Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

[DukenukemX]

You mean you don’t like the idea of paying a monthly subscription to use your car’s seat heaters? BMW told me otherwise…

Don't you all have money?

 

[TheSlySyl]

Well, at least I got a couple really cheap 4k chromecasts before Stadia shut down. lol.

 

[Flogger23m]

When it comes to Stadia itself, I say good riddance. Streaming games is just awful and I don't want it to ever catch on.

 

[ZodaEX]

When it comes to Stadia itself, I say good riddance. Streaming games is just awful and I don't want it to ever catch on.

Actually it works great for turn based RPGs.

 

[Armenius]

https://nitter.it/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656

 

[staknhalo]

 

[Dan_D]

I think services like this will unfortunately be the future. However, technologically we aren't quite to a point where such services can match the experience of playing these games on your own hardware.

 

[staknhalo]

I think services like this will unfortunately be the future. However, technologically we aren't quite to a point where such services can match the experience of playing these games on your own hardware.

But they'll have to be running on hardware somewhere, giving a sliver of hope to diy

 

[SamuelL421]

But they'll have to be running on hardware somewhere, giving a sliver of hope to diy

This just made me envision a scenario where screwed-over users would be emulating a node of stadia in order to access their old games (assuming the service become defunct). Dystopian stuff right there.

I think services like this will unfortunately be the future. However, technologically we aren't quite to a point where such services can match the experience of playing these games on your own hardware.

I'd like to argue that it would never happen and subscription fatigue is real, but I have to agree with you. I think it doesn't have to do with price or quality either. Game streaming will someday take over due to convenience - there's a majority of people who will always gravitate to the easiest and/or laziest option.

 

[staknhalo]

It also might be power requirements that necessitate it

 

[ElementDave]

Dystopian stuff right there.

Dystopian? Meet Ubisoft+ on Stadia for a double dose of dystopia. 🤮

 

[Armenius]

I'd like to argue that it would never happen and subscription fatigue is real, but I have to agree with you. I think it doesn't have to do with price or quality either. Game streaming will someday take over due to convenience - there's a majority of people who will always gravitate to the easiest and/or laziest option.

Soon we're going to have the same service issue that movie and TV streaming has been having, and then the industry is going to scratch their heads wondering why piracy is on the rise again. People don't want to subscribe to half a dozen services just to consume the content they want. Gaming right now has a good thing going with Game Pass. An agnostic service would be better, but the games they offer for the price is unmatched in the current market. On PC, at least, I don't see subscriptions really catching on so long as Steam continues to operate.

 

[Sycraft]

According to Linus Tech Tips, Stadia had pretty good image quality and input lag.

Pretty good quality but not amazing. They sold it like it would be amazing. If you want some in depth technical reviews, Digital Foundry did a few good ones. Net result is like I said: About the same quality as an Xbox One X. Now that's not bad, at all, but it is hardly high end gaming PC. That was, at the time these were done, a $300-400 console. That is competing with a much lower price point and thus something people already have and which, by definition, will always have lower input lag.

 

[vegeta535]

Soon we're going to have the same service issue that movie and TV streaming has been having, and then the industry is going to scratch their heads wondering why piracy is on the rise again. People don't want to subscribe to half a dozen services just to consume the content they want. Gaming right now has a good thing going with Game Pass. An agnostic service would be better, but the games they offer for the price is unmatched in the current market. On PC, at least, I don't see subscriptions really catching on so long as Steam continues to operate.

Who is to say Valve won't get on it at some day. If anyone has the resources to pull it off it is them.

 

[staknhalo]

Soon we're going to have the same service issue that movie and TV streaming has been having, and then the industry is going to scratch their heads wondering why piracy is on the rise again. People don't want to subscribe to half a dozen services just to consume the content they want. Gaming right now has a good thing going with Game Pass. An agnostic service would be better, but the games they offer for the price is unmatched in the current market. On PC, at least, I don't see subscriptions really catching on so long as Steam continues to operate.

Game update(s) model made piracy of games a pita imo

Security through incompetence 👌

 

[DukenukemX]

I think services like this will unfortunately be the future. However, technologically we aren't quite to a point where such services can match the experience of playing these games on your own hardware.

You won't see technology progress to the point that it'll get better. To fix latency issues you need more servers all over the world. This sounds very expensive, and something that won't be done successfully. If you live in NYC and California then you're lucky because you're in key locations for these servers to exist. If you live in NJ or Nevada then good news you're close enough that you won't notice a huge difference. If you live in Kansas or Wyoming then bad news, nobody cares because hardly anyone lives there to justify putting severs so you can play games. If you live outside of North American and Europe... fuck you, you'll take the 300ms latency and love it.

Latency is a distance issue, not a technology issue. You just need more servers closer to where you live to make it work. The problem is when you usually get home to log in and play Elden Ring, so are thousands of people who live near you.

I'd like to argue that it would never happen and subscription fatigue is real, but I have to agree with you. I think it doesn't have to do with price or quality either. Game streaming will someday take over due to convenience - there's a majority of people who will always gravitate to the easiest and/or laziest option.

It's a price and quality issue. Cloud Gaming is currently less convenient because each service has it's own issues. Sony's PSNow sucks for mouse and keyboard and crashes often on PC. Geforce Now will only let you play games that is approved. Stadia requires Chrome or Chrome based devices, as it won't work with web browsers like FireFox or even Chromium. As for performance, PS Now is the worst, with Geforce Now as the best. Still worse than playing it local.

Pricing is an issue as these services aren't getting cheaper. PS Now is only $10 per month, but it cost $15 if you want to play on Android. Yes mobile phone play is more. Geforce Now is $10 per month for 1080P, you know something every crap PC can do. Stadia is $10 per month for 4k... 30fps, and you need to buy the game from them. You can't buy Elden Ring for Stadia as it's not offered, and there's an online petition to bring it.

My Lenovo laptop with a Ryzen 4600U with Vega graphics can play all the games just fine at 1080P. You don't need an expensive computer.

 

[Flogger23m]

I'd like to argue that it would never happen and subscription fatigue is real, but I have to agree with you. I think it doesn't have to do with price or quality either. Game streaming will someday take over due to convenience - there's a majority of people who will always gravitate to the easiest and/or laziest option.

Subscriptions will likely be more costly than buying games. If you're paying $360-400 a year to play games, you're really not much better off. $420 will buy you 6 full priced $70 games (seems to be the new AAA price going forward). But if you get from third parties and get stuff on sale, you can get more games. Also, you keep them forever. To continue playing with subscriptions that means another $360-400 a year.

Maybe you'll get some extra DLCs and whatnot and you'll get them all sooner but that isn't much of an advantage. I assume the streaming services will become confusing, like having different tiers that entitle you to some DLC and higher end ones that give you all of it.

The $1 Game Pass deals (not streaming) are okay now for what they offer, but the reason they're so cheap now is to get people in the door. Once it catches on it won't be that cheap, you'll be lucky if it is $100 a year.

 

[DPI]

Random idiot tweets GoOgle StAdIa ShuTTinG DoWN, I heard it ...

and this is news somehow.

 

[LukeTbk]

Was the rumors only an jpeg of an 100% anonymous message on an anonymous twitter account or there was more than that ?

 

[Aurelius]

Nobody has been asking for this. It's being pushed on the market by corporations that want to sell everything as a "service".

Pardon the extra-late reply. I think you misinterpreted what I said. That future vision wouldn't necessarily be like the services we see today. I'm just talking about the concept of playing your games on every device you own using streaming, however we get there.

With that said: if the future does involve subscriptions, I could see them working if they provide better value. Think Xbox Game Pass or PS Plus Premium, but a considerably larger library. Streaming music eventually overtook downloads simply because the catalog and convenience became much stronger. It's certainly not guaranteed to pan out that way, but if you'd asked someone in 2010 if streaming music would dominate, you would have probably seen far fewer people saying "yes."

 

[Darunion]

Pardon the extra-late reply. I think you misinterpreted what I said. That future vision wouldn't necessarily be like the services we see today. I'm just talking about the concept of playing your games on every device you own using streaming, however we get there.

With that said: if the future does involve subscriptions, I could see them working if they provide better value. Think Xbox Game Pass or PS Plus Premium, but a considerably larger library. Streaming music eventually overtook downloads simply because the catalog and convenience became much stronger. It's certainly not guaranteed to pan out that way, but if you'd asked someone in 2010 if streaming music would dominate, you would have probably seen far fewer people saying "yes."

Man, i do remember my first touch of it with pandora, was really cool having that much music at my fingertips. That said i did just buy a turntable and some vinyls, kinda nice to just sit and listen to music and not change songs 30secs in. really helps the ADD in me haha.

Music streaming wasnt too much of a stretch though considering open air radio. Dealer still keeps trying to get me to pay for sirius though, still cant find value in that one for me. Like cmon i have a phone and can play any song i want for less per month

i could probably see liking that game pass type system when i was younger and played more games and more of them when they released, but nowadays i buy maybe 2 games a year.

 

[Aurelius]

Man, i do remember my first touch of it with pandora, was really cool having that much music at my fingertips. That said i did just buy a turntable and some vinyls, kinda nice to just sit and listen to music and not change songs 30secs in. really helps the ADD in me haha.

Music streaming wasnt too much of a stretch though considering open air radio. Dealer still keeps trying to get me to pay for sirius though, still cant find value in that one for me. Like cmon i have a phone and can play any song i want for less per month

i could probably see liking that game pass type system when i was younger and played more games and more of them when they released, but nowadays i buy maybe 2 games a year.

I still tend to listen to albums in full when they arrive, but then I also listen to a lot of singles (I'm an electronic music fan) and am not averse to playlists. I do appreciate how vinyl can make you appreciate an album more, mind you!

I agree that game streaming subscriptions are different beasts than music or video. They make the most sense if you're a hardcore gamer who either wants a steady flow of new titles or frequently finds yourself wanting to play away from your console or PC. That's great if you're a twenty-something whose biggest responsibility is a pet; it's not so hot if you're a parent who's thankful to find an hour or two of uninterrupted leisure time. I don't know that cloud gaming will take over in the way streaming media has, but it might be a more significant option than it has been.

 

[LukeTbk]

That's great if you're a twenty-something whose biggest responsibility is a pet; it's not so hot if you're a parent who's thankful to find an hour or two of uninterrupted leisure time.

I feel there is a possible price point for a bronze entry level that it would make even more sense for that parent (versus paying the same price for hardware and games without playing them much, versus just opening the Game Netflix on your smartv and play some of the popular among parents game on the front page and some custom to your previous one you enjoyed) or maybe more obviously if he can use his kids heavily game account to game when he want instead of having his own hardware/game separate to his kids game account.

I must be not the only one that if I add all my steams, GOG, epic bundle, epic, ubisoft, etc... store games I own, that has a very low hours average on them with many never installed and would have been better in a low price but DLC heavy model or a pay by hours streaming one.

 

[sleepeeg3]

Innovating company tend to have a long list of failure in their background.

Normally it's a short list (1), but when you have as much money as Google has to throw around, yes, they can throw alot of money into the failure fire.

 

[DPI]

Was the rumors only an jpeg of an 100% anonymous message on an anonymous twitter account or there was more than that ?

He swore on a stack of Wonder Woman comics.

The reality is the decision for something like shutting a google service down is nobody working in that department would know about it until the same day as the public.

 

[DukenukemX]

Random idiot tweets GoOgle StAdIa ShuTTinG DoWN, I heard it ...

and this is news somehow.

The thing is that nobody is shocked if Stadia goes under. Even if the rumor is faked, it's plausible. If I told you that Stadia was releasing a Linux service that allowed you to actually download the games, and that was a rumor, then most people wouldn't believe it.

 

[staknhalo]

If I told you Stadia wasn't going away, would you suddenly rush to spend all your money to buy the games that are still not on Stadia?

 

[Twisted Kidney]

I thought it had negative latency.

That kind of scientific break though should transform our entire species.

Does this mean it was all marketing wank?

 

[staknhalo]

I thought it had negative latency.

That kind of scientific break though should transform our entire species.

Does this mean it was all marketing wank?

they didn't market it as negative controller latency if that's what you're talking about - only almost native/reduced or whatever

but i thought that aspect was neat how they decided to do that (the controller had it's own dedicated connection back home instead of over the gamestream or something I forget really, something like that)

 

[DukenukemX]

I thought it had negative latency.

That kind of scientific break though should transform our entire species.

Does this mean it was all marketing wank?

Marketing wank but some of it has truth. If you've every played emulators you know of a feature called Runahead which basically tries to run the game a bit ahead of time in order to reduce latency. You can run it a few frames per second ahead of what's actually happening in the game to reduce latency. I imagine that's what Stadia meant with their "negative latency". The problem is the amount of CPU power needed to do this on a SNES emulator is extremely high. Now imagine doing this on a modern game like CyberPunk 2077 or Borderlands 3 where the game is already using a lot of CPU cycles just to run it. It just can't be done. So it's marketing wank because Google wanted to give people hope that their service will eventually get better. Think of it like Sega Genesis's blast processing which was a real feature but never actually utilized in a retail game due to the needed code mastery to make it actually work.

 

[LukeTbk]

Stadia negative latency technology would have inlcuded at some point predicting player input before they do them making the marketing salad not to out of place, if 2 frame of the world game always exist the normal one and a parrallel unshown in which the player just pressed an important and likely button that create fast consequence and that the stadia is able to locally show the other frame locally right away if it is actually pressed, calling that negative latency (even if it would still not be actual negative nor 0 latency) would maybe not be the worst term ever.

That said would cost a lot of a big game with an high quality stream, so the "one day" being an important variable here.

 

[Sycraft]

Stadia negative latency technology would have inlcuded at some point predicting player input before they do them making the marketing salad not to out of place, if 2 frame of the world game always exist the normal one and a parrallel unshown in which the player just pressed an important and likely button that create fast consequence and that the stadia is able to locally show the other frame locally right away if it is actually pressed, calling that negative latency (even if it would still not be actual negative nor 0 latency) would maybe not be the worst term ever.

That said would cost a lot of a big game with an high quality stream, so the "one day" being an important variable here.

That kind of thing would never work. Never mind the impossibility of running all the possibilities for input (with a simple 4 directional hat and 4 button pad you can have 192 possible input combinations and modern game pads have way more buttons, and multiple analogue inputs) at the same time, but then you'd have to stream all those frames, each adding to the amount of data you have to send. Not only is that a problem because now you eat a lot more bandwidth and require higher end connections, but paradoxically it also increases lag. Transmitting data takes time, how much depends on the amount of data and the speed of the link. So suppose you have a frame that is 1MB in size. If you have a gigabit link, that can do about 120MB/sec (real world is going to vary based on overhead) so it'll take you around 8.3ms to transmit that data from the time you start until the client has it all. That is on top of whatever latency there is in the link. So if it takes the client's request 10ms to get to you, then it takes 10ms for your response to get back, a 20ms ping, it'll take about 28ms in total before they have all 1MB of that frame. But now suppose you want to send 20 different frames for 20 different possibilities, all 1MB. That means you need to transfer 20MB total, which means that the end of the last frame won't get there for almost 190ms. If that's the frame that is needed, that's a ton of lag.

Now it is more complicated with real video compression, nor are frames going to be 1MB, but this gives you an idea of the issues and the fact that sending more frames doesn't necessarily mean less lag.

Render ahead can work on a local system because the frames are rendered and stored in RAM, then the one needed is copied to the screen as needed. It isn't going to work over a network link. That aside as noted this is something that requires a ton of CPU power when done emulating old systems. A modern game would need a massive cluster of computers to do it.

 

[M76]

Marketing wank but some of it has truth. If you've every played emulators you know of a feature called Runahead which basically tries to run the game a bit ahead of time in order to reduce latency. You can run it a few frames per second ahead of what's actually happening in the game to reduce latency. I imagine that's what Stadia meant with their "negative latency". The problem is the amount of CPU power needed to do this on a SNES emulator is extremely high. Now imagine doing this on a modern game like CyberPunk 2077 or Borderlands 3 where the game is already using a lot of CPU cycles just to run it. It just can't be done. So it's marketing wank because Google wanted to give people hope that their service will eventually get better. Think of it like Sega Genesis's blast processing which was a real feature but never actually utilized in a retail game due to the needed code mastery to make it actually work.

Wouldn't this make the lag worse? I mean if the game is ahead of what you see on screen, that is literally the definition of lag. So making the game run even farther ahead would only make it worse logically.

 

[schoolslave]

Time only moves in one direction - latency issues related to expected real-time input cannot be solved with what we know today.
Despite all their hubris, Google knows this too. As someone else mentioned, the only way to mitigate latency is local servers.

Cloud gaming is just another in the long list of rent-seeking bullshit.

 

[GoodBoy]

You guys do realize this is just a rumor right? "Yay streaming is dead!" I don't understand that attitude when it's just an option that probably works out for 'reasons' for some people. Doesn't have a damn thing to do with you.

Streaming has a long way to go before there are exclusive 'must-play' games that are on a streaming only platform.

I don't want it, doesn't mean I've got pitchfork in hand for someone who does, or for Google.

 

[socK]

I ping single digits to some locations and the latency is still enough to be annoying. God have mercy of you look at something with a lot of visual noise, like walking through foliage, because the compression shits itself. I found Assassin's Creed unplayable because of this. It looked absolutely fucking terrible in some areas.

I've given a few services a try a few times and it still isn't good. I'm pretty convinced it can't be.

The absolute best case I've come across was "vaguely tolerable" but never good.

 

[Aurelius]

You guys do realize this is just a rumor right? "Yay streaming is dead!" I don't understand that attitude when it's just an option that probably works out for 'reasons' for some people. Doesn't have a damn thing to do with you.

Streaming has a long way to go before there are exclusive 'must-play' games that are on a streaming only platform.

I don't want it, doesn't mean I've got pitchfork in hand for someone who does, or for Google.

Oh, definitely... and the rumor seems to have been debunked, too, even if Stadia clearly isn't what Google hoped it would be.

And I'm with you on the value of the service. I'm in no rush to sign up for Stadia or other cloud gaming services, but I'm not going to blast anyone who enjoys using them. I just think the technology and business models need a lot of work for game streaming to become truly mainstream. There are too many people on this forum who want to impose their tastes on everyone else, and it's important to remind them that it's okay for others to like something you don't.

 

[ChadD]

Where is the news here ? This rumor started the day it launched.

Streaming is still the future. Google was always doomed with the.. buy the game at full price setup. Sure you didn't need to buy hardware, however 95% of games these days will run on 8 year old hardware. So the value there is greatly reduced.

Once one of these guys figures out how the business side of building a Netflix for gaming steaming will disrupt digital distribution. Goggle never really delivered on the promise of higher end visuals for all even if your streaming to a tablet/tv.

I don't know considering how the video streaming industry is going... perhaps its a long way off. Getting all the players to pitch in on one service seems pretty much impossible. We are probably doomed to always have 5 different services wanting to be players and no one ever having more then 1/5 of potential titles. lol

 

[sharknice]

Time only moves in one direction - latency issues related to expected real-time input cannot be solved with what we know today.
Despite all their hubris, Google knows this too. As someone else mentioned, the only way to mitigate latency is local servers.

Cloud gaming is just another in the long list of rent-seeking bullshit.

I remember way back in like 2010 Onlive said they were going to get servers in every local ISP building. Which is funny because it minimizes the "advantages" of cloud gaming.

And no matter how close you move the servers, it's never going to be enough for the gamers that care about latency, image quality, and FPS. The only real advantage cloud gaming can provide to users over local hardware is cost and convinience. And they're even struggling with those.

 

[jfreund]

You guys do realize this is just a rumor right? "Yay streaming is dead!" I don't understand that attitude when it's just an option that probably works out for 'reasons' for some people. Doesn't have a damn thing to do with you.

Streaming has a long way to go before there are exclusive 'must-play' games that are on a streaming only platform.

I don't want it, doesn't mean I've got pitchfork in hand for someone who does, or for Google.

Oh, definitely... and the rumor seems to have been debunked, too, even if Stadia clearly isn't what Google hoped it would be.

And I'm with you on the value of the service. I'm in no rush to sign up for Stadia or other cloud gaming services, but I'm not going to blast anyone who enjoys using them. I just think the technology and business models need a lot of work for game streaming to become truly mainstream. There are too many people on this forum who want to impose their tastes on everyone else, and it's important to remind them that it's okay for others to like something you don't.

It was only a rumor this time, very unfortunately.

Kill it with fire. Streaming games is just another example of corporations pushing their agenda at the expense of consumers.

You will own nothing.