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Ok Google – Why was Stadia shut down?
The streaming service’s impending shutdown in January 2023 has taken many by surprise. Among them was the developer, who was working towards an exclusive release on the platform until his Stadia VP and General Manager, Phil Harrison, released a blog post. Platform closure details.
Studios like Tequilaworks scrambled to find new homes for their WIP projects. Rime developer’s upcoming game, Gylt, stadium Exclusive ahead of a quick emergency pivot towards a multi-platform release. And they weren’t the only ones in that pickle.
So far, it’s unclear how or if Google will refund the studios that were working on Stadia’s release. It’s also unclear why the tech giant suddenly pulled out of its ambitious cloud gaming project.
“The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia is massively proven and transcends gaming,” Harrison said in the post.
“We see clear opportunities to apply this technology to other parts of Google, such as YouTube, Google Play and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts. Also available for partners.
“We remain deeply committed to gaming and will continue to invest in new tools, technologies, and platforms that help drive the success of our developers, industry partners, cloud customers, and creators.”
Technology over branding
Interesting phrasing, that statement. Google has proven this technology at scale and wants to use it elsewhere in their business. We also want to sell it to other companies who may want to use it for gaming purposes. But as far as that blog reads, Google currently has no interest in using its cloud technology as the foundation for its gaming platform.
And perhaps it has less to do with the internal conspiracies of the giant, mysterious conglomerate, and more to do with what we do on the ground level. .
It’s been in the oven since circa 2003, when Finnish cloud pioneer G-Cluster first provided consumer-level server farm power over top-of-the-line copper cables in the 2000s.Gaikai and live broadcast They each had their own attempts at stealing processing tasks from their local machines in the late 2010s and launched their products in the early 2010s.
In retrospect, those early glimpses into cloud gaming may have done more bad than good. For anyone who sampled OnLive circa 2011 and patiently watched the Vaseline-smeared images of the Assassin’s Creed Revelations update itself, there was a constant agonizing beat behind controller inputs and when Stadia was announced. I certainly felt pain.
dark sky
Not that the concept behind OnLive or Gaikai was flawed.Sony says they Acquired Gaikai for $380 million in 2013PlayStation Share Play, Remote Play, and PlayStation Now service.The previous two are PS3 or PS4but the latter is still in trucking. playstation plus Recent subscription umbrella. It’s been nine years since he’s been in the cloud, and it’s safe to say he’s enjoying the long game in the game.
Microsoft, too, seems happy in the long run. A proprietary cloud gaming service, also associated with monthly gaming subscription passes for platform holders, is currently in beta. Also, if you have an internet connection, it’s not bad. It’s capable of 1080p60 streaming, and there’s still a slight sense of input lag if you’re careful, but it’s light-years beyond OnLive.
And then there’s Nvidia. The California-based multinational has been involved in streaming games for several years, having been pushed into the upper echelons of tech company wealth by mining bitcoin. GeForce nowformerly GeForce NOW, and before that simply Grid, has been around since 2013 and has seen significant improvements since its launch.
When Stadia launched in 2019, you can see why this was an attractive area for Google. All current stakeholders were moving forward. It must have seemed like a bit of an open goal for someone as powerful as Google to come along and legitimize an entire technology by its name, ultimately attracting a mainstream audience.
And when the world had to stay indoors for an indefinite period of time in 2020, Stadia scored a Carnegie Hall reservation. Indeed, these were the perfect conditions for a new gaming platform to break through.
Of course it didn’t happen. Gaming itself boomed during the pandemic, but most of that spending came from mobile games. A smaller percentage of revenue came from traditional game revenue (console, boxed, digital game copies). As for cloud gaming revenue…it was simply too small to count. Earlier this year, he wrote a report for gaming industry investors using sales data from 55 countries. None of the data sets attempted to count cloud gaming as a vertical. Competing against established platforms and distribution channels did not disrupt the market.
bright forecast
I can’t tell you why. I can only say that I was never tempted to try it out and as a lifelong traditional gamer who already owns a PC and a console, I’ve never been interested was.Moreover, the most attractive aspect of cloud gaming is already xbox game pass PlayStation Plus – Netflix subscription model.
This is a huge advantage of streaming services over consoles and PCs. Pay a flat monthly fee and get access to a huge library of games. It’s better than paying $50 for every new release you want to try. Had Stadia been the only service to offer such a model, the console he’s invested in over the years might have pulled people out of the ecosystem.
Without that incentive, your eyes are drawn to the cold reality that cloud gaming technology is only a little shy of being fit for purpose. Input lag is greatly reduced from these slow pioneers, but it’s still there. These are minor things, but we are gamers. You pay thousands of dollars for a machine that can render shadows according to slightly more complicated algorithms. We pay full price for remasters of games released within the last 10 years. Noticing small differences in fidelity is our bread and butter.
Still, there’s a sense that these are just teething woes on the way to the inevitable future of perfectly flawless 4K60 game streaming. Until then, they seem content to sit still and continue investing. Whatever took Google by surprise, one might wonder if the decision would seem silly over time.
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