Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down

They don't want to scare their users and confirm that it really is shutting down immediately today, or next week. This account is damage control at its finest and Google will release a statement and then wind all of Stadia down, including that Twitter account in denial. Given that Stadia failed in the pandemic, it already failed in general.

I mean, I did say that this information was given to me from the future [0] so I've already watched this unfold once. Now it is unfolding for the second time for real.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039202

Yet on the other hand, if Google really wanted to refute the rumor, they'd say "It's not true, we have a firm roadmap for improvements and expansions etc." And actually have a published roadmap they could point to. Instead they claim they're working on getting new games but from what I can piece together we're about 60% through 2022 and Google has only released 37 of the promised 100+ new games that would come to the platform this year. They could make up some ground but they're not on pace for it.

But then they muddied things up with Stadia Pro, making people think it was actually supposed to a "Netflix for games" subscription service, and crucially making Stadia Pro the only SKU for a very long time. So rather than the really appealing entry point to console gaming that people could have easily tried, they ended up targeting the exact people for whom Stadia was the worst fit (hardcore gamers with existing console owners and large game libraries).

>PS3

performed extremely well, beating Xbox 360 by a fairly thin margin.

>Gaikai

sold for $380M USD to Sony (most people consider this a success, even if you think it should have been more.)

>Xbox One

lost to the PS4 by a factor of two but was still successful (50 million est. lifetime sales)

Even if every single thing he was in charge of failed catastrophically, anyone who isn't looking closely is going to see someone with a huge amount of industry expertise working on some of the largest and most successful products to ever exist full stop (not just in gaming.)

Phil Harrison is an absolute tool though.

No where near as good and as stable as Stadia, also the monthly fee is a pain. With Stadia you can just buy the game and then play when you want, I don't think there is anything else like that.

Not sure if game pass is better but the price would put me off a little bit, because we only play for a few hours every couple of weeks.

So yes, it's Google's turn to show commitment and keep their services running. Plus, the possible loss with keeping Stadia up should also be weighted against this cementing their reputation.

However, those services could be profitable, just at a smaller scale. They could keep them around and exploit them without too much investments. This is what other large companies do, they won't break the experience for their customers because they value them.

Google has another approach.

Selling access to a machine on demand seems much more appealing.

GeForce NOW, despite initial problems with publishers, will always leave you with the option of moving to a different service or building your own machine to run the games you own.

Spin off non-core companies as soon as humanly possible with some investment and simply be a (majority) investor in them instead.

If they were serious about Stadia, Google should have worked to provide experiences only Stadia could allow. That was one tagline of SG&E before it was canned a mere 18 months in - clear failure on Google's part because you can't develop a game that fast.

As for what could have gone differently - cut deals with smart TV manufacturers to include the Stadia app on the TV, making it easy for millions to try it out.

Instead, the Stadia app wasn't even on the Chromecast initially. (OK, memory vague here but I remember having to fiddle around and after upgrading from the Chromecast that came with the Cyberpunk 2077 bundle to Google TV with Chromecast or whatever they were calling it, it was still a while before the Stadia app was there or left beta).

I also thought Google should have done a sports game tie-in, or perhaps F1 racing, to essentially let viewers replay something they just watched. Kind of a live replay, where YOU control the offense/defense/car. Say you're watching a soccer match and team X scores. During a break, advertise Stadia's version of FIFA, click a button and replay the scoring play where you control one of the teams. Can you also score, or can you defend??

Yes this would be complicated licensing and software between TV ads, game maker, license holders, etc. but it would have showcased an advantage Stadia had over traditional consoles/pc gamers - immediacy, play right on your TV in response to something you just watched. Brady just score a touchdown - can you do it to, or play defense and stop it (pick up Stadia controller, click some buttons or whatever and get dropped into that scenario, ready to play)??

I think this would have had insane appeal among sports fans, building excitement, etc. But no, Stadia just crapped itself and cancelled their in-house studio and basically tread water for the rest of the time.

Other companies like Amazon and Sony are also no stranger to product cancellations. The major difference is that when Amazon or Sony cancels a product, they will refund early adopters the cost of the product. Google isn’t willing to do that.

I think the basic model will eventually work out, though. The bandwidth is there. The compute has to be cheap enough that the biz model works by just taking the retailer's cut of the title sale + maybe a tad more. The tad more can come from one-time hardware sales and maybe better negotiated cuts of the sale from the studios. I would never ever have purchased a copy of any AAA title without Stadia and similar services. I think the same is true for almost all Stadia purchases.

But Google's failure here makes sense. It's a low margin game. google sucks at low margin games.

Nearly all software produced currently ships out with the assumption that updates can easily be pushed out. As a concrete example, twenty years from now I don't want to play the original Mario Kart 8 that shipped when the switch was released, I would want to play the Mario Kart 8 that has double the levels that they are currently slowly dropping over the next year. The ideal situation would be an ability to write that information back to the card.

Couple that with another law that enforces consumers ability to roll back updates to any previous version they desire and you're fully protected with the ability to play your games essentially forever

Then let the industry figure out the technical details. Most of these services amount to a bog standard download of encrypted files. There is absolutely nothing about this that requires any more than the most basic infrastructure anybody reading this could set up.

Alternatively, we force them to describe these time boxed, locked down, lacking basic consumer rights things we're purchasing as the rentals they actually are.

Decriminalization of piracy so people can support themselves would be a good start, but I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

You do, but if Google literally dropped support of their phones, you'd never get another security update, so it'd be in your best interest to move although not mandatory like if Stadia shut down. The comparison is about peoples' visceral reaction to Google products when they're disappointed, not specifically when the product is dropped.

> What significant things are much better on non-Google Android phones?

Not my point and frankly I have no clue: I've had a google android phone of some kind or another since the G1, which if that reference is lost on you is the original android phone.

why would I do that when I can buy a game on Steam or GOG or even outright pirate it, run it on my local machine, don't need to worry about internet upstream capacity, and I can take it anywhere?

it never made any sense and will never make sense.

In return you'll have a nearly endless catalog of games (including from older generations), 4K, no compression or lag issues.

Here, there is none.

Stadia will exist by the end of the summer. You don’t have to believe me. Like I said feel free to come back to this thread in October.

Like, expensive and bad? I had better internet in my paremts' summer hut than in Palo Alto.

I played through the first third of Arkham Asylum using OnLive. The nail in the coffin for me at the time was the paltry selection of games; I couldn’t justify the subscription.

I work for a European ISP though, so I’ve generally had better-than-most internet service for the last 20 years.

In a more realistic version, it is exactly what Netflix does - they pay to have Netflix streaming servers running in local ISP centers in much of the world where there are Netflix customers.

no games were actually purchased, so customers are free to take their complaints and do exactly nothing with them.

(yes, this is egregious)

Adoption of stadia was sufficiently small that Google will pay the full refund cost just to prevent PR damage or lawsuit losses (and take the loss themselves, because the game developer isn't going to want to give a refund).

But technically when you buy a game you're not really buying a game anymore, there's no physical item purchased.

You're merely purchasing a temporary non-transferable license to use it.

Back in the '90s if I gave you a Game boy game, it now belonged to you. I guess if I started a company renting them out Nintendo could sue me for copyright infringement though.

Now when I download a game, I'm merely permitted temporary usage. I can't give it to you

No way the gaming community would be opposed to such a thing.

I do wish that a major government would pass a law to this effect- if you advertise something as "buy", "purchase", or "own" then you need to have and execute on a plan to ensure access in perpetuity, even if you go out of business.

* XBox fitness remains the best product I've ever used that didn't make it in the market.

I don't think it's "trivial" though. They probably have to do some negotiation with both Steam as well as each individual publisher of games on the service.

Between their inability to provide support while a service is up and their consistent lack of long term vision/ investment for the services they create, it's just not worth it.

I can't imagine I'm the only one making significant financial decisions based on this sort of thought process.

I can't really understand how people can trust google domains.

Google still exists, and has plenty of money to make all Stadia customers whole by buying them a retail copy of all of the games. But they choose not to because they are greedy.

Note: I am not a Stadia customer because I figured this would happen.

I think they were worth the price I paid for them.

Stadia was never marketed much and always had a tiny library with no cross play. The moment Nvidia stepped up, Stadia was dead.

Killing of stadia only reaffirms peoples fear to use google products. This includes GCP.

When I think about it, my family still has photographs from 70 years ago sitting around in family albums.

Whereas I now struggle to find pictures I took 7 years ago.

I am slowly moving all my customers/clients away from Google Analytics, mostly to Matomo. Couldn’t be happier. Some clients can also diversify their ad spending to other platforms. Google needs to start feeling what “customer service” means, for now it has none.

Everyone on HN predicted this, and the only way I would have ever trusted Stadia would be with a CEO-level promise of refunding all purchases if they shut down within 10 years.

That's honestly the magic of Nvidia's streaming service. You're paying for the streaming, not the game. You then link your Steam account and play. So if Nvidia's streaming service shuts down, I still have the games I paid for in steam. It's genius, and the only way I'd ever consider paying for cloud gaming. While I don't like the Xbox game pass method, as you own nothing, at least you're renting and not buying, so you're not technically losing anything if you leave or they shut down.

It was utterly shocking that Google did not copy Nvidia's streaming games bough on other stores idea, especially with so many people are fearful of a Google shutdown.

It's also a mystery to me why Valve hasn't done what Nvidia did. Presumably they will at some point. Unless they don't want to risk other cloud providers from pulling their games from steam.

Assuming the rumor about Stadia is true, then in hindsight, this is directly tarnishing the reputation of those other products. Every canceled product does, but it's strange to see it in writing. Although I wouldn't give this comment much weight, it's clearly dodging the answer.

Why can't everything be licensed directly from the right owner of a game so that the license of a game can be transferred from one streaming service to another?

If you read this - run. Or ignore everything that comes after as it's filled with lies.

As it was released, I had zero interest in Stadia for all the reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread. And I am the perfect target consumer for Stadia. I have a large monthly budget for games, I travel enough that it makes sense to have a portable gaming platform, and I embrace tech early. Even with all this, I had zero interest in Stadia simply because it was a Google product that I knew would be canceled.

Call my cynical. But I don't see this happening.

I think programming languages are a bit different. (Assuming they're not encumbered by patents / trademarks / copyright the way Java was/is.)

If Google decides to bail on Carbon, any design work, published implementations, etc. remain accessible for others to use or build upon.

If Google were to abandon Carbon, the main risk I see is that Google would not longer contribute to Carbon's refinement and implementation. So maybe that would reduce the odds of Carbon reaching critical mass, but it wouldn't flat out prevent people from legally continuing to use it.

To be fair that's normally the case for Google.

You will own nothing and be happy. Great.

I think the real failing is what you stated - biz dev and brand reputation.

Read the other replies and you will see folks say "There were no games" or "The selection was limited." Why in the world would a major game company hesitate to invest in google and google services? Well, if you have a reputation of killing off your services like the grim reaper, I imagine that would come up in an executive risk assessment.

Google can fix their reputation but its going to take a lot of work. Consider Microsoft's reputation in the late mid to late 90's on slashdot and other forums compared to their reputation today. It took a lot of work but possible.

Googles going to have to put down the scythe though.

I am now pretty reluctant to pay to keep any games though with this rumour alive.

My impression is that Google has actually changed how new initiatives are funded from the exec layer, such that there’s less likelihood of completely overlapping products being created, such as a new messaging service. I could be wrong about that, and even if I’m right it might change again in the future, but at least for now I’d be surprised to see a new messaging service get launched.

Can I interest you in a sixth, incompatible rewrite of Google Wallet instead that will only launch in India while you make Google Pay 7.0 ?

If the rumor is true, the service is killed off.

If the rumor is false, well it sounds like something google would do, and consumers will hesitate to buy into it and businesses definitely won't. I've read and written my fair share of executive summaries before - I imagine this would make its way into it.

That's the difference, there simply wasn't any point investing in Stadia, because, well, this. There was no value to achivements, generated media, friend circles or god-forbid buying games because we knew it was going to be cancelled.

What kind of gaming platform randomly bans high profile game devs. because an automated Youtube bot told them to? A bad joke of one.

> It does in fact work quite well.

Didn't they fake high res video streams by up scaling bad renders? Haven't used it but as far as I understand there was quite a bit of overpromising and underdelivering going on.

> other first-party console alternatives,

Their competition would be GeForce Now from NVIDIA. Which not only is still a thing but also predates Stadia by several years.

> agreed that it was a good experience...and then pretty much never touched it again.

So did the free trial run out? Where the games crap? Have you ever asked them why they decided that it wasn't worth using?

No need. Sony and Microsoft have their own (quite good) tech for this.

Sony's actually been in the game streaming game for nearly a decade. PS Now launched in 2014. I haven't used it personally, but I hear it's great.

Microsoft xCloud has been available for almost two years, in preview for a year before that. I got home once and found my wife playing Dragon Age II. I sat and watched for a little, then she quit the game, and only then did I discover she had been streaming it. My jaw hit the floor. I had no idea that it was being streamed. Truly impressive tech.

I agree! They really gave Console as a Service a shot. But back in the day when it was launching, my take was that the "new console" part of it was secondary. The core goal would have been to get a foot in the game streaming market for their Android TV / Cast platform.

> dug in instead of pivoting

If this rumour is true, maybe that's exactly what's happening. They've proven that the experience is good enough for people to play games on it, and even pay for the privilege. So it's technically sound (depending on geography).

Gamers aren't going to play through the entire new Skyrim on Stadia, Google knows that. But what about Gamers (in the right geographical location) watching a Youtube video on their smart TV being served an ad? That ad for the new Skyrim has a "Play demo now" button, no download required, instant gameplay. Now that's an expensive ad if I've ever seen one.