Google kills off Stadia
- Reference: 1664478381
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/09/29/google_shuts_down_stadia/
- Source link:
"[W]hile Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service," explained Phil Harrison, VP and general manager of Stadia, in an [1]announcement .
Stadia's demise isn't exactly a shock. In July, a concerned individual, evidently sensing all was not well, [2]asked via Twitter whether a shutdown is imminent. The game service responded, " [3]Stadia is not shutting down ."
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Another hint of trouble surfaced in February, 2021, when Google [5]disbanded its in-house development team for creating Stadia games.
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That was about when we had predicted [8]Google would discontinue Stadia – we gave it two years to live from its March 2019 launch. We regret the off-by-one error.
[9]Warning: Colleagues are unusually likely to 'break' their monitors soon
[10]Terraria dev cancels Stadia port after Google disabled his email account for three weeks
[11]Why make games for Linux if they don't sell? Because the nerds are just grateful to get something that works
[12]Big Tech is building the metaverse of its own dreams. You don't want to go there
If Google keeps this up, it will never be able to shake off its reputation for being too willing to [13]throw its products under the bus. That its executives and managers are incentivized to launch products, and not so much for maintaining them, generally speaking, fuels this whole situation.
Google is just infamous as a serial killer of products. As Matt Rickard, a former Google software engineer, [14]observed last month, "Google's reputation for discontinuing products is unmatched."
He gives Google an out by noting that Google experiments a lot, which naturally leads to failures. But he goes on to acknowledge, "Google can't shake this meme, and it's starting to do real damage to users and the Google brand." It seems the meme follows from behavior.
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Google's demolition of Stadia leaves the US cloud-based game streaming market to [16]Amazon Luna , [17]Microsoft Xbox Cloud Gaming , [18]Nvidia GeForce Now , [19]PlayStation Plus , and some lesser known names. Netflix is said to be considering whether to join the fray. Apple, which operates on-device, cloud-coordinated Apple Arcade, is also [20]said to be pondering a cloud gaming service.
At least Stadia users – let's gamble that this should be plural – can console themselves with the fact that Google is offering refunds.
Expressing gratitude for those Stadia players who have been with the service since its launch, Harrison said, "We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store."
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Refunds for Google hardware purchases – Stadia Controller, Founders Edition, Premiere Edition, and Play and Watch with Google TV packages – will not require returning the hardware.
To be clear, Google doesn't want the bother or expense of trashing your Stadia e-waste so don't send it back. Further details for the refund process, expected to be mostly complete by mid-January, 2023, will be posted on [22]this support page in the weeks ahead, Google says.
Stadia aficionados will be able to access their game library through January 18, 2023. After that, not so much.
Harrison's post also alludes to layoffs on the Stadia team: "Many of the Stadia team members will be carrying this work forward in other parts of the company."
We've asked Google to confirm what's to become of those not numbered among the "many" and to put a number on those departing. We've not heard back. ®
Get our [23]Tech Resources
[1] https://blog.google/products/stadia/message-on-stadia-streaming-strategy/
[2] https://twitter.com/BlueFireDemon44/status/1552984411519451137
[3] https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YzYVe8MZ2lv7-5NLPvRKewAAAMY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://blog.google/products/stadia/focusing-on-stadias-future-as-a-platform-and-winding-down-sge/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YzYVe8MZ2lv7-5NLPvRKewAAAMY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YzYVe8MZ2lv7-5NLPvRKewAAAMY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/19/google_stadia_games_streams/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/10/microsoft_samsung_game_streaming/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/08/terraria_developer_cancels_stadia_port/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/26/linux_game_development_scene/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/22/metaverse_opinion_vr/
[13] https://killedbygoogle.com/
[14] https://matt-rickard.com/why-does-google-kill-so-many-products
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YzYVe8MZ2lv7-5NLPvRKewAAAMY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://www.amazon.com/luna/landing-page
[17] https://www.xbox.com/en-US/cloud-gaming
[18] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/
[19] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/ps-plus/
[20] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/10/17/apple-considered-making-a-cloud-gaming-service-alongside-apple-arcade
[21] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YzYVe8MZ2lv7-5NLPvRKewAAAMY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[22] https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/12790109
[23] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Failed because failure was expected?
Count me as a person that never looked at it because of Google's reputation. I expected it to have a hostile privacy policy, ads, heavy restrictions on developers, and a brief lifespan.
Re: Failed because failure was expected?
Google and Phil Harrison. What could have possibly gone right?
Solution to a problem nobody had?
The whole proposition for this never seemed to rise above "Because CLOUD".
Who were these imaginary gamers that desperately wanted to steam their games off of remote servers. Google made a solid effort at making the tech work, but it always seemed like an academic effort.
Xbox and Playstation make this work by essentially using tethered downloads. The game pretty much runs locally. So looking at Stadia, you have a tiny player population that is slow and expensive to grow. You have layer on layer of extra complexity that Devs have to wrangle to get a game to play well, and the result of all that hard work is an expensive port of a game that works almost as well as the installed version that will outsell it 10000:1.
And if it took off, you have to contend with a large and voracious gatekeeper that can take whatever cut of the profits it wants, and leave the studio holding the bag for all the expense and risk.
The question is why the canceled it, it's why anyone thought they should LAUNCH it.
Well.....
Say what you want, but refunding everything is a brilliant move and how it should be done.
Re: Well.....
It is, it's above and beyond really, Google lost tons of money on Stadia by doing that. Wonder if people can export their save game data to use elsewhere?
This may come back to bite Google eventually
Not the axing of Stadia, specifically, but the general reputation of shutting down services whenever they feel like it. I for one sure as hell won't recommend Google services for customer projects anymore, unless I am absolutely certain they'll be online only for a couple of months, maybe a year at most.
Re: This may come back to bite Google eventually
I recall MS, when they first ventured into gaming, were generally pretty much dismissed, and spent a long time not making money on that business sector. But, give them their due, they stuck at it and, well, the profits do the talking.
And Nintendo, the serial every-other-oners. They've stuck to it too, through the lean years, make up for it in the good years. The Wii was, for its day, a total masterpiece, and really showed what you could do with really pretty modest hardware.
Google just don't seem to stick with it. Stadia will barely make it past 3 years old. Pretty sure that it took a lot longer for MS to get good results from their games division.
Re: This may come back to bite Google eventually
Say what you will about MS, they can and frequently do gnaw at a bone until it works. If anything that has been their strength. Surprisingly for an american megacorp, they play the long game.
The only Google services you should rely on
Search
Maps
Gmail
Play
Cloud
And of course their most important product by far, Adsense. Everything else could be chopped at a moment's notice. Especially anything to do with messaging. They've canceled over a half dozen of them, so don't get too comfy with RCS...Google will probably replace it too and use Apple not supporting it as the excuse.
Credit to google
Giving people refunds for hardware and software purchases is an unexpected move and one I applaud.
Landfill
To be clear, Google doesn't want the bother or expense of trashing your Stadia e-waste so don't send it back.
And have they found a good way for (ex)customers to recycle all that obsolete kit? Would Googling for an answer help?
Re: Landfill
[1]You can use it to play PC games with a bit of messing
[1] https://github.com/helloparthshah/StadiaWireless
Cut short by several months
http://stadiacountdown.com/
Had it pegged as being November 2023, January is a bit rough.
Still, there you go, predictable as death, Google axed a product.
Nobody should be surprised.