Google reportedly paid tens of millions for Stadia ports

6adget · Mar 1, 2021

Personally I have had no problems with Stadia. It's allowed me to play red dead 2, and cyberpunk on all my devices, not just my gaming rig. I have been able to play them on my 5 year old lap top with no lag that would prevent me from enjoying the games that I bought. I know most people don't like it. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. to each their own. I just hope it sticks around for a while. Its been nice not worrying about constantly buying new hardware to play newer games. You don't even have to pay a subscription fee as long as you play them in 1080. If you want to play in 4k then you have to pay for a sub.

LightBeam · Mar 1, 2021

There's also the thing where they said they could stream 4K 60 fps but it was never able to, so you can add false advertisement to that
They really screw anything that could be screwed

Taleweaver · Mar 1, 2021

Erm... I'm not sure on this.

On one hand, it's certainly insane to pay this much for ports. Heck, even if it paid off, one can question whether or not it was worth it.

But it's that other hand that's interesting. That is : what exactly did you buy for that money? I'm not talking about the ports themselves, but... Call it the price of progress, so you will. Mainstream streaming is a one way direction. Attempting to set it up for both directions comes with problems. I've booked often about poor pets being done by a summer intern, but this is an entirely different thing.

That is : stadia might have failed because the world isn't ready (fuck... You've got dolts attacking 5G masts because they think it gives them Corona), but what is the worth of technology for tomorrow?

Edgarska · Mar 1, 2021

That's hilarious.
But in their defense, the launch was beta in everything but name anyway. All they had to do was actually call it "beta".

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Taleweaver said:
Erm... I'm not sure on this.

On one hand, it's certainly insane to pay this much for ports. Heck, even if it paid off, one can question whether or not it was worth it.

But it's that other hand that's interesting. That is : what exactly did you buy for that money? I'm not talking about the ports themselves, but... Call it the price of progress, so you will. Mainstream streaming is a one way direction. Attempting to set it up for both directions comes with problems. I've booked often about poor pets being done by a summer intern, but this is an entirely different thing.

That is : stadia might have failed because the world isn't ready (fuck... You've got dolts attacking 5G masts because they think it gives them Corona), but what is the worth of technology for tomorrow?

You're conflating valid concerns over not actually owning your games with conspiracies?
Google wasn't "ahead of the times", they failed where other companies have found moderate success because they're too greedy.

DBlaze · Mar 1, 2021

Can it die before judgment comes out on it so they can just release it normally on PC, thanks google.

MikaDubbz · Mar 1, 2021

If Microsoft wasn't already working on Xcloud when Google was working on Stadia, then Google's stab at the cloud gaming industry may have had a better chance. I do think cloud gaming has place in the industry, it can work, and it can only get better as technologies advance. But, the landscape Google was trying to make their own: computers and smart devices, able to stream whatever game they could get ahold of, was also being eyed by Microsoft, and sure enough when Xcloud GamePass launched, it didn't just come to Xbox devices, but also to computers and smart devices. And it came with torrent of games because Microsoft has been in the gaming industry long enough to already have a vast selection on Game Pass, both first party titles and third party titles, many of those third party titles also being available on Stadia. But with Stadia you have to pay per game, while you just pay Microsoft monthly for streaming Game Pass and you're good to play any games in the service.

I have a suspicion that Google had to rush out Stadia because they wanted to beat Microsoft to the punch, but that did them no favors as it definitely launched far too early with all of its initial issues, many of which it still maintains.

Edgarska · Mar 1, 2021

DBlaze said:
Can it die before judgment comes out on it so they can just release it normally on PC, thanks google.

I'm still waiting for the Gylt PC port, I tried playing it when they gave the free month of stadia pro, but even with stadia telling me my connection was excellent it had too much latency, and their genius idea of lowering the bitrate to less than 3Mbps for dark scenes made it look like crap, since it takes place in mostly dark environments.

Worldblender · Mar 1, 2021

lordelan said:
Now I really have to bother with OwnCloud/NextCloud to get a similar setup of own songs at some point.

I've been running a private ownCloud instance since 2018, on one of the computers I already own. You can ask me for help on this if you need it. BTW, it only has HTTP access available, no HTTPS yet.

pedro702 · Mar 1, 2021

MikaDubbz said:
If Microsoft wasn't already working on Xcloud when Google was working on Stadia, then Google's stab at the cloud gaming industry may have had a better chance. I do think cloud gaming has place in the industry, it can work, and it can only get better as technologies advance. But, the landscape Google was trying to make their own: computers and smart devices, able to stream whatever game they could get ahold of, was also being eyed by Microsoft, and sure enough when Xcloud GamePass launched, it didn't just come to Xbox devices, but also to computers and smart devices. And it came with torrent of games because Microsoft has been in the gaming industry long enough to already have a vast selection on Game Pass, both first party titles and third party titles, many of those third party titles also being available on Stadia. But with Stadia you have to pay per game, while you just pay Microsoft monthly for streaming Game Pass and you're good to play any games in the service.

I have a suspicion that Google had to rush out Stadia because they wanted to beat Microsoft to the punch, but that did them no favors as it definitely launched far too early with all of its initial issues, many of which it still maintains.

The best thing on Microsoft xcloud is the games dont need to be ported, they already exist on either console or windows since that is where most games devs release their games, so they loose 0 money on porting since they already exist on their platforms, that makes all the difference, since they just need a simple deal with devs to put it on their service, no actual work is required to modify the games to make them streamed by the devs, same way for psnow, if the game exist on a ps console they just need a deal to stream it.

so on google stadia they needed to pay the devs to port it and then a good deal to become streamed for x ammount of time.

Deleted User · Mar 1, 2021

The main point of failure for Stadia was charging both for the service and the games, if they only charged for one it would have gone so much better

gaga941021 said:
Explain this to me:
Why do they need ports for games?
Can't they just runthese games on Windows or something and stream that?

Apparently Stadia games run on Linux, which i sort of get as they definitely are running them in VMs inside a big server

KnightOfRoses · Mar 1, 2021

WiiHomebrew+Snes said:
Very glad this failed. Almost like it was on purpose to save physical consoles. At least for now...

We're still far way of the time when we will be able to use cloud computing exclusively. Sure, we have chromebooks and a myriad of web app for developers, but for the end user cloud still too much trouble. Consoles are safe for the next decade or two.

ZipMartin · Mar 1, 2021

Still nobody cares :grog:

Hells Malice · Mar 1, 2021

Their biggest mistake was targeting gamers. They should've targeted potential gamers or the very casual crowd, they're the most likely to waste money on a subscription service anyway. That demographic probably already has 15 media subs to begin with.
But obviously gamers don't want to deal with the issues of game streaming.

Any idiot could predict they spent a ton of money getting big titles. Did people think Rockstar did it out of the kindness of their heart? Come on now. Obviously a large sum of money changed hands. And by a large sum I mean pocket change for google. This won't hurt them at all.

xdarkx · Mar 1, 2021

The money could have gone to their first party studio, but instead they wasted it on third party. Not that they shouldn't try getting third party to their platform, but they should also give their first party time and resources to develop some games. It's pretty clear Google has no idea what they are doing as they don't appear to have any patience for game development which is needed for just about any games.

Just a matter of time before Google pulls the Stadia's plug or sell the tech to some other company.

eyeliner · Mar 1, 2021

Veho said:
Maaaaaybe, but also the fact is that Windows are an enormous resource hog, so they would have massive overhead on every running instance. Porting to their native framework would have saved a ton in the long run.

Would probably be cheaper to fork the money to Microsoft and customize Windows' source code and make it game-centric instead of the do-it-all operating system it is.
That was a retardedly wrong decision that ended up costing them more than the millions burnt. It was time and porting issues as well.

But what the hell do I know.

Stadia failed?
Rent me as the Stadia chairman. I can make it work as a casual frontend for hidden object and match three games. Instead of competing with Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, tackle BigFishGames and the likes. Mobile players would eat that in a heart beat, so no app installs to waste phone storage.

Again, what the hell do I know...

TheGodMauro · Mar 1, 2021

The biggest problem Stadia had is that it never had a sizeable target audience. Core gamers already own a gaming PC and/or a console, plus, consumers are naturally resistant to change, so it's unlikely that they would have shifted platforms to begin with.
Casual gamers are more than happy to play free to play experiences on their phones, not to mention the multitude of indie titles that run on even outdated hardware, most of this group wouldn't even consider paying 60-80$ for a game (Even if they can spend more than that in MTs).

So that leaves us with what? The core gamer that doesn't own a gaming rig or a console, has a good and reliable internet connection, and doesn't mind the possibility that their game collection will disappear when Google finally pulls the plug on this thing. You don't need a market analyst to see that's a fairly small percentage of the population, and since they are core gamers, you need to provide AAA experiences for them, or they will drop the platform. Providing the experiences costs money, money that they will never get back because of their low customer base (*).

It's an Ouroboros of investment, unless they magically start pulling in millions of customers, this thing is going to be short lived.

(*) Google never provided actual user numbers but it's easy to guess that they aren't doing great just because of that, after all, you want to impress investors with numbers for your new platform.

kevin corms · Mar 1, 2021

How else would they get any games on the service? I cant see many more games heading to stadia, google needed to partner with someone to give players a way to play offline.

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TheGodMauro said:
The biggest problem Stadia had is that it never had a sizeable target audience. Core gamers already own a gaming PC and/or a console, plus, consumers are naturally resistant to change, so it's unlikely that they would have shifted platforms to begin with.
Casual gamers are more than happy to play free to play experiences on their phones, not to mention the multitude of indie titles that run on even outdated hardware, most of this group wouldn't even consider paying 60-80$ for a game (Even if they can spend more than that in MTs).

So that leaves us with what? The core gamer that doesn't own a gaming rig or a console, has a good and reliable internet connection, and doesn't mind the possibility that their game collection will disappear when Google finally pulls the plug on this thing. You don't need a market analyst to see that's a fairly small percentage of the population, and since they are core gamers, you need to provide AAA experiences for them, or they will drop the platform. Providing the experiences costs money, money that they will never get back because of their low customer base (*).

It's an Ouroboros of investment, unless they magically start pulling in millions of customers, this thing is going to be short lived.

(*) Google never provided actual user numbers but it's easy to guess that they aren't doing great just because of that, after all, you want to impress investors with numbers for your new platform.

Right! I never understood who the service was really for, you pay full price for each game (and they are usually more expensive than other alternatives) and you have no way to play offline (which other services have options for).

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LightBeam said:
There's also the thing where they said they could stream 4K 60 fps but it was never able to, so you can add false advertisement to that
They really screw anything that could be screwed

Poor leadership, how many more chances will they give Phil Harrison? He might have been good in the 90s maybe (when he had lower positions), but he failed over and over again in the past couple of decades.

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MikaDubbz said:
If Microsoft wasn't already working on Xcloud when Google was working on Stadia, then Google's stab at the cloud gaming industry may have had a better chance. I do think cloud gaming has place in the industry, it can work, and it can only get better as technologies advance. But, the landscape Google was trying to make their own: computers and smart devices, able to stream whatever game they could get ahold of, was also being eyed by Microsoft, and sure enough when Xcloud GamePass launched, it didn't just come to Xbox devices, but also to computers and smart devices. And it came with torrent of games because Microsoft has been in the gaming industry long enough to already have a vast selection on Game Pass, both first party titles and third party titles, many of those third party titles also being available on Stadia. But with Stadia you have to pay per game, while you just pay Microsoft monthly for streaming Game Pass and you're good to play any games in the service.

I have a suspicion that Google had to rush out Stadia because they wanted to beat Microsoft to the punch, but that did them no favors as it definitely launched far too early with all of its initial issues, many of which it still maintains.

As an extra for gamepass its kind of nice, I dont want it to be my primary way to game but its nice to have. I think almost all gamers will agree.

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xdarkx said:
The money could have gone to their first party studio, but instead they wasted it on third party. Not that they shouldn't try getting third party to their platform, but they should also give their first party time and resources to develop some games. It's pretty clear Google has no idea what they are doing as they don't appear to have any patience for game development which is needed for just about any games.

Just a matter of time before Google pulls the Stadia's plug or sell the tech to some other company.

Google never knows what they are doing, they just copy or buy someone else's work. Heck, read about why Steve Jobs hated them so much to get an idea. They did manage to have a slightly better search engine than the competitors early on, which really gave them a lot of power over information and advertising.

Xzi · Mar 1, 2021

Lmao, what a colossal waste. They should've waited to see how the games they developed were received before attempting to take on the industry leaders. Or...y'know, just give the money to charity instead.

Julie_Pilgrim · Mar 1, 2021

Xzi said:
Lmao, what a colossal waste. They should've waited to see how the games they developed were received before attempting to take on the industry leaders. Or...y'know, just give the money to charity instead.

I mean, this is like pocket change to google, they don't really care if they waste it

Jayro · Mar 1, 2021

But they took 5GB of Google Drive space from us just a few years ago... Makes perfect sense.

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Scott_pilgrim said:
I mean, this is like pocket change to google, they don't really care if they waste it

I can give them my Venmo.

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