Google reportedly shut down its Stadia studios a week after praising them | Hacker News Reader

Google reportedly shut down its Stadia studios a week after praising them

theverge.com

36 pointstlogan11 comments

This is an interesting case of a great team, great idea but no follow through. Question - why does Google want to slap its name on things? Why not just make these things offshoot startups with a little seed money and a lot of shares for said seed money - let it do its thing in the wild and collect a nice cheque if things work out and let it die if things don't workout.

One of the reasons the gaming community and tech in general seemed somewhat repulsed by the Google brand and how they treat their products. At this point, everyone is sliently praying Gmail survives whatever internal war Google has when it comes to axing products.

> Why not just make these things offshoot startups with a little seed money and a lot of shares for said seed mone

IMO, this is a great idea. Both SAP and IBM do this with acquisitions that didn't take or internal projects that don't line up with the strategic plan, and it works alright for them: see Qualtrics and Acoustic.co

The only theory I have for why Google hasn't done this is because they're run by engineers and not finance guys, and they think managing a reorg like that would hurt their momentum. but that's just a guess.

> At this point, everyone is sliently praying Gmail survives whatever internal war Google has when it comes to axing products.

I don't think we need to worry too much about this, since Google has monetized GMail through GSuite for businesses, universities, etc.

Is Niantic Google's case?

You're right! I didn't know Niantic started inside Google.

And what do you know - it's a successful game studio! We come full circle to Stadia.

Doesn't surprise me. Doing a great job and making great progress does not guarantee success or security.

A team, program, department, or studio could be doing a great job - but if it no longer aligns with the organization's strategic priorities, it has to go.

If you refuse to axe things that don't make strategic sense just because they're doing well, you'll end up with a confused, directionless mass of expensive high performers. Not great for the bottom line.

Google has gone from an inspiration to an expiration. Man does not live by ads alone.

Facebook begs to differ.

My experience, perhaps based on cynicism, is that when a product or company is at risk and the leadership of that product or company makes a statement about the health or longevity of that product or company, one should expect the exact opposite to happen. For example: when a company buys a different company and claims that there will be “no changes to vision or product lines,” I believe that one should expect exactly those things to occur. When a company is having financial difficulties and states that they have “no plans at this time to lay off any of their workforce,” I believe the staff should immediately start updating their résumés, because very shortly a plan to lay off will be revealed.

Google Stadia has been a product with an uncertain future for some time. Having Google leadership point out how pleased they are with the team should’ve sent the team to a job board to find something new, because by their statement of support they only confirmed the end was near.

But that’s perhaps just my cynicism.

Is this a sign that Stadia is going to be shuttered soon? Is the tech still too early? Or are Xbox and PS just so far ahead?

The studio was shut down because Stadia isn't making money. Stadia as it exists today will almost certainly shut down this year or next. They may not just stop operations, though. They might transform into some kind of cloud service in a more general capacity.

Well at least they tried.

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