And here's another bit of gaming news: Google is 'deprioritizing'
Stadia, it's online video gaming streaming service.

Again, this revelation isn't all that surprising. Stadia has been on
life-support from pretty much the day it was announced. It is perhaps
understandable that Stadia had a rough start; in 2019, people were
much more wary of streaming services for games then. That's less so
the case today; while there is still a sizeable percentage of gamers
who look askance at the idea, there's an equally large group who are
fine with the idea. Other companies have managed to weather their
rocky starts; why hasn't Stadia?

Reputation has been one significant factor; Google (nee' Alphabet) has
a habit of shuttering unprofitable services (see
https://killedbygoogle.com/) and nobody - neither gamers nor
developers - wanted to invest in a product that might be gone in two
years. Google did little to reassure customers on either side either.
Add to that Google's continuing legal and privacy issues; neither of
which would have killed the product, but they continually portrayed
the corporation in a bad light.

As important was cost, and again this affected both sides of the video
game market. Developers had to pay to be listed and used by Stadia,
and gamers had to buy games specifically for the platform. Compared to
products like nvidia's GeForce Now program (which allowed you to
bring-your-own-game from markets like Steam and Epic) or Microsoft's
xCloud (pay a monthly subscription for access to a host of games) and
the price just didn't make sense.

Stadia's initial offering was poor too; there were practically no
games available on its service at start, and - given that lack and the
above problems - they had a hard time recruiting new developers and
new gamers. That, of course, only led to a nasty feedback loop which
had everybody wondering 'how soon before Google shutters the whole
thing?' and scaring away even more customers.

Well, Stadia is not dead yet but neither is it showing much signs of
life. Google is now transitioning Stadia towards being something more
akin to an API that developers can use as a backend for developing
their own streaming product. This, at least, cuts the end-user out of
the picture; no need to worry about how few gamers actually use Stadia
because they aren't the customers anymore. Now it's all about the
developers-developers-developers! Except Google still hasn't offered
publishers any real reassurance to the product's longevity or any
reason to use it over any of Stadia's competitors.

Honestly, it's sort of amusing watching how Google - a company once so
highly praised for its technical and marketing prowess - flounder so
ridiculously with a product that could have been a smash hit. In some
ways, I see this as an 'the emperor has no clothes' moment for the
company. It won't kill Google - it might not even kill Stadia - but it
is revealing how a company which knows so much about its customers can
still screw up so badly. And if that's the case, how valuable is all
that accumulated data after all? I bet I'm not the only one wondering
about that...

On 05/02/2022 21:07, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> And here's another bit of gaming news: Google is 'deprioritizing'
> Stadia, it's online video gaming streaming service.
>

[snip]
I'd actually forgotten all about it.

The reviews I saw of it where pretty savage especially when what you got
was compared to other platforms in terms of both price and performance.
One I remember in particular was how many games were virtually
unplayable without using a wired connection.

Am 05.02.22 um 22:07 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
> And here's another bit of gaming news: Google is 'deprioritizing'
> Stadia, it's online video gaming streaming service.

Stadia was dead in the water to begin with...

Am 06.02.22 um 10:33 schrieb Werner P.:
> Am 05.02.22 um 22:07 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
>> And here's another bit of gaming news: Google is 'deprioritizing'
>> Stadia, it's online video gaming streaming service.
>
> Stadia was dead in the water to begin with...
What I meant with that was, that I am not sure where they wanted to go
with it. No game streaming service before was successful in a sense that
it had mass market, the problems always were lag, high traffic which
then caused high fees...
Gamestreaming works excellently in lans, but for remote connections it
works only for certain genres really well, which tend to be on the less
popular side.

The semi successful services atm all allow at least local downloads
wherever it is possible. Stadia is not one of them.

The next turd will be the Meta Verse or whatever Facebook dreams of it.
Second Life reloaded with uncomfortable headsets...

On 06/02/2022 09:35, Werner P. wrote:
> Am 06.02.22 um 10:33 schrieb Werner P.:
>> Am 05.02.22 um 22:07 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
>>> And here's another bit of gaming news: Google is 'deprioritizing'
>>> Stadia, it's online video gaming streaming service.
>>
>> Stadia was dead in the water to begin with...
> What I meant with that was, that I am not sure where they wanted to go
> with it. No game streaming service before was successful in a sense that
> it had mass market, the problems always were lag, high traffic which
> then caused high fees...
> Gamestreaming works excellently in lans, but for remote connections it
> works only for certain genres really well, which tend to be on the less
> popular side.
>
> The semi successful services atm all allow at least local downloads
> wherever it is possible. Stadia is not one of them.
>
> The next turd will be the Meta Verse or whatever Facebook dreams of it.
> Second Life reloaded with uncomfortable headsets...
>

I kinda see the idea behind it (no expensive PC to worry about) but I'm
just not sure the technology is really up to it. Removing your ownership
of games one step further away, that's a bit of a no for me.

On Tue, 8 Feb 2022 09:26:54 +0000, JAB <noway@co.uk> wrote:

>On 06/02/2022 09:35, Werner P. wrote:
>> Am 06.02.22 um 10:33 schrieb Werner P.:
>>> Am 05.02.22 um 22:07 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
>>>> And here's another bit of gaming news: Google is 'deprioritizing'
>>>> Stadia, it's online video gaming streaming service.
>>>
>>> Stadia was dead in the water to begin with...
>> What I meant with that was, that I am not sure where they wanted to go
>> with it. No game streaming service before was successful in a sense that
>> it had mass market, the problems always were lag, high traffic which
>> then caused high fees...
>> Gamestreaming works excellently in lans, but for remote connections it
>> works only for certain genres really well, which tend to be on the less
>> popular side.
>>
>> The semi successful services atm all allow at least local downloads
>> wherever it is possible. Stadia is not one of them.
>>
>> The next turd will be the Meta Verse or whatever Facebook dreams of it.
>> Second Life reloaded with uncomfortable headsets...
>>
>
>I kinda see the idea behind it (no expensive PC to worry about) but I'm
>just not sure the technology is really up to it. Removing your ownership
>of games one step further away, that's a bit of a no for me.

(Assuming you are talking about game streaming and not Facebook's
Metaverse)
Today's technology is generally capable of providing a high-quality
stream, but to maximize it comes with a cost - in hardware and network
capacity - that most services aren't really interested in paying yet.
So instead they use less bandwidth and slower-hardware, and the end
result is a noticable - but not necessarily significant - degradation
in visual quality. But I can't blame them; if they had to run dual
GeForce 3800s on the fastest CPUs for every gamer, the cost would add
up pretty quickly and nobody would pay for their service.

(side note: Apparently Microsoft uses XBoxes for many of its GameCloud
streams. If you play Forza Horizons 5, you get the Xbox logo preceding
the game ;-)

Latency is always the bigger issue, and I'm not sure if technology
will ever solve that issue (well, unless somebody discovers some way
to push electrons faster-than-light, and then why the hell are we
still bothering with video games? ;-). I notice latency even when
streaming games locally; when pushing the signal across a continent,
it can't help but be a wee bit longer. Still, it's not so bad you
can't compensate for it, and for many games (those not depending on
split-second timing) it's hardly an issue at all.

Stadia's business model was always a stupid one; they were double- (or
even triple-) dipping, expecting gamers to pay for the service, then
pay for the game, and also getting publishers to pay them too. Other
services - be it Microsoft or Sony's subscriptions or even nvidia's
free offering - are 'good enough', especially if you can't afford (or
don't want to pay) for a high-end PC. 'True PC Gamers' (whomever that
may be) will likely always prefer to run the software locally, but for
many people, streaming works well enough for them.

Your concerns about ownership are absolutely valid too, but
unfortunately it's not an issue enough people care about. I suspect
that in ten or fifteen years, being able to buy a game will be fairly
rare, unfortunately. Fortunately, I'll have such a huge stockpile of
games by that point that I'll barely notice ;-)

On 08/02/2022 20:46, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2022 09:26:54 +0000, JAB <noway@co.uk> wrote:
>
>> On 06/02/2022 09:35, Werner P. wrote:
>>> Am 06.02.22 um 10:33 schrieb Werner P.:
>>>> Am 05.02.22 um 22:07 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
>>>>> And here's another bit of gaming news: Google is 'deprioritizing'
>>>>> Stadia, it's online video gaming streaming service.
>>>>
>>>> Stadia was dead in the water to begin with...
>>> What I meant with that was, that I am not sure where they wanted to go
>>> with it. No game streaming service before was successful in a sense that
>>> it had mass market, the problems always were lag, high traffic which
>>> then caused high fees...
>>> Gamestreaming works excellently in lans, but for remote connections it
>>> works only for certain genres really well, which tend to be on the less
>>> popular side.
>>>
>>> The semi successful services atm all allow at least local downloads
>>> wherever it is possible. Stadia is not one of them.
>>>
>>> The next turd will be the Meta Verse or whatever Facebook dreams of it.
>>> Second Life reloaded with uncomfortable headsets...
>>>
>>
>> I kinda see the idea behind it (no expensive PC to worry about) but I'm
>> just not sure the technology is really up to it. Removing your ownership
>> of games one step further away, that's a bit of a no for me.
>
> (Assuming you are talking about game streaming and not Facebook's
> Metaverse)
> Today's technology is generally capable of providing a high-quality
> stream, but to maximize it comes with a cost - in hardware and network
> capacity - that most services aren't really interested in paying yet.
> So instead they use less bandwidth and slower-hardware, and the end
> result is a noticable - but not necessarily significant - degradation
> in visual quality. But I can't blame them; if they had to run dual
> GeForce 3800s on the fastest CPUs for every gamer, the cost would add
> up pretty quickly and nobody would pay for their service.
>
> (side note: Apparently Microsoft uses XBoxes for many of its GameCloud
> streams. If you play Forza Horizons 5, you get the Xbox logo preceding
> the game ;-)
>
> Latency is always the bigger issue, and I'm not sure if technology
> will ever solve that issue (well, unless somebody discovers some way
> to push electrons faster-than-light, and then why the hell are we
> still bothering with video games? ;-). I notice latency even when
> streaming games locally; when pushing the signal across a continent,
> it can't help but be a wee bit longer. Still, it's not so bad you
> can't compensate for it, and for many games (those not depending on
> split-second timing) it's hardly an issue at all.
>

The technology part was really both of those. So the infrastructure
isn't available at a general consumer level and the increased latency
does seem to be one that's hard to get around.

I do agree though that for a lot of games a high quality video stream
and increased latency isn't a big problem (well unless you promised 4K
graphics and it turned out that wasn't true then people might be a tad
upset) but I have a feeling that the games where it is important are the
type of games you need a high end PC for and if you can't play games
like that then what's the point?

> Stadia's business model was always a stupid one; they were double- (or
> even triple-) dipping, expecting gamers to pay for the service, then
> pay for the game, and also getting publishers to pay them too. Other
> services - be it Microsoft or Sony's subscriptions or even nvidia's
> free offering - are 'good enough', especially if you can't afford (or
> don't want to pay) for a high-end PC. 'True PC Gamers' (whomever that
> may be) will likely always prefer to run the software locally, but for
> many people, streaming works well enough for them.
>

It does look pretty bad value compared to say GeForce Now and I believe
I read a review that looked at the problems with latency between the two
and GeForce Now clearly came out on top.

> Your concerns about ownership are absolutely valid too, but
> unfortunately it's not an issue enough people care about. I suspect
> that in ten or fifteen years, being able to buy a game will be fairly
> rare, unfortunately. Fortunately, I'll have such a huge stockpile of
> games by that point that I'll barely notice ;-)
>

I'm not sure how it's going to go and although I'm ok with the Steam
model (partially because it's Valve) I really don't like the idea of
indirectly renting games. If I compare it to say Netflix, we watch quite
a lot of it just to pass the time or it's something that we'll watch
once and never watch again. I do also buy the odd DVD for something that
I think is a keeper.

Games just aren't the same to me as the majority are in the keeper
category for at least ten years and sometimes longer.

Part of the problem (if you can call it that) is that you have a new
generation who have been brought up with the idea that the world of
entertainment media is based on downloading but not actual ownership so
it'll be interesting to say what happens when the first big player goes
bust.

Something else I see in the longer term is governments realising the
laws and regulations in place really aren't fit for purpose in this
area. Saying that I really wish they'd tackle lootboxes first although
here in the UK there does seem to have been some progress.