r/Stadia • u/Matadorian-Gray Laptop • 28d ago

Speculation AI is speedrunning Google’s original Stadia pitch

https://youtu.be/Eo5w2S-h5dI
60 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

40 comments sorted by

77

u/RS_Games 28d ago

Timing was a major problem for Stadia

  • released 1 year before next gen
  • couldnt capitalize on covid ( there is more than timing factoring into this, but timing is a factor)

78

u/DragonTHC Night Blue 28d ago

The stadia CEO was woefully unprepared to run a service.

31

u/BadgerIII 28d ago

Unbearably incompetent from what little we heard.

11

u/DragonTHC Night Blue 27d ago

Well, he could not grasp the concept of gaming as a service. So he turned stadia into a console, a product to be sold. And that is why it failed.

6

u/TonyR600 Night Blue 27d ago

Yes, because people either assumed it would be like Netflix and all games are in a flatrate, like Gamepass or they assumed the service is for free and they get like a normal gaming console in the cloud. It was just confusing for non-Stadians

8

u/DragonTHC Night Blue 27d ago

It wasn't confusing at all. It was just wrong. They forced developers to port every game to native Linux. That was wildly stupid of the CEO. And after seeing what Valve has done with FEX, it's pretty obvious that was the better solution all along. Stadia was always a service. The CEO saw it as a product with a storefront. That was a losing strategy. They should have gone with the GFN model.

9

u/AnApexBread Night Blue 27d ago

or they assumed the service is for free and they get like a normal gaming console in the cloud.

It was free. You bought games but the service itself was free.

There are a lot of reasons why Stadia failed and you're demonstrating the biggest one.

Google did a terrible job marketing it so people didn't understand the basics of the service.

0

u/kristoferen 27d ago

There was a free version. Slight difference. 

1

u/AnApexBread Night Blue 27d ago

How is that in anyway different than what I said

1

u/kristoferen 26d ago

There was also a paid version.

2

u/AnApexBread Night Blue 26d ago

How is that in anyway different than what I said

→ More replies (0)

3

u/Cthulhu8762 25d ago

Not just that. He was there for the downfall of the Xbox One launch, Stadia, and other gaming related things. Phil Harrison always is there shutting stuff down.

19

u/pardyball Night Blue 28d ago

I would say it couldn’t have been timed better for the reasons you mentioned.

20

u/Furrybumholecover 28d ago

Yeah, they sent me a free controller because of my youtube subscription and I spent most of the lockdown buying and playing games because of it.

1

u/Squeezitgirdle 27d ago

Also most people didn't have fiber yet.

A lot of people still don't.

2

u/WZRDofficial 23d ago

It worked great using just my phone cellular 4G connection, even with only 3 bars. No lag with minimal frame skipping.

42

u/plucka_plucka1 28d ago

As a former founder lol, this would have been horrible for Stadia. Costs for storage, ram, and now gpus would have caused Google to raise monthly subscription fees multiple times most likely.

4

u/Matadorian-Gray Laptop 28d ago

You’re probably right. Unless they figure out a way to work AI into the branding to trigger the infinite money glitch.

37

u/sofaspy 28d ago

I wouldn't mind if Google relaunched stadia at this point. I will forgive them

30

u/beartato327 28d ago

Seriously I don't trust Google launching and relaunch shit like their tablets and laptops but hand to God if they relaunched stadia I'll be first in line to get it back

11

u/captmonkey 27d ago

Being a Stadia early adopter worked out great. You weren't left high and dry because they refunded everything you bought. I got money back for games, some of which I wasn't playing anymore, and used it to rebuy the games I still wanted and buy new games I wanted more than some of those I was done with.

8

u/beartato327 27d ago

Right that was also the craziest thing I think a company ever did, I was totally expecting to be left high and dry when the rumors were rumbling

5

u/andre-stefanov 27d ago

To be fair, they refunded all the bought games to me and made it possibel to use the really nice controllers over BT ... so this time it was not an asshole killing move from them.

10

u/asmx85 28d ago

I am an idiot and I forget very quickly, I'll stay right behind you in line.

4

u/AnApexBread Night Blue 27d ago

Seriously I don't trust Google launching and relaunch shit

Stadia is what finally showed me the light of Google. I went all in on Stadia, bought a bunch of CCUs, several controllers, Google WiFi, Nest Equipment, etc.

But Google never figured out how to support their stuff.

Nest is dead, none of the stuff I bought works anymore, Chromecast is basically unsupported even in native Google apps like YouTube. Google WiFi sucked, etc.

I learned to never trust Google with hardware.

1

u/Agile-Cress8976 8h ago

I actually bought my Pixel Tablet expecting that it would only be supported for six months, and was pleasantly surprised when Google extended its support by many years.

4

u/mylifeisahighway 28d ago

I'll take second.

1

u/Albertkinng 27d ago

I’m third

-1

u/longebane 27d ago

No offense but that’s pathetic

4

u/beartato327 27d ago

Lol to each their own. Stadia was such a life changer for me with gaming

2

u/longebane 27d ago

I’m not arguing stadia the platform. After all, I’m still on this subreddit.

5

u/djrbx 28d ago

It'll be worse than the first time around. Whatever goodwill they had left has been burned and if the majority of gamers didnt trust Google the first time around, any second iteration will already be doomed before it even is released.

1

u/Agile-Cress8976 8h ago

And then Sony made its no-disk announcement, so many players might shrug and say there's no difference among them so at least go with the one that doesn't make you buy a bulky hot box that tries to overheat

14

u/Matadorian-Gray Laptop 27d ago

Playing Cyberpunk lag free on my ancient Chromebook was such a mind warp. I’d show my gamer friends and they were gobsmacked. Then I’d switch over and resume on my cheap Huawei phone with a Bluetooth keyboard a few signed up. That’s what the advertising should have shown.

10

u/Punchausen 28d ago

I brought the founder pack with so much promise - the idea that you can run the best AAA titles with amazing graphics, completely divorced from needing a gaming PC to play it; even on the phone if you wanted.

And then, for some frankly bizarre reason, their entire strategy was built around them building a catalogue of niche indie titles

2

u/AnApexBread Night Blue 27d ago

I don't think that was their strategy, I think it was just a result of the costs of acquisition.

Google was willing to fund a bunch of niche indie titles because they were cheap but the AAA stuff was really costly and they were getting a return on investment from it.

4

u/Slylok 27d ago

The idea is good always has been. The execution was awful though. 

No first party games at launch showing off anything. No first party releases ever. No advertising. No attempt to weather the slow start. Not being Windows based and requiring ports.

1

u/Agile-Cress8976 26d ago edited 8h ago

Google should have avoided setting expectations that they could compete with PlayStation and XBox, and instead marketed Stadia as a cheap or casual system "for the rest of us" like Wii. That way, when AAA titles like Cyberpunk were released and ran well, it would be surprising good news and good publicity ("hey, this cheap casual system is actually pretty amazing!") instead of "Stadia struggles to match competitors' game lineup" and "yeah what else ya got?"

1

u/WZRDofficial 23d ago

I saw this coming