[Bloomberg] Google’s Stadia Problem? A Video Game Unit That’s Not Googley Enough
- Thread starter --R
- Start date
Ubisoft really loves moneyhats. they are doing the same to Epic
"Just to reiterate the absurdity of this thing: Sources say Google spent tens of millions of dollars -- the budgets of some major games -- PER Stadia port."
You know, Google more or less accidentally propping up half of the video game industry is one of the better outcomes this could have lol
Get paid, Capcom.
Get paid, Capcom.
"Googley"
They don't really have a fuckin identity
Unless you want the thing to hack into your brain and post ads in there
Or unless you want it to be the grim reaper for half finished projects that go nowhere
Or a youtuber with a dark past, who swears he is good, until his dark present is revealed
They don't really have a fuckin identity
Unless you want the thing to hack into your brain and post ads in there
Or unless you want it to be the grim reaper for half finished projects that go nowhere
Or a youtuber with a dark past, who swears he is good, until his dark present is revealed
I'm not sure what people think the alternative was.
Stadia had two key market opportunities:
The paying for ports thing is just what it is. Like with MS' acquisition of Bethesda, those are investments in your platform and not transactions that are necessarily going to make sense from a dollars-and-cents perspective when viewed in isolation. Stadia needed to build some semblance of a library with attractive, top-tier games. So they overpaid in order to create that library. I don't see it as guffaw-inducing as Jason / others seem to think it is.
Stadia had two key market opportunities:
- Games that were technically impossible elsewhere.
- Enabling non-gamers to selectively play AAA games without needing to go out and buy a console. (Think the older adult who hears the hype about GTA VI and would like it check it out but certainly isn't going to spend $400 on a new console plus the game.)
The paying for ports thing is just what it is. Like with MS' acquisition of Bethesda, those are investments in your platform and not transactions that are necessarily going to make sense from a dollars-and-cents perspective when viewed in isolation. Stadia needed to build some semblance of a library with attractive, top-tier games. So they overpaid in order to create that library. I don't see it as guffaw-inducing as Jason / others seem to think it is.
Tens of millions per Stadia port.
It should have been obvious from the beginning that this just wasn't sustainable.
Heh, what?
It should have been obvious from the beginning that this just wasn't sustainable.
Heh, what?
Cecilia D'Anastasio article on Stadia's studio
The Quibi of gaming.
(I think the angle of the article is wrong. Clearly disgruntled engineers are framing that it would have been better to launch slow, but that would have also failed. The problem is still that it was too Googly - a dash of not invented here to make porting harder than it should have been, plus launching in a completely half finished state instead of pushing it back a year, plus a total lack of buy in from the other business units.)
(I think the angle of the article is wrong. Clearly disgruntled engineers are framing that it would have been better to launch slow, but that would have also failed. The problem is still that it was too Googly - a dash of not invented here to make porting harder than it should have been, plus launching in a completely half finished state instead of pushing it back a year, plus a total lack of buy in from the other business units.)
There was also the opportunity to not turn it into a competing platform, but to sell it as a cloud service to game publishers and others. Because the tech works well.
PS5 probably sold more on its first day than Stadia has in its lifetime based on this article.
Stadia being built on Linux and Vulkan was the least of its problems, assuming it even was one. Were Stadia to grow going with Linux would allow them to scale much faster than using Windows.
I feel the biggest thing about Stadia is that it died as a result of Google having the image of Google on top of having a completely fumbled launch as mentioned in the article.
Google has garnered a reputation in recent years for killing off product lines way to soon and without thought, which very obviously made people question just how long Stadia would really last as a platform. So many people just kind of brushed off Stadia and just assumed (so far it seems rightfully) that it would be shuttered in a few years. Then the launch of the system comes around and it's the antithesis of what Stadia is about, being tied to the $130 bundle and the app itself having limited availability, as well as no free tier either, meaning you had to pay monthly to access the games on top of paying to buy games. Not to mention that there were just a whole slew of issues software side and it wasn't great.
Then the games available were all just late ports of games that were very over priced compared to the console and PC versions, and the games that did launch day and date had marketing issues and were far and few between (Google promised RDR2 would be 4k60, when it was in fact neither 4k nor 60fps) and all throughout 2020 and 2021 it's just been more delayed ports and a limited selection of new games.
I wouldn't be so sure about that honestly. The issue with Stadia is that it fumbled the marketing. When it launched, there was no "free tier" of Stadia meaning that on top of having to pay full price for years old games or new games that don't run as well as the consoles (in the case of RDR2) customers also needed to pay a monthly fee (I think it's $10) and the service was also only available as part of the $130 Chromecast bundle, the PC web-app and Google Pixel phones at launch. And even now with the free tier available and the fact that the service is more available, Google hasn't done enough marketing to really advertise that fact (and they didn't in April when those things were fixed to an extent) and even now in 2021, Stadia isn't getting the majority of big casual games day and date with the consoles and PC, so people are just unwilling to buy in.
Top the poor marketing and lack of games with the fact that it's a modern Google product and people realize that Google kills everything and doesn't honor consumer money, I feel it wasn't just the business model that did Stadia in, it was a whole mix of issues
Google has garnered a reputation in recent years for killing off product lines way to soon and without thought, which very obviously made people question just how long Stadia would really last as a platform. So many people just kind of brushed off Stadia and just assumed (so far it seems rightfully) that it would be shuttered in a few years. Then the launch of the system comes around and it's the antithesis of what Stadia is about, being tied to the $130 bundle and the app itself having limited availability, as well as no free tier either, meaning you had to pay monthly to access the games on top of paying to buy games. Not to mention that there were just a whole slew of issues software side and it wasn't great.
Then the games available were all just late ports of games that were very over priced compared to the console and PC versions, and the games that did launch day and date had marketing issues and were far and few between (Google promised RDR2 would be 4k60, when it was in fact neither 4k nor 60fps) and all throughout 2020 and 2021 it's just been more delayed ports and a limited selection of new games.
I wouldn't be so sure about that honestly. The issue with Stadia is that it fumbled the marketing. When it launched, there was no "free tier" of Stadia meaning that on top of having to pay full price for years old games or new games that don't run as well as the consoles (in the case of RDR2) customers also needed to pay a monthly fee (I think it's $10) and the service was also only available as part of the $130 Chromecast bundle, the PC web-app and Google Pixel phones at launch. And even now with the free tier available and the fact that the service is more available, Google hasn't done enough marketing to really advertise that fact (and they didn't in April when those things were fixed to an extent) and even now in 2021, Stadia isn't getting the majority of big casual games day and date with the consoles and PC, so people are just unwilling to buy in.
Top the poor marketing and lack of games with the fact that it's a modern Google product and people realize that Google kills everything and doesn't honor consumer money, I feel it wasn't just the business model that did Stadia in, it was a whole mix of issues
A good publisher would pay these third parties to make exclusives, but google wanted to do everything fast which gave publishers no other option but to port things.
I don't get why they needed to rush this. Ok, MS has been gearing up for streaming for a while but now Google are basically dead to never return.
I don't get why they needed to rush this. Ok, MS has been gearing up for streaming for a while but now Google are basically dead to never return.
I'm a huge fan of Stadia and the idea of cloud gaming in general. I have a hard time believing that their expectations were so far out of line with the reality of how this went given their fuck-ups at every turn. I believed they were in this for the long term and were comfortable with the losses it would take to dig into the industry. Even getting a small share of the gaming market could eventually prove to be very profitable. They need better market research folks.
This definitely seems to be where they're heading.
He might, since the current head of Luna just left that job.
This definitely seems to be where they're heading.
This would have actually been a good idea, but they did not do that! To play Stadia on a TV, you must buy a Chromecast Ultra and a Stadia Controller. There is no other smart TV way to play on the Stadia platform. You can't even use other Chromecast models, what the fuck?
I have an LG OLED TV and an Nvidia Shield TV. The latter one actually runs Android TV (Google's own platform!!!!!) and I can't play Stadia on either. Where the fuck are the apps?
I still can't believe this photo.God...20 milions per port, what the fuck am I reading?! This picture was really the most self aware thing about Stadia.
What does this even mean? PS5 is a 500+ dollar investment. Stadia is the cost of the game and a 60.00 controller.
Google?
Google is a great place to work, not sure what you're referring to. Probably one of the most desirable employers in the world.
Good read and great article. I'm curious how a square peg of a visual artist could fit into the round hole of Google employee metrics.
God...20 milions per port, what the fuck am I reading?! This picture was really the most self aware thing about Stadia.
Wait, what is the context for that photo???
That's what they're pivoting to. But honestly, I feel like they're only doing so because the initial development is already a sunk cost. If it wasn't, I'm not sure the economics of running it as that type of business would have worked out.
I think they experimented with whether that was the bottleneck when they gave away the Chromecast Ultra + Controller free with each copy of Cyberpunk. I think when that didn't immediately sell out (and was even available a week after the Cyberpunk release) they realized "fuck, if we can't even give away this hardware then people really don't see our platform as a good value."
And they weren't wrong.
I had never seen this before. That's an incredible self-burn.God...20 milions per port, what the fuck am I reading?! This picture was really the most self aware thing about Stadia.
I was bullish on Stadia. I really liked the idea. I was willing to entertain a mild monthly service fee for the promise of a large library of new PC games without having to build a PC gaming PC. Infact, this is *exactly what I want.* I own a Mac, I'm not going to buy a new PC anytime soon or ever, and I can't be bothered to keep up with the spec updates of a new gaming PC. I used to be an avid PC builder, but I'm not anymore and won't be unless I have a kid who wants to build PCs.
So Stadia seemed *perfect* for me. I have a ~400gb internet, unlimited data, and really nice display tech (4K TV, MacBook Pro, UHD phone, tablets, etc). I was really interested in a service that I could quickly check out brand new PC games without needing to buy a PC. I don't care -- and don't want -- exclusives. I wanted this service to play PC games, I don't care whether they're Steam or Stadia games, I just wanted it to play new PC games.
And...
Stadia didn't deliver that. I eventually signed up for a free month through some promotion like 9mos later. And there were no new games. It felt like how the Mac Steam store feels, when you login and you see "NEW GAMES!" on the store and it's... Borderlands 2, Bridge Builder puzzle game, Portal 2, and some other shit that came out 5 years ago on other platforms that I already own.
And then, on top of that, the other hook: Get super high quality games without a super expensive PC, never delivered. Red Dead 2 came out on it and it was worse performance and graphics than the Xbox One X version of the game. I was legit thinking that it'd be like ultra graphics settings, 60fps, or something, and I thought like .. "wow if this has cross-progression through the Rockstar Social Club then I'll *definitely* get Stadia for it." And it came out and ... it was, what, like 1080p, with tons of compression artifacts, and quality settings seemed to be pegged at "Lastgen consoles ..... but worse." RDR2 on Xbox One X was 4K and ran near enough to a consistent 30fps, and looked freakin amazing. The whole promise of stadia for me, 4K 60fps ultra high quality games without spending $2500 on a new PC, was dashed. Combined with the terrible game library of old games I just didn't *get it* and ultimately cancelled my sub before getting billed, didn't buy anything for it.
Gonna need to see the receipts on this one
So Stadia seemed *perfect* for me. I have a ~400gb internet, unlimited data, and really nice display tech (4K TV, MacBook Pro, UHD phone, tablets, etc). I was really interested in a service that I could quickly check out brand new PC games without needing to buy a PC. I don't care -- and don't want -- exclusives. I wanted this service to play PC games, I don't care whether they're Steam or Stadia games, I just wanted it to play new PC games.
And...
Stadia didn't deliver that. I eventually signed up for a free month through some promotion like 9mos later. And there were no new games. It felt like how the Mac Steam store feels, when you login and you see "NEW GAMES!" on the store and it's... Borderlands 2, Bridge Builder puzzle game, Portal 2, and some other shit that came out 5 years ago on other platforms that I already own.
And then, on top of that, the other hook: Get super high quality games without a super expensive PC, never delivered. Red Dead 2 came out on it and it was worse performance and graphics than the Xbox One X version of the game. I was legit thinking that it'd be like ultra graphics settings, 60fps, or something, and I thought like .. "wow if this has cross-progression through the Rockstar Social Club then I'll *definitely* get Stadia for it." And it came out and ... it was, what, like 1080p, with tons of compression artifacts, and quality settings seemed to be pegged at "Lastgen consoles ..... but worse." RDR2 on Xbox One X was 4K and ran near enough to a consistent 30fps, and looked freakin amazing. The whole promise of stadia for me, 4K 60fps ultra high quality games without spending $2500 on a new PC, was dashed. Combined with the terrible game library of old games I just didn't *get it* and ultimately cancelled my sub before getting billed, didn't buy anything for it.
Gonna need to see the receipts on this one
OK, I'm sorry. I was wrong. Please stop blowing up my alerts.
Last edited:
I am referring to Google shutting down services left and right. How many people on Era said what will happen when service was announced?
Google is a FAANG so I can see how they got caught up in the allure but Google doesn't know anything about video games.Google?
Ah, that's true. I was thinking there was no way it could be real anyways. Lol.
It looks terrible in retrospect and it's hilarious. The context at the time though was that Google set up a pop-up "Gaming History Museum" prior to their announcement that they were getting into gaming, and every part of the exhibit would show some aspect of videogaming history, and then adjacent to each aspect would be "Coming Soon" at the end of it with a blank pedestal implying a cloud future (Stadia). This photo is a pretty hard self own but they also had the same thing with NES, N64, PS2, PacMan, etc in other areas of the pop-up museum.
(edit, oh I didn't know the ET thing was a photoshop, I actually thought they had it in that popup museum)
*Edit*
Yes that's *NOT* a photoshop:
Google Pop-Up Museum Teases New Logo, Possible Gaming Hardware
Google's unveiling of its take on the future of gaming will kick-off the second day of the annual Game Developers Conference, and will include hands-on time with some of the tech unveiled at the event, Variety has learned.
variety.com
The ET, Dreamcast, etc thing was real, it was part of this popup museum they did. While ET, Dreamcast, etc were failures, they are part of gaming history.
I think that part of the article is somewhat ambiguously phrased. It says Stadia's launch "library of games was small and mostly old, with none of Google's exclusives available yet" - I guess that when it says "Google's exclusives", it means "exclusives developed by Google", which Gylt wasn't.
Probably for most big publishers, yes. I guess it was overall profitable for any smaller team whose game got picked as one of the Stadia Pro games as well.
Whenever the industry gets around to putting significant resources into "only possible through cloud"-type games, there's probably going to be an initial slew of games that have concepts that sound unappealing (and which have a high chance of not working out). Without a model to follow, there'll be mistakes, and this game, if it had released, seems like it had a high chance of being one of them.
You are misremembering. Although you could play Stadia in a browser with a Bluetooth controller from day 1, to do that, you had to be a Stadia subscriber, and to be a Stadia subscriber, you had to purchase a pack. For anyone who didn't purchase a pack, on day one, Stadia was inaccessible. It was inaccessible even to some people who did purchase a pack as Google took a while to send out codes.
Amazon probably aren't paying anything like the same amounts for Luna ports, since Luna uses virtualised Windows instances, so developers just have to submit a build of the game that works on Windows. Stadia, with its custom hardware, required Stadia-specific ports, hence Google having to incentivise publishers to make those ports happen.
Stadia is still getting new games, but it's not clear what effect Google's closure of their own development teams will have yet since there hasn't been enough time for any effects to filter down to development (and some of that development is almost certainly still work that Google has paid to make happen).
Slightly strange of Schreier to present that as an either/or situation. Google could have been funding both bigger publishers and smaller developers at the same time, if they were really committed to Stadia. It's not like the system didn't need games like Assassin's Creed and The Division 2 - it's not enough just to have those games (as Google found out) but it is still necessary to have them.
Why would you spend 10's of millions of dollars to get Red Dead 2 unless it was exclusive? The game was already out on every platform. Same goes for Ubisoft titles. Then on top of that you don't even have games of your own besides one title?
No wonder it failed.
So it was never, "Developers saw the power of THE CLOUD and bought in." It was Google overpaying publishers to such a degree that yes, of course we'll put the game on your ass-backwards service because you're literally giving us free money."