Stadia Launch Developer Says Game Makers Are Worried 'Google Is Just Going To Cancel It' (arstechnica.com) 67
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google has a long and well-documented history of launching new services only to shut them down a few months or years later. And with the launch of Stadia imminent, one launch game developer has acknowledged the prevalence of concerns about that history among her fellow developers while also downplaying their seriousness in light of Stadia's potential. "The biggest complaint most developers have with Stadia is the fear that Google is just going to cancel it," Gwen Frey, developer of Stadia launch puzzle game Kine, told GamesIndustry.biz in recently published comments. "Nobody ever says, 'Oh, it's not going to work,' or 'Streaming isn't the future.' Everyone accepts that streaming is pretty much inevitable. The biggest concern with Stadia is that it might not exist."
While concerns about Stadia working correctly aren't quite as nonexistent as Frey said, early tests show the service works well enough in ideal circumstances. As for the service's continued existence, Frey thinks such concerns among other developers are "kind of silly." "Working in tech, you have to be willing to make bold moves and try things that could fail," Frey continued. "And yeah, Google's canceled a lot of projects. But I also have a Pixel in my pocket, I'm using Google Maps to get around. I only got here because my Google Calendar told me to get here by giving me a prompt in Gmail. It's not like Google cancels every fucking thing they make." "Nothing in life is certain, but we're committed to making Stadia a success," said Stadia Director of Product Andrew Doronichev in July. "Of course, it's OK to doubt my words. There's nothing I can say now to make you believe if you don't. But what we can do is to launch the service and continue investing in it for years to come."
While concerns about Stadia working correctly aren't quite as nonexistent as Frey said, early tests show the service works well enough in ideal circumstances. As for the service's continued existence, Frey thinks such concerns among other developers are "kind of silly." "Working in tech, you have to be willing to make bold moves and try things that could fail," Frey continued. "And yeah, Google's canceled a lot of projects. But I also have a Pixel in my pocket, I'm using Google Maps to get around. I only got here because my Google Calendar told me to get here by giving me a prompt in Gmail. It's not like Google cancels every fucking thing they make." "Nothing in life is certain, but we're committed to making Stadia a success," said Stadia Director of Product Andrew Doronichev in July. "Of course, it's OK to doubt my words. There's nothing I can say now to make you believe if you don't. But what we can do is to launch the service and continue investing in it for years to come."
Wasn't Google Plus a "bet the company" project? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Wasn't Google Plus a "bet the company" project? (Score:5, Informative)
You can find a list of all the products Google has killed at killed by google [killedbygoogle.com]
They won't cancel gmail because they are data mining the fuck out of it. If it's "free" then YOU are the product.
--
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.
Only a dumb soldier fights another man's rich war.
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I still remember them cancelling MyTracks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Very nice and simple app. It would have taken almost no effort to keep supporting it in current state.
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Google will not cancel Gmail, as they scan all email and use it for ad targeting. But from the services not useful for ad targeting, I think only Android really survived and that may not have been up to Google so much. Or maybe Android is useful for ad targeting as well. Cannot really see Stadia fulfilling that though.
Re:Wasn't Google Plus a "bet the company" project? (Score:5, Insightful)
Setting aside their seemingly capricious product cancellations, Google tends to "sunset" products that don't garner enough interest. With that in mind, does Stadia have enough public interest?
Quick: when does/did Stadia launch? How do you use it? How much does it cost? Are you even interested?
I'm in the software industry, I have over a dozen gaming platforms hooked up/charged and ready to go right this moment (off the top of my head: Windows gaming rig, PS4, PS3 (w/ PS2 support), Xbox 360 (w/ Xbox support), Switch, Wii U, Wii (w/ Gamecube support), 3DS, DS, GBA SP (w/ GBC support), Apple TV, and an iPad and iPhone), and I follow video gaming news, so you'd think I'd be smack dab in the middle of their target demographic, surrounded by others who would want to talk about this sort of thing. Instead, other than some idle "hey, did you hear about Stadia?" water cooler conversations right around when it was announced, I haven't heard a peep from anyone in real life.
There was a bevy of online news and excitement right around when it was announced, but all of that initial excitement seems to have died down and faded away. The gaming news sites I follow aren't counting down the days or waiting with bated breath like they do with any major console release. In fact, despite Stadia launching next week (which I had to look up), there's still far more coverage of the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett, both of which are about a year away from launch. And Google has been aggressively running ads for Stadia on YouTube these last few weeks, but I still couldn't tell you when it launched. I actually thought the launch had come and gone without any notice, and that this article was in response to the lack of interest.
Perhaps even more telling, my wife, who doesn't game muchand doesn't follow gaming news, didn't even know what Stadia was after seeing the ads. She figured "Stadia" was a new game and was confused by the Google branding. If their ads can't even convey what type of product Stadia is to someone who's never heard of it, they're in a world of hurt.
At least when it comes to games, even worse than failing is to fail without anyone noticing or caring. Stadia seems to be on that path right now. There's plenty of time to right the ship, but how much does Google actually care to do so?
Re:Wasn't Google Plus a "bet the company" project? (Score:5, Interesting)
And the more you understand about it, the less excited you are. You're paying money to have access to a service, where you will have to buy your games and "hold" them in that service - can't bring ones you already own, so if you want to play ones you already have you will need to re-buy - and you're not getting a price break on any of it. So to recap:
You pay once to get some hardware to access Stadia - a "console" you don't own.
You pay a monthly fee to have Stadia - because of course you do
You pay full price for each game you can only use IN Stadia - again, a copy you don't own except in your "console" on Stadia.
That's a no from me....when I buy games through Steam for example, I can at least back them up locally. There are tradeoffs and hassles, but I also only buy the games during deeply discounted sales and consider that the fair tradeoff. Stadia gives you no discounts and costs money just to have your account exist. And if/when it shuts down or you get tired of paying, you walk away with *nothing*.
Re: Wasn't Google Plus a "bet the company" project (Score:1)
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Sure, but with my consoles, the games and their licenses sit in little boxes on my shelf, ready for use tomorrow or 10 years from now. With Steam I agree it's a more ephermeral thing, but as I mentioned I only buy Steam games during their crazy sales at deep discounts so my line of thinking there is I got my fun out of it now, and if it goes away, well, I only payed $10 for the complete Borderlands 1 collection instead of $100+ at full price so no massive loss. I'm willing to accept the potential fragilit
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I am a gamer and really enjoy learning new games (that has limits though with so many derivative games, killing the learning fun). I use a high end wired mouse and a wired mechanical keyboard with customisable lighting, that for the best possible response time. Stadia, those interactions going out across the internet and waiting for the response to come back and the infuriating frustrations I would expect from any slight or enduring interruption of internet service (keep in mind ZERO caching of data transmi
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All you can "backup" is the DRM-ed copy of the game. Steam let's you play offline for a while but after a couple of days (2 weeks?) it demands to login again. If you can't because e.g. Steam died, all your games are gone.
What you are looking for is DRM free backups you can play and reinstall any time you like on any machine you like. This is what GOG [gog.com] provides. Sadly only comparably few modern games are available from it. But i
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> If you can't because e.g. Steam died, all your games are gone.
I might just be optimistic here but I'm reasonably sure that if Steam went away completely because of some business problem with Valve - and it wasn't somehow bought out by another company - there are enough people in the same boat that a few bright sparks in the game hacking community would be able to figure out how to "free" our DRM'd local copies. But if/when Stadia goes away, you've got nothing to even try to unlock.
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Exactly - Google's good at breaking new ground and testing the market. Some of that works out - search (they way they did it) worked out well, as did advertising by self-serve/bidding. Gmail hasn't exactly blown the world away, but it seems to be doing okay.
Loads of other stuff was either just too far ahead of its time (Wave, perhaps, Glass, perhaps), or completely off the wall bonkers and poorly executed (G Plus). At least with Wave and G+, the investment to try it was close to zero. To try Glass you neede
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And the more you understand about it, the less excited you are. You're paying money to have access to a service, where you will have to buy your games and "hold" them in that service - can't bring ones you already own, so if you want to play ones you already have you will need to re-buy - and you're not getting a price break on any of it. So to recap:
You pay once to get some hardware to access Stadia - a "console" you don't own.
You pay a monthly fee to have Stadia - because of course you do
You pay full price for each game you can only use IN Stadia - again, a copy you don't own except in your "console" on Stadia.
Can't imagine how much your enthusiasm will drop once you actually become informed. You were wrong on two of three points (and possibly all three).
You don't need to buy Stadia hardware. I ran the beta on a 5 year old 11 inch chromebook, and it ran fine.
You don't have to pay for 1080p gaming, which is more than enough for casual gamers (as evidenced by the popularity of the Switch).
And while you do need to buy games through their service, nothing says they won't also provide alternate copies of the game. T
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Quick: when does/did Stadia launch? How do you use it? How much does it cost? Are you even interested?
Hahahah, indeed! Quick answers: No idea. Web-Browser? No idea. No. .... At least I am not part of the target population, I think ;-)
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Technically, google could pull it off, but because they're a company with no history in the industry, except for having a platform absolutely full of ad supported and microtransaction infested games for phones, I just don't think they can sell it to gamers who are more invested in gaming; they understand the drawbacks and are happy to pay for add free, stutter and latency free games. I don't think stadia presents any value to gamers.
If developers think that google will cancel it, that probably explains why
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I'm in the software industry, I have over a dozen gaming platforms hooked up/charged and ready to go right this moment (off the top of my head: Windows gaming rig, PS4, PS3 (w/ PS2 support), Xbox 360 (w/ Xbox support), Switch, Wii U, Wii (w/ Gamecube support), 3DS, DS, GBA SP (w/ GBC support), Apple TV, and an iPad and iPhone), and I follow video gaming news, so you'd think I'd be smack dab in the middle of their target demographic, surrounded by others who would want to talk about this sort of thing.
Wow, you sure missed the boat on that one. Their target demo is not hard core gamers that own every possible means of gaming consumption. It's literally the opposite.
Their target is people who may be casually interested in a particular game, but not enough to purchase a system or build a gaming PC. People who click banners in facebook to play a random game in their browser.
Now those same people can click a link in an e-mail, or banner ad, and if browsing in Chrome can immediately start playing a triple-A
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Wow, you sure missed the boat on that one. Their target demo is not hard core gamers that own every possible means of gaming consumption. It's literally the opposite.
Their target is people who may be casually interested in a particular game, but not enough to purchase a system or build a gaming PC.
I think you were close, but then you overstated you case. After all, if what you're saying is true, it makes no sense why nearly every game announced so far [androidpolice.com] is targeted at the core gaming crowd and why—as I talked about with regards to my wife—their marketing doesn't make it clear what their product is to people outside the core gaming crowd. Nothing about the way they're handling this suggests that you've correctly nailed their target demographic.
Quite the contrary, based on everything we've se
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Google should just make a public commitment (Score:2)
Google should make a public commitment, and binding as part of their terms of service with developers, that they will continue to support and further develop the service until 2025. Then update that number around 2022 if they plan to continue the service.
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Yip. But they don't want to throw good money after bad, so will make no such commitment. Hence people are correct to be sceptical of their future plans.
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I'd probably invest in the controller and subscription if it was 2 years even.
But as it is, I'm not spending a penny.
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All well and good (and I'd love to see something like this), but unless they can guarantee customers on the service for the game devs to make money from, then it's still just as risky.
G is just a middle-man here - they need both the devs and the end users. If there are no devs, then there are no customers. If there are no customers, then there are no devs. Microsoft solves this problem by paying devs to make content, and they 'buy' customers too on occasion. It remains to be seen if Google does the same. As
Isn't that the calculated risk? (Score:2)
You could also bet on getting your stuff working without Google. Which is another risk. You know the history.
Maybe it will be like a Google phone (Score:1)
Support for 3 years and the clock starts ticking the first day the device goes on sale.
Depends on personal data. (Score:2)
It is telling in what he didn't say (Score:5, Insightful)
""Nothing in life is certain, but we're committed to making Stadia a success," said Stadia Director of Product Andrew Doronichev in July. "Of course, it's OK to doubt my words. There's nothing I can say now to make you believe if you don't. But what we can do is to launch the service and continue investing in it for years to come.""
If he instead had said "We are as committed to Stadia as we are to GMail. This IS the future of Google" then people would have more confidence (as much as they reasonably could) about the future of the project.
Instead he chose NOT to say that, presumably because it would be a lie. And therefore people are right to believe that Google might cancel it if it doesn't meet their expectations.
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If he instead had said "We are as committed to Stadia as we are to GMail. This IS the future of Google" then people would have more confidence (as much as they reasonably could) about the future of the project.
I would still have very little confidence in the project, because companies often say all sorts of things about what they'll do. The situation can change entirely in as little as a year.
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Well, I guess Andrew Doronichev does not have the most secure job now. He will probably need to look for something new in a few years. Also, words are cheap, real commitments are not.
Diversification (Score:2)
You would have to be a complete and utter fool to bet your gaming company's future on any Google-specific service or product, such as Stadia. As part of a diversified portfolio, where your risks and rewards are spread out, and where Stadia is a small part of the whole, it MIGHT make sense.
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You would have to be a complete and utter fool to bet your gaming company's future on any Google-specific service or product, such as Stadia. As part of a diversified portfolio, where your risks and rewards are spread out, and where Stadia is a small part of the whole, it MIGHT make sense.
Isn't this service for the most part just ports of existing games?
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As I understand it the games are not ports but actual for instance PC games being streamed to a subscriber.
I can see it appealing to people who have great internet but for whatever reason on interest in game consoles or a high end gaming PC. Maybe such a person just has i-devices and a Nintendo switch but would like to see what the fuss is about with Red Dead redemption 2. So maybe a chromecast ultra is an alternative a way to do that for such a person. I don't actually know the size of such an audience. Ju
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As I understand it the games are not ports but actual for instance PC games being streamed to a subscriber.
I can see it appealing to people who have great internet but for whatever reason on interest in game consoles or a high end gaming PC. Maybe such a person just has i-devices and a Nintendo switch but would like to see what the fuss is about with Red Dead redemption 2. So maybe a chromecast ultra is an alternative a way to do that for such a person. I don't actually know the size of such an audience. Just saying the audience might exist.
Of course it could also be somebody at google realized that had a lot idle servers and extra bandwidth and saw this as a way to both monetize those resources while also demonstrating to potential cloud customers the capabilities of their cloud.
Exactly my point, so how does this article make any sense? What does a developer care if they abandon the service after 6 months?
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There's also this whole system for lag compensation that involves all sorts of predictive input, rollback and latency optimisation that will in theory make the experience significantly better than just "your Steam version +100ms of lag". But naturally this will require quit
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As I understand it the games are not ports but actual for instance PC games being streamed to a subscriber.
Steam couldn't make it work reliably on local LAN/Wifi networks. Game streaming across a WAN will not amount to much more than a try-before-you-buy service, it's not going to cut it as a daily driver for any serious gamers.
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I use Steam streaming quite a lot on the LAN and it's usually pretty snappy. The problem is always that games are usually hacked together messes from copy/pasted tutorials that build up from spinning textured cubes to the final product. So many games die because they spawn a window that changes the resolutions and reinitialises DX and then reinitialises it again for the lols then minimises and spawns the actual game.exe... Steam's capture thing tries its best but more often than not they have to put hacks a
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There are a lot of fools around though, and many, many in "leadership" positions. (You know, even more clueless than others, but very convinced of their own vision and skills...)
if canceled (Score:2)
it would be because the developer failed to make it entertaining enough, too many bugs or other reasons. so the developer better not give google a reason to cancel it.
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I'm pretty sure it will be cancelled because they can't do anything about the latency, because Physics.
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Wait until Google releases their next streaming game console: Quantum
When we get Enders Game levels of immediacy in remote communications, that's when I'll start paying attention to streamed gaming.
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I'm pretty sure it'll suck because of physics, but it'll be cancelled because nobody cares at all.
Not a single person has said the word "Stadia" to me. I haven't seen a single ad for it. Not a single niece/nephew has brought it up, my son hasn't asked for it, none of my friends are even aware of it to badmouth it or praise it.
What do you need to run it? I assumed it would be some sort of software client, but one of the comments here says you need hardware. Alright. Where do you buy this hardware? I ha
Re: if canceled (Score:2)
According to an article on the front page, theyâ(TM)re going to eventually use AI to predict user input to reduce latency... they claim.
That's not the point (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's not like Google cancels every fucking thing they make."
That's not the point, bucko. The point is that they cancel a lot of things. And we can't tell the difference. How do we know which projects will be cancelled and which ones won't? We don't. This makes Google unreliable. I've had workers like that: they do excellent work - sometimes. But if you're not reliable I can't keep you.
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It's actually reasonably easy to guess which projects will get cancelled.
You just have to ask yourself - does Google product X continue to provide (directly or indirectly) relevant, timely and valuable data about a user which can be used for targeted marketing?
If the answer is no, then the chances of it surviving are slim.
I can see a market for that data (Score:1)
If streaming is required, I won't use it (Score:3)
I'm rather conservative, and I don't want something I use to depend on access to an outside server. Yeah, it's just a game. So I don't mind closed source that I run in a virtual machine with no external access to disk drives or internet devices. I accept that it doesn't have to be useful.
But it *does* need to be available when *I* choose, or I won't even look at it.
This means most of the games I play are several decades old now, but if you won't sell what I want, don't expect me to buy it.
Zero interest in Stadia due to cancellation (Score:3)
It's a new google project - that means there's a 90% chance it will be cancelled within 24 months. I paid close to $100 for my google daydream VR goggles, that "gaming system" got cancelled a couple of weeks ago.
I know Stadia exists, I am probably their core market (early 30s male with plenty of disposable income) but I haven't read a single artlcle about Stadia because I have a high degree of confidence that it's going to fail or will soon become incompatible with gen 2 of whatever they dream up. It's not worth it, and it's not worth investing the time to see what's unique/cool - it's going to be gone anyways. It's not even investing the time to read a single article to find out what price point it's going to be.
Outside of the google home/nest stuff (which they already managed to cripple in important ways) and their nexus/pixel phones I am not touching any of their hardware with a 20 foot pole. It's not worth the time/money/energy to read about "new products" from google if they're just going to cancel them. Google Wave was the last product I got excited about.
Why be worried? (Score:2)
This is a virtual certainty. From all the experimental projects Google ever did, only Android has survived. Of course Stadia is going to be cancelled in a few years.
The difference here.. (Score:2)
Is that when google eventually cancel Stadia, any exclusive game to the platform will just cease to exist from history.
Also any game from a studio that bankrupts, or a game that did some stupid temporary music deal, or a game that offended some stupid lawyer, or a game that the publisher just decided that it should not exist because they're absolute konamis.
It's not like Google cancels every fucking thing t (Score:2)
It's not like Google cancels every fucking thing they make.
Most of the examples of Google's shit that still exists are examples of things Google has BOUGHT OUT from others.
yea nothing is certain (Score:2)
But google does have a history of releasing new goofy gadgets and shitcanning them very quickly
OnLive got shutdown so will this last longer? (Score:2)
OnLive got shutdown so will this last longer?
Why does it matter? (Score:2)
If Google cancels it, why does that matter to game developers? Does it actually require special fiddling to make games work with it? In a sane world it would work with unmodified games, intercepting their API calls.
If it doesn't work that way, why would any developer bother with it? Because Google will definitely shut it down in an untimely fashion.
Reasons to be concerned. (Score:2)
The biggest concern... (Score:4, Interesting)
"The biggest concern with Stadia is that it might not exist."
No, my biggest concern is that I will be paying for a game I will not be allowed to own and that my data plan will be destroyed by playing it. And when Google cancels the service, I will lose access to all those games I don't own but have been paying for.
So... yeah. No thanks.
Stafia is dead, long live Stadia (Score:2)
How many times did the boy cry wolf? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't have to cry wolf very many times to get ignored. You don't have to cancel every project to create a chilling effect.
There is no market for this (Score:1)
I'm just not seeing the market for this. If you're a proper gamer then you have a console or a gaming PC, why would you want to use this? If you're a casual gamer then the types of games you likely play work on your phone, they don't need a massive gaming rig in the cloud. I'm somewhere between casual and hardcore and I have a reasonable library on steam which, using parsec (https://parsecgaming.com/) I can play on any pc anywhere, don't need a chromecast and a special controller, just my laptop or work com
Here's how Google works (Score:2)
In order to get a promo you need to launch stuff. Nobody ever gets promoted for maintaining and improving existing stuff. So people interested in promotions and career growth rope in less socially aware engineers to launch something the higher ups would like to beat their chest about. The stuff launches. The people who started (and launched) the project get promoted and _immediately_ move on to something else that is not maintenance to keep their career going. Shit falls apart and gets cancelled within 2 ye
Do not use Stadia under any circumstances (Score:1)
Wrong (Score:2)
"Nobody ever says, 'Oh, it's not going to work,' or 'Streaming isn't the future.' Everyone accepts that streaming is pretty much inevitable. The biggest concern with Stadia is that it might not exist."
Euhm, with games specifically, a LOT of people are saying it will not work, streaming is not the future. And until we have just about zero latency connections worldwide, they're right.
This one Google should probably just close down.
They have their head so far up their ass... (Score:1)
There's nothing I can say now to make you believe (Score:2)
> There's nothing I can say now to make you believe if you don't
" Google is publicly committing today to maintain the Stadia project for at least 10 years, at full staff level, and new features every year. Google also commits to integrating the latest version of Stadia in every version of Android during this time. We, of course, hope and expect Stadia to last even longer than that."
Paypal me at my email, Google.