It's Dead, Jim.......and by Dead I mean Stadia

It was the business model which was hot garbage. You can sell the service; you can sell the games; but double dipping for both will have prospective users telling you exactly where you can shove your 'negative latency'.
Isn't that the XBOX model? Google cut out the crappy console hardware. People buy into that ecosystem. Unfortunately for Google, latency made this DOA.
There is a large danger with the emergence of streaming tech that, if we are not vigilant and act vehemently when we see bad policy and products rise, will hobble our privacy and control over computing. Picture software and game developers who would love for nothing to run on your PC - they can sell it all to you, the ultimate DRM. Mods are nigh impossible, piracy too (sans leaks of server/broadcast software or incredible reverse engineering), and all manner of invasive policies are allowed because its not a matter of their program on your PC anymore you're connecting to their system; their system their rules! The benefit of the cloud only thrives as long as users have the possibility to define both the client and the server as they wish. Otherwise, it becomes a one way pipe where you are given the illusion of control. Stadia failing, especially as a proprietary game platform and store, is a benefit that it takes us further from this direction and perhaps will caution others... but we can't grow complacent. There are still others, and more will come with dreams of stock prices rising damn all else.
Very true. "You will own nothing and be happy."
Unfortunately, the invisible hand trumps this. The majority of people have already given away their rights to purchase audio (.mp3s, etc) and video (Blu-Ray, etc.) to subscription services. Eventually those options may disappear entirely.
 
The idea of cloud gaming has just enough good points that a skilled salesman could convince a board room of non gamers and corporate suits to invest money into it as the next big thing that they don’t want to miss out on. It screams TechBro startup to me and always has. And I think Google is figuring out they fell for a con and is getting out before they put more money into a failed project.
It could work, 15 years from now with a crapload of ifs and buts and some candied nuts.

But the reality is we aren’t there yet.
 
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It's always funny to hear "experts" here decry the latency of cloud gaming when all they play are multiplayer games with servers that are located 60ms away from them and operate on 17ms refresh rates.
 
It's always funny to hear "experts" here decry the latency of cloud gaming when all they play are multiplayer games with servers that are located 60ms away from them and operate on 17ms refresh rates.
That statement is apples-to-oranges at best.
The refresh and latency isn't an issue when it is simply for other player locations/actions/etc., but for the entire game render and I/O operations; cloud gaming is quite the different beast.

Multiplayer games can be had over a 1Mbps connection with decent latency.
Cloud gaming requires a 20-30Mbps+ connection with optimal latency, which no everyone in the world has (depending on the continent/region/distance/connection/etc.).

Sounds like the "experts" here know what they are talking about.
 
It's always funny to hear "experts" here decry the latency of cloud gaming when all they play are multiplayer games with servers that are located 60ms away from them and operate on 17ms refresh rates.
That's a poor strawman argument. Nobody has claimed to be an expert and from what I've seen in these discussions it's actually multiplayer gamers that are more likely to believe it's feasible. More importantly it ignores that remotely refereeing a game and remotely rendering a game are completely different things and the tricks they use to disguise latency in multiplayer gaming won't work for cloud gaming which has been discussed ad nauseam in these discussions already.

Cloud gaming is a "good enough" technology that isn't good enough for many regardless of whether it's due to being more sensitive to lag or physical distance to a server making lag much worse, especially when it comes to full price games that are available on other platforms without the limitations.
 
It's always funny to hear "experts" here decry the latency of cloud gaming when all they play are multiplayer games with servers that are located 60ms away from them and operate on 17ms refresh rates.
You wanna hear something funnier? That those "experts" were right and Stadia is dead. Not only it died but it did during a pandemic where everyone stayed home and nobody could buy new consoles or graphic cards to play games. It had the best possible chance and it failed.
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Nobody wants any amount of input lag, and nobody wants to lose even more rights to the media they paid money for. The people who thought cloud gaming had a future are people who never played games beyond solitaire, and never worked on a computer network of any kind. The games you play online with 60ms do not reflect what you see on screen. I've mentioned this before but the client that you use will fake actions, while the real location of the player is in a grey area. Anyone who's play Dark Souls will experience players with a high enough latency that they teleport around, and what you think you saw happened can be denied in the other players favor. This is such an advantage that some players will induce the latency to get the upper hand. Where as Cloud Gaming has latency all the time and there's no way to fake it like you do with clients. Like I said, the people who thought cloud gaming had a future know nothing about games and networking.

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx6zlMc5EVlJDg3XZTgZn3E4jNa61vj8yl
 
Cloud gaming requires a 20-30Mbps+ connection with optimal latency, which no everyone in the world has (depending on the continent/region/distance/connection/etc.).

Cloud gaming is a "good enough" technology that isn't good enough for many regardless of whether it's due to being more sensitive to lag or physical distance to a server making lag much worse, especially when it comes to full price games that are available on other platforms without the limitations.

You don't need to sell to literally every person in the world to succeed. It's okay to only aim to have millions of users, and make billions of dollars. And if Joe Shmoe in Idaho is stuck on ADSL and can't use your service? Bummer. But, not your problem.


You wanna hear something funnier? That those "experts" were right and Stadia is dead. Not only it died but it did during a pandemic where everyone stayed home and nobody could buy new consoles or graphic cards to play games. It had the best possible chance and it failed.

It failed because Google is miserably incompetent at business. And at product development.

This is a company with a captive audience of 3 billion Android devices, and they can't even keep a messaging app alive.


Nobody wants any amount of input lag, and nobody wants to lose even more rights to the media they paid money for. The people who thought cloud gaming had a future are people who never played games beyond solitaire, and never worked on a computer network of any kind. The games you play online with 60ms do not reflect what you see on screen. I've mentioned this before but the client that you use will fake actions, while the real location of the player is in a grey area. Anyone who's play Dark Souls will experience players with a high enough latency that they teleport around, and what you think you saw happened can be denied in the other players favor. This is such an advantage that some players will induce the latency to get the upper hand. Where as Cloud Gaming has latency all the time and there's no way to fake it like you do with clients. Like I said, the people who thought cloud gaming had a future know nothing about games and networking.

Most people's gaming experience involves plugging their console into a cheap TV on which they never turned off motion smoothing, adding the better part of a hundred milliseconds of latency. And they're perfectly happy with it.
 
It failed because Google is miserably incompetent at business. And at product development.

This is a company with a captive audience of 3 billion Android devices, and they can't even keep a messaging app alive.
Stadia failed because it was expensive to play games on it. Not only you need specialized hardware like the Chromecast, but it was still worse in terms of latency compared to using Stadia on PC. The market this was meant for are people who have expensive Android phones or Chromecasts bundles. You had to buy games for it, and pay $10 per month for 4k. Google wasn't even first with this as Nvidia had the same business model with their Grid platform, which evolved to Geforce Now. Expecting people to buy games for a cloud gaming service is just stupid. It's not like Stadia worked in other web browsers, as you need Chrome. This is the same mistake that Nvidia did with Grid, and Sony did with PS Now. Before the service had any amount of success, they already limited who could use it.

Most people's gaming experience involves plugging their console into a cheap TV on which they never turned off motion smoothing, adding the better part of a hundred milliseconds of latency. And they're perfectly happy with it.
This is what every executive thinks when they decided to pursue cloud gaming. If a little latency is Ok then a lot of latency should be OKer? One of the reasons PC had such a massive resurgence was due to this very reason. Your 30 fps PS4 on wifi with bluetooth gamepad and Walmart TV without gamemode enabled is going to experience much worse input lag than a PC on wired Ethernet with a GTX 970 with a proper monitor and wired keyboard and mouse. It's all about input lag. Why you think motherboards still come with PS2 ports? Some people still think that PS2 ports offer lower input lag than USB. This is also why CSGO players want frame rates in the hundreds, as it really does significantly reduce input lag. I would rather have a 1440p monitor that goes to 120Hz than a 4k monitor that does 60Hz, because I know that extra frame rate will benefit me more so than a higher resolution.

There is an extent where input lag is acceptable, but people understand that lower latency does give you a competitive advantage. If you can't notice it, then it's fine. If you can notice it, then expect people to rage quit. I'm predicting that Geforce Now or PS Now are next to axe their service. You can't even play Elden Ring on Geforce Now, which as far as I'm concerned is game of the year. You know there's a big problem when the best game of the year can't even be played on the most powerful cloud gaming service, while Valve's Steam Deck which runs Arch Linux, plays Elden Ring better than on Windows. You can play more games on Linux than you can on cloud gaming services. Playstation Now still doesn't have SpiderMan. It used to, but it was removed. It's all licensing issues, and if big companies like Nvidia and Sony can't get that straightened out then there's no point to these services. SpiderMan runs just fine on the Linux running Steam Deck.

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You wanna hear something funnier? That those "experts" were right and Stadia is dead. Not only it died but it did during a pandemic where everyone stayed home and nobody could buy new consoles or graphic cards to play games. It had the best possible chance and it failed.
I don't mean to let the facts get in the way of a good story, but more gamers than ever were able to get new gen consoles that were faster and more appealing than ever. On top of that, the fastest growth ever seen of any GPU generation in the Steam hardware survey also appeared with Ampere.

Meanwhile, Stadia was charging gamers to play games they already owned on hardware running at 1/4 the speed of what they already owned. At zero latency, Stadia was destined for failure.

Stadia failed because it was expensive to play games on it.
Happy to see you disagree with yourself but still agree with me.
 
I don't mean to let the facts get in the way of a good story, but more gamers than ever were able to get new gen consoles that were faster and more appealing than ever. On top of that, the fastest growth ever seen of any GPU generation in the Steam hardware survey also appeared with Ampere.
Not sure what you mean but my recollection is that for the past 2 years the PS5 was scalped for over $1k, making it hard for people to purchase them. Graphic cards were also priced well over $1k, meaning people were stuck using older cheaper GPU's. If Stadia was the least path of resistance to playing games then it should have been successful. As for Ampere, it only started to saturate the market until this year when crypto started to drop, which is probably when Google knew that Stadia was done for. I posted the rumor about it being shut down back in July, so Google knew.
Meanwhile, Stadia was charging gamers to play games they already owned on hardware running at 1/4 the speed of what they already owned. At zero latency, Stadia was destined for failure.

Happy to see you disagree with yourself but still agree with me.
You haven't mentioned pricing until now. Stadia's main appeal was the need to not buy expensive hardware. The problem was that Stadia was appealing to those who didn't have money... by making them pay more money. While a wireless gamepad was a neat idea to reduce latency, it really didn't work. Especially because anyone who wants to reduce latency knows not to use wifi, but a hard wire. Chromecast devices were not ideal to reduce latency, as Gamers Nexus did test them and they were the worst when it came to input lag. Stadia needed Chrome devices to work, and only certain Android phones were able to even use it. Add to it that Stadia was not keeping up with new game releases on consoles and PC, and the Vega 56's they used to power them were already outdated compared to the PS5, as well as compared to AMD's RDNA and Nvidia's Turing. Not hard to see why Stadia's appeal was quickly lost.
 
Not sure what you mean but my recollection is that for the past 2 years the PS5 was scalped for over $1k, making it hard for people to purchase them. Graphic cards were also priced well over $1k, meaning people were stuck using older cheaper GPU's. If Stadia was the least path of resistance to playing games then it should have been successful. As for Ampere, it only started to saturate the market until this year when crypto started to drop, which is probably when Google knew that Stadia was done for. I posted the rumor about it being shut down back in July, so Google knew.
Scalping doesn't mean zero people were unable to buy consoles at reasonable prices. I pre-ordered a PS5 at MSRP and got it on launch day, and retailers have periodically released batches at regular pricing (or at worst, with bundles). Besides, scalping has occurred with previous console generations as well; it might have been more acute due to pandemic supply chain issues, but it's not a novelty.

I don't think dropping prices for RTX 30 cards had much to do with Stadia's failure. It was simply that people didn't like the technology or business model (even the free Stadia tier still required that you buy games tied to the service). They might not have even realized Stadia existed. Google today acts somewhat like Microsoft did in the Ballmer era, where it's convinced its brand name is enough to guarantee success — but the truth is that gaming is a well-established market where it's very difficult for even a household name to break through.
 
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Scalping doesn't mean zero people were unable to buy consoles at reasonable prices. I pre-ordered a PS5 at MSRP and got it on launch day, and retailers have periodically released batches at regular pricing (or at worst, with bundles). Besides, scalping has occurred with previous console generations as well; it might have been more acute due to pandemic supply chain issues, but it's not a novelty.
My point wasn't that people couldn't get PS5's, but which is the path of least resistance. If Stadia was easier and better then it should have won. It clearly didn't.
I don't think dropping prices for RTX 30 cards had much to do with Stadia's failure. It was simply that people didn't like the technology or business model (even the free Stadia tier still required that you buy games tied to the service). They might not have even realized Stadia existed. Google today acts somewhat like Microsoft did in the Ballmer era, where it's convinced its brand name is enough to guarantee success — but the truth is that gaming is a well-established market where it's very difficult for even a household name to break through.
I didn't say that GPU's are what killed Stadia, but by the time GPU prices became less stupid, Google knew Stadia didn't have a chance. Stadia definitely wasn't marketed. It also isn't just Google having trouble turning a profit as I've heard nothing about PS Now and Geforce Now. Cloud gaming is generally a failed business model.
 
I bought $20 worth of games through the Stadia app from Google Reward points on my old moto g7

You think I might get $20 back somehow? Let's find out.

I just got this email Imma be stuck with points again when I have an iPhone now that's why I bought the Stadia games to begin with lol I would have rathered a gift card :(

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I wonder if they're gonna refund the various stadia bundles I bought over the years to get "free" Chromecasts. I think I bought 3 of em, and the chromecasts are still in use.
 
The Chromecasts are a dead platform now as well? I mean the separate hardware dongles as I think the software is still alive in receivers and TVs and probably other "Smart devices"?
I still use em, the fact that I spent <$20 each (cause of stadia) is part of why. Great for secondary screens that i don't want to get a whole OS for, like the screen in my kitchen that I mostly use for background youtube while I cook and such.
 
The Chromecasts are a dead platform now as well? I mean the separate hardware dongles as I think the software is still alive in receivers and TVs and probably other "Smart devices"?
Could be the case (has smarttv are being quite the norm by now) but they just released a new one this september ?

In September 2022, the Chromecast with Google TV (HD) was released. It is a 1080p version of the Chromecast with Google TV (4K), and is the successor to the third-generation Chromecast.[40]

The fact it was a 1080p device could be a sign that it is for older tv market.
 
Because they didn't want to create a product; they wanted to create a revenue stream.
Google doesn't care about products, it just cares if it's shareholders are happy.

I watched a couple livestreams of the shutdown last night, there was a google engineer in one of the chats (this dumb beta cuck kid streamer doing a stream) doing the actual decommissions, looked him up and he's actually a pretty big deal at google, here's his website: https://danrl.com/.

was cool to witness live, first time I've seen a service from a company this big in this big of a market get shutdown
 
How any company can go all in on cloud gaming when most people have like sub 5Mbps internet is beyond me.

Well Nvidia capitalized on this news to kill local GameStream and go Geforce Now only

So, that's one way how...

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I gotta say, across tech as a whole, I'm eager to see what this economic downturn does and what/who gets cut/goes by the wayside - and then eventually what might come out of leaner/better situations/what directions things take once the turnaround occurs

Also semi-inline with this and the post:

https://www.mmobomb.com/news/amazon...s-contributing-to-thousands-already-this-year

Amazon Games Lays Off About 100 Employees, Contributing To The Thousands Already This Year Amazon Wide​

 
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How any company can go all in on cloud gaming when most people have like sub 5Mbps internet is beyond me.

I remember thinking similar with streaming TV over 20 years ago and that people (including myself) would never give up their physical media but after Netflix and STEAM I try to keep an open mind when it comes to new tech.
 
How any company can go all in on cloud gaming when most people have like sub 5Mbps internet is beyond me.
As a reminder, it isn't bandwidth that's the main problem with game streaming. Game streaming is not the same as Netflix or Disney+, in that bandwidth is all that matters. Lots of people have good enough internet to make this work, the problem is even if you do have good enough internet, it still sucks. There's is always input lag and worse image quality. So is that worth it for someone to jump into the cloud? The world has answered no.

I remember thinking similar with streaming TV over 20 years ago and that people (including myself) would never give up their physical media but after Netflix and STEAM I try to keep an open mind when it comes to new tech.
Netflix you don't own anything, but Steam you do. 20 years ago I gave up on DVD's and ignored Blu-Ray for DIVX as the future. That hasn't changed much for me, other than the codec of course. With the way video streaming has gone, I foresee a lot more Plex users.
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