PCG Article Stadia is closing down in January, hardware and software purchases to be refunded

[ZedClampet]

Google's game streaming platform "hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected."

Not surprising. Google is better at throwing in the towel than they are at making that awful search engine actually give me the results I want rather than just feed me links that are very remotely related to what I asked but very popular with other people.

I think it was just a couple of months after Stadia was announced when Xbox announced that you would be able to stream the games on their service. I've been waiting for the Stadia collapse ever sense.

I think Nvidia's service is a better idea, too. Buy the games you want but don't bother having a gaming PC. That's going to be helpful with Nvidia determined to charge as much as humanly possible for GPU's. Hmm. Maybe that's their plan...

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Google's game streaming platform "hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected."

Not surprising. Google is better at throwing in the towel than they are at making that awful search engine actually give me the results I want rather than just feed me links that are very remotely related to what I asked but very popular with other people.

I think it was just a couple of months after Stadia was announced when Xbox announced that you would be able to stream the games on their service. I've been waiting for the Stadia collapse ever sense.

I think Nvidia's service is a better idea, too. Buy the games you want but don't bother having a gaming PC. That's going to be helpful with Nvidia determined to charge as much as humanly possible for GPU's. Hmm. Maybe that's their plan...

The crappy thing about Nvidia's service is that it doesn't support a ton of games. I linked my Steam and Epic with it, and only a handful of my many games even showed up as supported. And none of them were the main ones I would want.

 

[ZedClampet]

The crappy thing about Nvidia's service is that it doesn't support a ton of games. I linked my Steam and Epic with it, and only a handful of my many games even showed up as supported. And none of them were the main ones I would want.

That's not Nvidia's fault. That's publishers being greedy and demanding that Nvidia pull their games off of the system.

 

[Sarafan]

No big problem since they're returning the money. This shows however threats of online services. What if they wouldn't return the money? What if an online distribution platform goes out of business and they won't have funds to return the money? The consumers will be left with nothing. Back in the days when physical distribution was a thing, this problem was non-existent. Now, as we see, the threat can be real. No major distribution platform went bankrupt until now, but who knows what will happen in the future?

 

[Brian Boru]

No major distribution platform went bankrupt until now, but who knows what will happen in the future?

One of the others, or a consortium, would have to step into the fire sale and pick up the pieces, simply to protect their own business model.

 

[Sarafan]

One of the others, or a consortium, would have to step into the fire sale and pick up the pieces, simply to protect their own business model.

Probably you're right. This works in a similar way for banks that are in trouble. But still, if a business is not profitable, there might be problems in finding someone who will invest even more money in it. Let's hope we won't be witnesses of such a situation in the future. All major distribution platforms currently have a stable financial situation.

 

[ZedClampet]

Probably you're right. This works in a similar way for banks that are in trouble. But still, if a business is not profitable, there might be problems in finding someone who will invest even more money in it. Let's hope we won't be witnesses of such a situation in the future. All major distribution platforms currently have a stable financial situation.

Epic would pay good money to get everyone to move their game libraries to them. But Epic is the only thing that could destabilize the digital platform situation. By operating in the red, it could get ugly if Steam and Microsoft started operating in the red to be competitive with them. To their credit, Valve and Microsoft have largely ignored Epic and have concentrated on adding value to their services rather than slashing margins.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

That's not Nvidia's fault. That's publishers being greedy and demanding that Nvidia pull their games off of the system.

Oh, I know it's not Nvidia's fault. I know you're right that it's the publishers' fault. But even so, the fact that it is like that makes the service way less valuable.

And I know this is really pushing it, but I was hoping to set it up through Edge on my Xbox so that I could play Horizon: Zero Dawn (a Sony game) on my Microsoft console, just for the heck of it.

 

[Brian Boru]

if a business is not profitable

We are a long way off from businesses which take 30% of digital retail not being profitable. That's a huge slice, for the resources consumed in providing such a service.

Valve and Microsoft have largely ignored Epic and have concentrated on adding value to their services rather than slashing margins

With the huge amount of free games already available 'out there', competing on service is likely to be a better strategy than competing on price, especially when interspersed with regular mega sales.

 

[Shodan_]

As soon as I saw the controller I knew they weren't seriously committed to making a gaming system or platform and Stadia was just some kind of intriguing proof of concept.

The only visual identity this product ever had was an impossibly generic looking gamepad, doomed from the start to linger in casual gaming hell for having the god awful Playstation thumbstick layout. That was Stadia's kiss of death. I have seen gamepad emojis with more personality than this sorry looking thing.

No one was excited about it, it looked like it came from a dollar store and it had a button layout that Sony mistakenly painted themselves into a corner with and subsequently had to spend 25 years and 5 generations to make even remotely useable. There's a few good reasons why Sony is the only first party to have had configuration for decades. Brand identity, but also because it's terrible. However the dual shock has also become the generic image of a "controller" due to the Playstation's success, so Stadia went with it. They knew their target audience, and they knew they couldn't find a PS5.

In any case, Stadia appealed to no one, it went out of it's way to look as generic, unexciting and unassuming as possible and now it's a bunch of e-waste. The Ouya tried harder than Stadia just looking at it.

 

[ZedClampet]

We are a long way off from businesses which take 30% of digital retail not being profitable. That's a huge slice, for the resources consumed in providing such a service.

Plenty of digital game storefronts that charged 30 percent have closed up, and GoG has struggled mightily. Right now PC gaming is in a good place, though, so the big boys, at least, aren't in any trouble, and it's kind of hard to imagine how they could get that way without a pricing war.

 

[Brian Boru]

Plenty of digital game storefronts that charged 30 percent have closed up, and GoG has struggled mightily

Oh yes, small guys, or those with no marketing, will always struggle—same in the other entertainment industries.

GOG could've made it if they had an ounce of marketing. I don't think I've ever seen them 'out there' in the same way MS or Epic are. That's not how you try to enter a market with a good dominant player. They can either go back to their old games roots—which seems to be what they've chosen—or spin off the store to a large company that has marketing savvy and can suffer a few years' losses to gain traction.

 

[Pifanjr]

At least with GOG you have the option to store all of your games on your own storage devices, so you don't lose any of them if they ever close down.

 

[ZedClampet]

At least with GOG you have the option to store all of your games on your own storage devices, so you don't lose any of them if they ever close down.

Or your storage devices fail. Back before cheap online storage was available, I had an external HDD that I used as a backup. My computer failed, and I got a new one, but I stupidly waited a couple of years before trying to load in my backup (it was all digital photos I'd taken), and when I went to load it up, it failed.

It's been 15 years and I still have it. Some day, if it isn't too late, I'll pay someone to try to extract the pictures from it...or not. My wife had maybe half of the pictures on her PC, so we still have plenty of pictures of the kids when they were babies.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

the god awful Playstation thumbstick layout.

I wouldn't assess the PS's controller as harshly as you do. I definitely prefer Xbox's layout. But I used a PS4 controller with my PC for a while, just because the trackpad made it easy to navigate UI. Like I said, I prefer Xbox layout, but I thought the DS4 was a great controller, too. I definitely didn't feel like it was god awful.

 

[Johnway]

i think the writing was on the wall within months of launch. The cloud tech just wasn't there, bad PR over pricing and business, lack of killer apps etc pretty much killed it from the start.

Cloud gaming has potential and in the current climate of cost of hardware shortages and increased costs, it could be a real winner if done properly and make it affordable. i would say that the companies offering this solution are just sabotaging themselves atm, nvidia's seemed like they were onto a winner until publishers wanted people to buy games on the platform again.

 

[Shodan_]

I wouldn't assess the PS's controller as harshly as you do. I definitely prefer Xbox's layout. But I used a PS4 controller with my PC for a while, just because the trackpad made it easy to navigate UI. Like I said, I prefer Xbox layout, but I thought the DS4 was a great controller, too. I definitely didn't feel like it was god awful.

For 2D gaming it's great

 

[Frag Maniac]

Yet another one of Google's failed experiments. I'm not sure merely promising customers refunds is proof they've compensated everyone involved in the project properly, but it at least seems proof they have billions to play with any way they want. I kind of feel that anyone trusting Google to be successful enough to stick with some of their crazy ideas is asking for it though. I mean on that matter, the writing has been on the wall for some time. They're like a modern day Sega.

 

[Brian Boru]

anyone trusting Google to be successful enough to stick with some of their crazy ideas is asking for it

Absolutely right, but that's been Google's product dev strategy for a long time—"move quickly and break stuff", something like that. Or "fail quickly and move on".

Looks like 1-2 dozen closures nearly every year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Scheduled_to_be_discontinued

 

[Foxhood]

It is a nasty positive feedback loop Google has managed to make for itself.

With each failed endeavor they kill off, more people be they consumers or partners will become wary of the next, which means higher odds of failure and in turn more becoming wary if it does fail. By this point, pretty much anything they try is close to guaranteed to turn into a failure with how little faith people have in them left.

The only sector they seem to be good at is handling data. Statistics, Analytics, Algorithms and the likes.

 

[Pifanjr]

Or your storage devices fail. Back before cheap online storage was available, I had an external HDD that I used as a backup. My computer failed, and I got a new one, but I stupidly waited a couple of years before trying to load in my backup (it was all digital photos I'd taken), and when I went to load it up, it failed.

It's been 15 years and I still have it. Some day, if it isn't too late, I'll pay someone to try to extract the pictures from it...or not. My wife had maybe half of the pictures on her PC, so we still have plenty of pictures of the kids when they were babies.

Yes, but that's not a limitation of GOG and it's the same limitation as physical discs have. Not being dependent on a service comes at a price, you have to do the work the service did for you.

 

[ZedClampet]

Yes, but that's not a limitation of GOG and it's the same limitation as physical discs have. Not being dependent on a service comes at a price, you have to do the work the service did for you.

I kind of think that having to rely on storage devices is actually kind of a limitation of GOG in the event of a closure.

 

[Pifanjr]

I kind of think that having to rely on storage devices is actually kind of a limitation of GOG in the event of a closure.

No? With Steam and Epic you just lose everything if they close, you're completely dependent on them. With GOG you have the option to remove the dependency, if you're willing to do the work.

 

[ZedClampet]

No? With Steam and Epic you just lose everything if they close, you're completely dependent on them. With GOG you have the option to remove the dependency, if you're willing to do the work.

I thought we were comparing having the library stored physically vs having it transferred (which is obviously what would happen if Steam closed, but maybe not for GoG since their library isn't worth much and Epic's is just giveaways). But Steam has 100 million buying customers that come with that data transfer. It's foolish to think you would lose everything if they closed.

 

[Pifanjr]

I thought we were comparing having the library stored physically vs having it transferred (which is obviously what would happen if Steam closed, but maybe not for GoG since their library isn't worth much and Epic's is just giveaways). But Steam has 100 million buying customers that come with that data transfer. It's foolish to think you would lose everything if they closed.

I agree it's very unlikely Steam would ever just disappear entirely, but I think the same is true for GOG? Regardless, it doesn't seem to be something we need to be worried about in the near future I think.