Stadia's death spiral, according to the Google employee in charge of mopping up after its murder
Stadia's death spiral, according to the Google employee in charge of mopping up after its murder
We all think we know why Stadia died. Here's Google's official take.
A statement from a Google employee, Dov Zimring, has been released as a part of the FTC vs Microsoft court case (via 9to5Google). Only minorly redacted, the statement gives us a run down of Google's position leading up to Stadia's closure and why, ultimately, Stadia was in a death spiral long before its actual demise.
"For Stadia to succeed, both consumers and publishers needed to find sufficient value in the Stadia platform. Stadia conducted user experience research on the reasons why gamers choose one platform over another. That research showed that the primary reasons why gamers choose a game platform are (1) content catalog (breadth and depth) and (2) network effects (where their friends play).
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"However, Stadia never had access to the extensive library of games available on Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam. More importantly, these competing services offered a wider selection of AAA games than Stadia," Zimring says.
According to the statement, Google would also offer to pay some, or all, of the costs associated with porting a game to Stadia's Linux-based streaming platform to try and get more games on the platform. Still, in Google's eyes, this wasn't enough to compete with easier platforms to develop for, such as Nvidia's GeForce Now.
The worst thing about Stadia was the squandered opportunities. Had Google actually put some effort into marketing it, it could have really succeeded. The tech behind it worked amazingly well. I played Destiny 2 on it from launch to the service's shutdown, and it was a fantastic experience. The latency was nowhere near as bad as people (who often never even tried the platform) would claim, and it was also the best place to play Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, as it was somehow the most stable version of the game. Streaming to YouTube worked very well, and some of the integrated features with YouTube (where viewers could interact with certain games) were also kinda groundbreaking.
But somehow, Google couldn't be bothered to advertise the product at all. They ran 1 Super Bowl commercial which didn't make a whole lot of sense to the average viewer, and then basically zero marketing after that. They refused to inform the public about what the product is or how it worked or what stood it apart from its competition, which led to bad-faith reviews and rumors being spread about the platform, ultimately leading to most people who knew about Stadia being wildly misinformed on it.
It's such a shame. I absolutely loved Stadia. It fit my needs perfectly. None of the other streaming platforms I've tried have even come close, even today.
I was intrigued but I didn't want to invest in it because of Google's history of killing great products.
They have some great tools for their cloud platform but at this point, I wouldn't go all in on any new product of theirs.
But somehow, Google couldn't be bothered to advertise the product at all. They ran 1 Super Bowl commercial which didn't make a whole lot of sense to the average viewer, and then basically zero marketing after that.
Google is really bad at marketing despite being an advertising company. Most of the products they've launched then shut down I just never heard of, despite finding the ideas behind them really enticing after the fact.
Google is really bad at marketing despite being an advertising company.
They're an ad server, not an ad producer. They don't make ads of their own, they distribute other's ads.
Small distinction, but helps to explain why Google is terrible at marketing their products.
I always loved the "hardware running 24/7" e-waste part of it
I owned a ps4 that I must have played 60 hours on for spiderman and horizon and now it's never going to be used anymore
Would've loved a streaming platform that doesn't cost a whole console in a year in subscription fees + makes you pay for the games
Would’ve loved a streaming platform that doesn’t cost a whole console in a year in subscription fees + makes you pay for the games
Stadia's subscription service wouldn't have cost more than a console for several years. It was only $10/month, and also not required to play the games or use multiplayer.
It would've taken over 4 years for Stadia Pro's subscription costs to reach the price of a PS5, not even including a PS+ subscription. And during that time, you'd have been able to claim ~150 free games. Realistically, Stadia had the potential to be more economic than buying a console.
The tech behind it worked amazingly well.
In my experience it was pretty shit. While visiting family in Minnesota, I got a better experience using Steam remote play to my desktop in Seattle than I did using Stadia, both in terms of latency and visual quality. I’m sure it would have been better living in California or New York, where you’re closer to a datacenter. But Doom Eternal was just unplayable for me.
I got one, was super disappointed with the functionality and didn't like it at all. Returned it in less than a week. I got it after it'd already been steeply discounted and was so glad I hated it and got a refund when they killed it....
Despite Google being heavily invested in the advertising space, they have always been terrible at advertising their own products. It almost seems like the top brass don't actually care about their non-search products at all.
Google couldn't be bothered to advertise the product at all. Except, apparently, to me specifically. I must have seen the same handful of Stadia advertisements literally 100+ times while watching YouTube. I got very sick of it after a certain point.
Yeah a product like that needs a Big Personality to be a sort of spokesperson for it. To go around and do the press circuit, and be the face of the product. Get memed, etc.
My guess is it was just a bunch of well meaning nerds behind this one, and no one wanted to actually go out there and bat for it.
Because everything ran locally at a datacenter, the real killer app of Stadia would have been a super-massively multiplayer game. There wouldn't be any problems with latency between game states, (any lag would be between the server and the console.) Imagine massive wars or mediaeval battles with thousands of participants. They never developed games that took advantage of what was unique about the platform.
AFAIK, MMOs keep all the game state on the servers already. The difference is that what they send to the client is key deltas to the game state, which the client then renders. Stadia type services instead render that on the datacenter side and send the client images.
With their expertise at networking and so-on, Google might have been able to get a slight advantage in server-to-server communication, but it wouldn't have enabled anything on a whole different scale, AFAIK.
IMO, their real advantage was that they could have dealt with platform switching in a seamless way. So, take an addictive turn-by-turn game like Civilization. Right now someone might play 20 turns before work, then commute in, think about it all day, then jump back in when they get home. With Stadia, they could have let you keep playing on your cell phone as you take the train into work. Play a few turns on a smoke break. Maybe play on a web browser on your work computer if it's a slow day. Then play again on your commute home, then play on the TV at home, but if someone wanted to watch a show, you could either go up and play on a PC, or pull out your phone, or play on a laptop...
Larger massive multiplayer capability was one of the features Google was touting upon Stadia's launch:
Over time, Buser [Google’s director of games] says we should not only see additional exclusive games on Stadia, but also cross-platform games doing things on Stadia “that would be impossible to do on a console or PC.” Instead of dividing up virtual worlds into tiny "shards" where only 100 or 150 players can occupy the same space at a time because of the limitations of individual servers, he says Google’s internal network can support living, breathing virtual worlds filled with thousands of simultaneous players.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/6/18654632/google-stadia-price-release-date-games-bethesda-ea-doom-ubisoft-e3-2019
You'd only be able to play with people local to you, in the same Stadia datacenter. If Stadia wanted to minimize latency, they would increase the number of datacenters (thus making fewer people per instance).
I will never, ever, understand why Stadia was something thay had to be "ported into" at such high cost. Specially for games that were ALREADY working on Linux. Like, what the fuck was the hold up. I read up stories that it was basically like porting to a fourth console and that just sounded outrageously stupid in my head.
Whatever tech stack they had, they could have made it way more profitable by making it generic windows boxes that partially run your library elsewhere. I dunno if there's some hubris or some licensing bullshit behind it, but fact is, if I want to do this on GeForce Now, I can do it, no questions asked, and as the costumer, that's the beginning and end of my concerns.
Google engineers always choose the hardest route to solve problems. Why wouldn't they? If your products are going to be shutdown in a few years anyway, might as well have a glowing resume from working on those products (resume-driven development).
Think about it, every time Google made a product with sensible tech stacks, those products were actually started outside Google and later bought by Google (Android, YouTube, etc). If Google made Android from scratch, there is no way they'll use java and Linux, they'll invent a new language and made their own kernel instead (just like fuchsia os which might be canned soon).
might as well have a glowing resume from working on those products (resume-driven development).
This is so true. Getting promoted requires showing impact. If you use off-the-shelf tools (that happen to be easily maintainable) that's not an impressive impact. If you invent a new language (and make up a convincing reason it was necessary) and so-on, that's really impressive and you can get promoted. The minefield you leave behind that makes maintaining your solution so difficult is just another opportunity for someone else to get promoted.
The thing was clearly designed to force you into paying a subscription fee. You can't let people have something they could possibly easily use and play games that aren't on your subscription if your entire purpose is to milk a monthly subscription from the users. Google, fuck you capitalism woohoo.
Only Microsoft can run decently windows in a decently big data centers. Because they can tweak it, as they do for Xbox os as well. For everyone else scaling windows server VMs or containers is a pain, because windows is a bad, poorly optimized, resources-hungry OS developed with main goal to make hardware obsolete every 3-5 years.
I don't know what nvidia is doing, but when I use it at my friends' places, lags are painful.
Linux was the right call in theory, in practice gaming industry is pretty broken on the PC side with its lock on windows, as we see on every new AAA port... Let's hope valve can save it, but I doubt.
One of the main issues with Stadia is that they didn't even do the basics. I saw basically no marketing, and on top of that, I heard all kinds of rumors about the business model that were entirely false. They made no effort to combat the misinformation. It was never the case that you literally had to purchase the game on top of the subscription fees, but that was like the number one issue brought up in every discussion.
It was never the case that you literally had to purchase the game on top of the subscription fees
It depends on the game. There were a bunch of games under "Stadia Play" that came along with the subscription, GamePass style. And then there were games you had to outright purchase.
It's been how long now? TIL that was false. 🤷
From everything I can see, you did have to buy games on Stadia. They would give you a free game a month, but if that wasn't the game you wanted to play, you had to buy it. The base version of Stadia was free, but the Pro version gave you a discount on games - it did not make them free.
This is the official support forum and there are many Q&A's about purchasing games:
https://community.stadia.com/t5/Payments-Billing/Can-t-buy-games-in-the-Store-OR-HDT-01/m-p/52482
Got my Stadia Pro account with a credit card...
... If you have an Android device, you can also try via the Stadia app to purchase games (once purchased, you can play them everywhere, on mobile, TV or PC).
The main problem with stadia was Google. I knew it was doomed from the start and that's why I never bothered with it. I actually know a lot of people that didn't bother with it because it was from Google. It's basically a self fulfilling prophecy at this point that most of their shit ends up on the Google graveyard.
A lot of people actually don't trust Google anymore since they've already been screwed over many times by them.
It's interesting that this comes out during the FTC vs Microsoft case.
As much as Google shot itself in the foot, as usual, this also shows the anti-competitive landscape in gaming. One of the biggest issues Google had was convincing AAA studios to develop games for their "console". Meanwhile, Microsoft is solving that by buying studios like Zenimax, Mojang, and soon Actiblizz. If you own the studio, they're guaranteed to develop for your console, and they may choose not to develop for any competitor's consoles.
Big air quotes on "choose."
But it has always been that way, with first party titles and exclusives , even purchasing studios like Rare or Psygnosis, its not like a brand new situation that developed right after Google announced Stadia.
If Google had done even any research, I would have started by looking at the PS1 launch and how Sony broke into a market then dominated by Nintendo and Sega with their exclusives, they would have secured a multi year pipeline of AAA titles before launch.
This is a mess Google could have completely avoided with some basic research and discussion with the remaining independent studios. Instead they launched and assumed that they could fix this shit later, rather than making an informed decision on if they actually had a real chance.
its not like a brand new situation that developed right after Google announced Stadia
No, but it's telling that one of the world's richest companies ran into this problem. It's pretty typical of Google to be arrogant and not understand the market they were trying to break into. Also typical of them to give up when it turned out to be a hard problem to solve. But, still, they chose to give up rather than make what (for them) would have been a reasonably small investment to buy a few AAA studios.
It seems to me that to have been successful in this attempt they would have either had to become a major console manufacturer with their own exclusives (maybe not a market they wanted to be in) or to be the junior partner working with another console manufacturer, where they controlled the server side and the other company controlled the client-facing and studio-facing side. But, Google rarely does partnerships like that. You're right that it really seems like they didn't go into it with their eyes open. They seemed to just arrogantly assume that their technological superiority would be enough to disrupt consoles without having to do what everybody else did.
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I stuck with Gamepass because I am a PC gamer. I toyed with PSN but the PS5 controller was not natively recognized by the client at the time I was testing it, which is dumb as fuck. Steam will pick up the controller and use their drivers for most games, but the PSN service just didn't work with the PS5 controller natively.
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Not exactly a unique situation to Stadia. Look at any failed console and lack of games is a prominent reason given why.
Not to mention the issues raised from a cloud service streaming platform that plagued previous attempts. I'm honestly surprised Stadia lasted as long as it did.
Which is why steam went whole hog into proton development for the steam deck. It's brilliant strategy. Suddenly their game catalog is immediately available on the device. So users can play games they already own and will have access to hundreds of others day one.
Wow, this is news to exactly nobody.