stadia, devs can't just sell them on there with no effort. That means that the catalogue is pretty thin, and of course there is no ability to bring your own game.
 
I have it, it works okay. At launch there were some issue, but on new games like Cyberpunk it's actually superior to last-gen consoles.

There is some lag, which varies by game, but they do support up to 4K HDR 60fps and the graphics can be good (like last-gen console / mid-range PC quality).

However, there is a noticeable video compression that can look bad, especially on darker games. I found Cyberpunk to look pretty good, but some games like Metro Exodus were borderline unplayable.

So I'd say it's an interesting service, and could find a market with people that don't want to buy a console but maybe want to check out a game here or there and aren't super serious or invested.

It also works on mobile, I was playing Cyberpunk on my phone, so that is kind of fun. I played a couple of the exclusive games, so I'm sad they closed the studios, but people should at least give it a chance.
 
Sycraft said:
I mean... at its best it can work fine. So if you have good, stable, Internet and a Google datacenter with Stadia hardware close to you, you can have a decent experience. The "just play a game no downloading" is real for sure and it is playable. Basically video quality is like you are watching a Youtube stream or the like, not bad but there is noticeable compression. There will be more input latency, of course, but if your connection is good it can be fairly minimal, and would basically be the difference between a fast display and a slow one. In terms of in game rendering quality it is kinda all over. Generally pretty good, but usually not equivalent to highest settings on a PC. Varies game by game though, some are more like console settings.

It is not the "everything maxed amazing experience" they sold though. Plenty of games are running below max settings, many cannot hold 60fps, etc. They are not bad, you get results generally as good as the Xbox 1 X at least, but it is not equal to, nevermind beyond, what you see on a high end desktop.

So that's all fine, and for some people they'd be perfectly happy with it. The problem comes when everything doesn't work right. If your net connection isn't fast and perfectly stable, you get dropouts. There's no ability to have a deep buffer, since that would lead to more latency so any time there's a net hiccup you get dropouts. So it requires a much more stable and fast net connection than you are used to with other things. You can have a connection that streams 4K UHD video no issue but won't be good for Stadia. Thus you are going to see real varied results. Some folks won't really see a problem, others will have major issues. All depends on where they live, who their ISP is, how stable their line is, etc.

After that the big issue is just games availability. Since they run a custom version of Linux, games have to be ported to Stadia, devs can't just sell them on there with no effort. That means that the catalogue is pretty thin, and of course there is no ability to bring your own game.
Click to expand...

Thanks! Nice, clear explanation. Ahem, not for me then. I don't work this hard for dropped games and lousy graphics. I need all the eye candies and everything max! :ROFLMAO:
 
LFaWolf said:
Thanks! Nice, clear explanation. Ahem, not for me then. I don't work this hard for dropped games and lousy graphics. I need all the eye candies and everything max! :ROFLMAO:
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Ya it isn't for those of us that are crazy and want a RTX 3090 :D. It is targeting the kind of person who wants a console, but doesn't want to spend $500. Now maybe in the future they'll scale up their hardware and start to have some high end settings but right now, that doesn't seem to be the case. It is fore sure more of a console competitor in most cases. For example Elder Scrolls Online only runs at 30fps 1440p, FF15 runs at 30fps 1080p.

Even with future hardware improvements, compression will still be an issue because of streaming. So you are talking 4:2:0 color subsampling and some artifacting. Just no getting away from that. Again can be fine for some, as Youtube and Twitch have us quite used to that, but no amount of upgrades on their side are getting rid of that just due to bandwidth limitations.

Dropouts and such are almost 100% going to be on your Internet quality, as Google generally is extremely well peered. Sadly, most of us don't have the quality of Internet we wish we did :p. That really is its biggest hurdle. If everyone had good net, it would be a competitor to the consoles for plenty of people who don't really care about having the best visuals. That's not the case though. Even many of us with "good" Internet have more minor issues with it than we realize, it just doesn't effect what we normally do, and plenty of people have Internet that is lacking. With streaming media, you can always solve the issue with a bigger buffer. Someone on a 128kbps line could watch a 4k movie, so long as you buffered the entire thing before playing, it'd just take a week to get ready. But with something realtime like a game, the data has to get there right now, or it is a problem.
 
DPI said:
They always are. Only way to get attention nowadays sadly.
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It is not particularly bad, no ?:

Google Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus​


What would you change to make it less misleading ?
Google to continue to operate gaming service for other publisher but will get out of the game development business ?

It feel misleading to me just because I was not aware of the internal studio to start with, for someone familiar with it (and writing the title) it could have felt clear.
 
LukeTbk said:
It is not particularly bad, no ?:

Google Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus​


What would you change to make it less misleading ?
Google to continue to operate gaming service for other publisher but will get out of the game development business ?

It feel misleading to me just because I was not aware of the internal studio to start with, for someone familiar with it (and writing the title) it could have felt clear.
Click to expand...

That's what I mean - if you didn't know they had an internal studio (glad I'm not the only one), the first four words you see are "google stadia shuts down". Considering all the noise Google made about it, that looks like a huge headline.

It also ends with "changing business focus". Which, for anyone who follows tech, means it's just another gravestone in Google's pile.

I'd have just left out stadia from the first part. "Google shuts down internal games studio; Stadia to host third-party games only".

to be clear, I thought your thread title was fine. It's the actual article title that I was grumbling about. But as DPI pointed out, this is common practice for news these days.
 
Right, people don't read the article, and some don't even read the full headline (not talking about people here specifically, I mean in general).

So with the first 4 words of that title, people may get the wrong idea. I do think Stadia had a rocky start, but it's actually a decent service maybe in need of a market.

But I don't think Google would pull out so quick, and they probably have information we don't so maybe this change of focus will prove a success.
 
cybereality said:
I have it, it works okay. At launch there were some issue, but on new games like Cyberpunk it's actually superior to last-gen consoles.

There is some lag, which varies by game, but they do support up to 4K HDR 60fps and the graphics can be good (like last-gen console / mid-range PC quality).

However, there is a noticeable video compression that can look bad, especially on darker games. I found Cyberpunk to look pretty good, but some games like Metro Exodus were borderline unplayable.

So I'd say it's an interesting service, and could find a market with people that don't want to buy a console but maybe want to check out a game here or there and aren't super serious or invested.

It also works on mobile, I was playing Cyberpunk on my phone, so that is kind of fun. I played a couple of the exclusive games, so I'm sad they closed the studios, but people should at least give it a chance.
Click to expand...
Or, you could buy it on Steam or GOG and then stream it through GeForce Now for the better experience. And you'll still own the game if GeForce Now ceases operations, unlike Stadia.
 
I imagine Stadia itself will go to the gallows once all of their contractual obligations have been fulfilled. A ballpark guess of 2 years.
 
Armenius said:
Or, you could buy it on Steam or GOG and then stream it through GeForce Now for the better experience. And you'll still own the game if GeForce Now ceases operations, unlike Stadia.
Click to expand...

Does that still work? I thought they didn't allow that anymore due to the game studios bitching. Well, you can stream some games, but not your full library is more what I mean.
 
sharknice said:
Stadia isn't dead yet, they're just cancelling making their own games for it.

Save your excitement for next year.
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Hang on. B-buffering
post-144-0-95302900-1548272974.jpg

Nytegard said:
Unfortunately, it is the future. Thankfully though, technology hasn't caught up yet.
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Someday we'll surpass the speed of light. Until then I'm going to stick to local hardware.
 
kirbyrj said:
Does that still work? I thought they didn't allow that anymore due to the game studios bitching. Well, you can stream some games, but not your full library is more what I mean.
Click to expand...
Yes except the companies like SE games will be unsupported because they are anti-consumer and greedy.
 
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