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Google Games

Google Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus (kotaku.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the end-of-road dept.
Google Stadia, the late 2019 streaming platform that promised to revolutionize gaming by letting users stream games without needing to own a powerful PC or console, is altering course, getting out of the game-making business and will now offer its platform directly to game publishers alongside offering Stadia Pro to the public. From a report: The company is announcing the news today, though Kotaku began to hear rumblings from sources close to Stadia last week that Google's service was heading for a major change. One games industry source told Kotaku that Google was canceling multiple projects, basically any games slated for release beyond a specific 2021 window, though they believed games close to release would still come out. Today brings some clarification. Google will close its two game studios, located in Montreal and Los Angeles. That closure will impact around 150 developers, one source familiar with Stadia operations said. The company says it will try to find those developers new roles at Google. Jade Raymond, the veteran producer who helped build Assassin's Creed for Ubisoft and moved on to EA several years ago before leaving to run game creation at Stadia, is exiting the company, according to Google.
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Google Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus More

Google Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus

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  • the console is dieing and when it does no refunds and no moveing the paid for games to an differnt console

  • oh noes, google shutting down a project! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Escogido ( 884359 ) on Monday February 01, 2021 @03:14PM (#61016630)

    in the immortal words of Viktor Chernomyrdin: this has never happened before - yet here we are again!

  • Google couldn’t get enough advertising tentacles around it. Remember Onlive and Ouya too?

    • It will die because everyone knew they would kill it. Even their free products have opportunity cost that is often not with it for that reason, much less this business here.

      • This is exactly what stopped me from buying one in 2019.

        I'm not so worried about the free one they sent me though. If they wind it down in 2022 I won't complain (stop letting new game purchases and support past purchased through the end of 2022).

    • Everything that doesn't add tens of billions to Google's bottom line will eventually be killed.

      I just don't understand why even keep trying. Nothing that Google creates will ever be as wildly profitable as their internet search.
  • THey could have at least not forced people to buy that expensive controller which will soon be useless.

  • most Google products are good at first, then they "drop" them.

    Usually before they drop them, they cripple them so nobody wants to do anything but replace them with a competitors product.

      The list is probably compiled somewhere, but it's getting pretty long.

    The only Google device I'd suggest is a Pixel phone. At least they update them for 3 years from when they come out.

    • I don’t know... Pretty hard to justify getting a Pixel 5. Huge step down over previous gen. Mid-range specs at top-end prices. For any Pixel 4 owner, it is decidedly a downgrade. Sounds like everything else you just described.

      • With the Pixel, the point was to ensure that there were flagship phones that were as sexy as iPhones. It was always to pump the Android OS. Samsung has risen to the bar they want, so why bother continuing the Pixel line? Might was well milk some money out of it as it dies.

        • What I loved most about Pixel phones were the clean Android versions and guaranteed updates. Good look getting Samsung to support your phone with updates when newer model comes out.

      • I don’t know... Pretty hard to justify getting a Pixel 5. Huge step down over previous gen. Mid-range specs at top-end prices. For any Pixel 4 owner, it is decidedly a downgrade. Sounds like everything else you just described.

        I have a Pixel 3a XL which is everything I need for a few years, almost felt the same about when the 4 came out.

        In another year or so, I'll re-evaluate the "Pixel 6 or 7" Otherwise, I'll just keep using it.

        I had a Samsung phone before this one, and received 1 update a month or so after I got it. That was the first, and only update I ever received on that phone.

        And let's discuss the non-removable apps on that phone...

    • Googles TOS for all their "free" offerings state that they can cancel you at any time basically at their whim.

      It makes zero sense to rely on Google for anything important.

    • it may be true most of the time, but this time the product simply wasn't appealing enough.

      also, most money in gaming (outside of microtransactions) is made with hot new titles, not with boring cheap-ish subscription material.

  • Game has to be processed locally. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Unless you are playing something that is not real time, like checkers or turn based RPGs, this will never work. The latency is just too high. Racing sims are the main example.

    • I'm sure it works fine if you're a few milliseconds away from a datacenter. For me, they probably range between 20 and 50 msec through my wifi ap and router as judged to a ping to earth.google.com and stadia.google.com

      The speed of light through fiber and the group velocity of a pulse through coax are about 2/3 the speed of light. 20 msec means about 1200 miles one-way not accounting for routing delays and maybe 150-300 miles with delays. You can easily go through that much cabling to get to the other side o

  • I am shocked! Sadly that is where most new companies think they can profit, by inserting themselves where neither the 1st or 2nd party wants them.

  • Hard not to cynical about it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by H3lldr0p ( 40304 ) on Monday February 01, 2021 @03:56PM (#61016820) Homepage

    Clearly Google was looking for free money, not to build an system for people to use for gaming. So it's hard to be anything but cynical about the outcome. Of course it was going to fail when the effort wasn't going to match the advertisement. Especially in an supersaturated market. It didn't offer integrations into streaming, it didn't offer extra goodies for being there, it didn't try to make itself different from running on any other console.

    Google didn't want to succeed, it just wanted to say that it tried.

  • One of the key issues with Stadia is that you need to buy the games on Stadia to play them. If they could play the games I already owned the value proposition would be much better - and the service would be ike GeForce Now. As it is, buying games I can't use elsewhere on a serviceably a company known to shut down its services frequently is not something I'd risk. Google's attention span on anything that isn't spying on you or packaging you up to sell you is measured in months, maybe a year or two.

    GeForce

  • I don't fault Google for trying new things but given how inevitable it seems that Stadia will appear in this list I have trouble believing that Google charges for it and that anyone pays.
  • imagine coming home to unwind after a hard days work and not being able to play video games because you misgendered someone or attended a protest and now you are being punished like a naughty schoolboy by a megacorporation. Sounds like a fantastic idea.
  • "Changing business focus" is business-speak for "we-f$ucked-up" and/or "the project will be shut down in Q4"

  • For a lot of developers making games is a labour of love - it certainly beats working for a bank. So games companies can pay low wages and squeeze out lots of unpaid overtime.

    Big tech firms, with their formal HR processes, can't do that, and end up paying much higher per-hour development costs than their competitors. Which is probably why both Google and Amazon have thrown in the towel.

  • it's on life support (Score:3)

    by EvilStein ( 414640 ) <spam@BALDWINpbp.net minus author> on Monday February 01, 2021 @08:57PM (#61017698)

    I would not be at all surprised to see them pull the plug on it within a year and try to rebrand it as YouTube Arcade or something. None of us can trust that a Google property is going to be around much, aside from what scores them advertising revenue.

  • Streaming (Score:3)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @06:08AM (#61018404) Homepage

    I can:

    - buy a game, play it on the computer in front of me, and push it through any number of remote-play services, for as long as I own the game, at zero cost, and I can choose any game I like, play them as long as I like, and play all my other games on the same device.

    Or:

    - rent a subscription to a game, dependent on a historically unreliable business model, to play it on their servers, at their convenience, and have it removed if they go bust or there's a problem, and I can only choose from their selections of games and can't play games I already own without re-buying them. Oh, and many games won't be playable nicely because of inherent latency issues.

    I honestly don't understand the business model at all.

    Serious gamers aren't going to touch it.
    Casual gamers aren't going to pay for it.
    Non-gamers won't be enticed by it.

    Who's the market? It's not like a Netflix for Games, it works in a very, very different way.

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