Stadia-specific catch all

Surprising absolutely nobody....

lol.

Certainly doesn't mean they're going to do the same thing to Stadia itself, but I don't know how anyone could take this as a good sign for the service.

Yeah it is a bad sign but this week also has the good news that new LG TVs will have Stadia as a native app so a net zero?

I don't really see the LG TV app doing much to alter Stadia's steady downward trajectory.

From Google's blog post:

In 2021, we're expanding our efforts to help game developers and publishers take advantage of our platform technology and deliver games directly to their players. We see an important opportunity to work with partners seeking a gaming solution all built on Stadia's advanced technical infrastructure and platform tools. We believe this is the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry.

Their path to Stadia being a long-term service is now licensing the technology to others, which pretty much suggests serving end users isn't. The writing is very clearly on the wall.

Not good news, but heck they own the studio that put out the Journey to the Savage Planet game which is a pro game this month... Not sure if the various studios they put under the banner will keep running on their own or not... But either way. I wasn't really excited about "games by Google" I am excited about 3rd party games on the service.

manta173 wrote:

Not good news, but heck they own the studio that put out the Journey to the Savage Planet game which is a pro game this month.

As near as I can tell, Typhoon Studios (the developers of Journey to the Savage Planet) is the Montreal studio that Google is closing.

*Legion* wrote:

Their path to Stadia being a long-term service is now licensing the technology to others, which pretty much suggests serving end users isn't. The writing is very clearly on the wall.

Perhaps I am not clear on the wall. So they are not end user focused anymore but licensing focused?

So licensing like "the unreal engine" licensing? Meaning tons and tons of games come out using it. Or in some other form of licensing?

farley3k wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

Their path to Stadia being a long-term service is now licensing the technology to others, which pretty much suggests serving end users isn't. The writing is very clearly on the wall.

Perhaps I am not clear on the wall. So they are not end user focused anymore but licensing focused?

So licensing like "the unreal engine" licensing? Meaning tons and tons of games come out using it. Or in some other form of licensing?

I think of it more for a games as a service model. For example, I play Elder Scrolls Online. If Zenimax licenses Stadia it would allow me to play ESO instantly without having to worry about downloading a huge game and future huge patches. I wouldn’t sign up for Stadia directly nor would I even need a Stadia account, I would use my ESO credentials. It could work.

I think they should try to strike a deal with Sony because I think GamePass is on the brink of blowing up.

*Legion* wrote:

From Google's blog post:

In 2021, we're expanding our efforts to help game developers and publishers take advantage of our platform technology and deliver games directly to their players. We see an important opportunity to work with partners seeking a gaming solution all built on Stadia's advanced technical infrastructure and platform tools. We believe this is the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry.

Their path to Stadia being a long-term service is now licensing the technology to others, which pretty much suggests serving end users isn't. The writing is very clearly on the wall.

Once developers started disallowing their games on Geforce Now, I assumed selling off the tech was their eventual endpoint, but Stadia may get there first.

manta173 wrote:

But either way. I wasn't really excited about "games by Google" I am excited about 3rd party games on the service.

Neither was I, but if they now view the prospect of developing in-house games for their own service as a sunk cost worthy of dropping after a few years of early development, I don't see how a third-party developer should feel confident about sinking all that time and effort into porting their game to the Stadia Debian stack.

farley3k wrote:

Perhaps I am not clear on the wall. So they are not end user focused anymore but licensing focused?

It means providing a service to customers isn't providing the kind of revenue that has Google seeing it as sustainable.

So licensing like "the unreal engine" licensing? Meaning tons and tons of games come out using it.

It means licensing the technology for uses that have nothing to do with the Stadia service. It doesn't even necessarily mean games. Think of Stadia less in terms of "a way to play games remotely" and more as "a technology for low-latency access to remote high-performance computing resources". Maybe licensees use it for games (though, again, these uses would not have anything to do with the Stadia service), maybe they use it for various other specialized tasks.

While this news isn't a death knell, it certainly won't make any gamers more excited about Stadia.

For my part, my initial reaction was "looks like I got lucky and got out at just the right time."

I don’t know how they could allow this story to break without reassuring users that Stadia itself isn’t going anywhere.

I certainly wouldn’t buy a game on Stadia tomorrow and expect to keep it indefinitely. (Although, to be fair, I wouldn’t have bought one on Stadia ever.)

*Legion* wrote:

Think of Stadia less in terms of "a way to play games remotely" and more as "a technology for low-latency access to remote high-performance computing resources". Maybe licensees use it for games (though, again, these uses would not have anything to do with the Stadia service), maybe they use it for various other specialized tasks.

This hits the nail on the head. Gaming is just one use case for Stadia's underlying technology, and it's not one that the market seems to have a lot of interest in at the moment. But I can think of a lot of businesses where this kind of technology would be exciting for much more mundane tasks. Like VR, I see Stadia's technology as being an impressive trick for gaming with a much longer life in industries outside of entertainment.

Top_Shelf wrote:
gamerparent wrote:

Stadia and Geforce Now to be native apps on LG TVs

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/11/2...

Huge.

Regardless of how hardcore gamers (us) feel about how the Stadia rollout has gone/not gone (to incl all the marketing missteps), getting an app onto 16% of the global TV market is going to change things.

You know who likes downloading an app on their Internet-connect TV?
You know who likes to have things at their fingertips?
You know who likes subscription services?

People.

Google and nVidia are going to make a killing with this.

Lol at my timing. Nailed it!

billt721 wrote:

Neither was I, but if they now view the prospect of developing in-house games for their own service as a sunk cost worthy of dropping after a few years of early development, I don't see how a third-party developer should feel confident about sinking all that time and effort into porting their game to the Stadia Debian stack.

Developing a full game vs porting a finished game to a specific platform (like the PS5 or Stadia) are very different moments in the production of a game and the costs are not really comparable. Google could still have 3rd party developers on call dedicated to optimizing games for the Stadia platform (porting) from major studios.

To me, this feels closer to Apple growing pains after joining the self-created content, mostly due to Apple not being fully aware of the hurtles faced by the content-creation industry.

In other news, EA brought Madden (there was a free weekend for all PRO subscribers, I tried it but I have no idea how to play Madden anymore) and FIFA is coming later in the Spring.

gamerparent wrote:

but I have no idea how to play Madden anymore

Judging by high-level play, what you do is spam a bunch of hot routes and other before-snap audibles until you exploit holes in the AI and turn the game into a mockery.

Terreria's release for Stadia has been cancelled after Google banned the creator's Google account after their company YouTube channel was hit with a bogus (and unexplained) terms of service "violation".

"We have not added anything new to our only YT channel (RelogicGames) in several months. However, we randomly received an email saying there was a TOS violation but that it was likely accidental and as such, the account would receive no strikes."

"Three days later, the entire Google account (YT, Gmail, all Google apps, even every purchase made over 15 years on Google Play Store) was disabled with no warning or recourse. This account links into many business functions and as such the impact to us is quite substantial."

(...)

Spinks says his entire Google account has been down for three weeks now, and Google has "done nothing but given me the runaround."

I am in the long-term process of reducing my Google accounts to pretty much nothing but YouTube and YouTube TV accounts, and a story like this only strengthens that resolve.

I did some reading up on the topic myself. It seems impossible to cut Google out completely but I definitely want to reduce my reliance.

I’ve quit everything except Gmail/Contacts (which is tough to change) and YouTube.

I’ve quit Search, Assistant, Calendar, Chrome, Photos, News, Maps and Waze which feels fairly substantial to me. I’d also never buy a Nest or FitBit product or anything Android.

Oh yeah, I wouldn’t use Stadia either.

**off topic**

What can replace Calendar?

Outlook?

I used to be huge Google consumer, but since 2018 have moved away from Gmail to Protonmail, Google Photos to Amazon Photos, Google Music to Spotify, Android to iPhone, and Search to Startpage/DuckDuckGo.

Calendar is still in development at ProtonMail, Contacts I don't know, and there's no alternative to YouTube of course.

I got a last warning from YouTube a few months ago, for a kid's song I uploaded 2 years ago to help out my daughter's kindergarten teacher at the time. It got maybe 50 views or so, probably all from other parents or the teacher herself. Should I violate the terms again I would be banned. So from now on I will stick to anti-vaxx and nazi propaganda uploads, just to be safe /s

Top_Shelf wrote:

Outlook?

Yup, I use a separate Microsoft account for my calendar.

PaladinTom wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:

Outlook?

Yup, I use a separate Microsoft account for my calendar.

Everyone has their own level of comfort but the idea of switching from Google to Microsoft feels like going from huge corporation who mines my data A to huge corporation who mines my data B.

I guess there is some value to having corporation A only have 50% of my data and corporation B having the other. To me the convenience of corp A having it all outweighs how they are mining my data. Since I also believe both are doing it I don't feel like I am getting away from being an open mine anyway.

Still back to Stadia I found a link on a Facebook group that offered 3 months of Pro for free to people who have bought a Chromebook in the last year so I am enjoying that for awhile.

farley3k wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:

Outlook?

Yup, I use a separate Microsoft account for my calendar.

Everyone has their own level of comfort but the idea of switching from Google to Microsoft feels like going from huge corporation who mines my data A to huge corporation who mines my data B.

I guess there is some value to having corporation A only have 50% of my data and corporation B having the other. To me the convenience of corp A having it all outweighs how they are mining my data. Since I also believe both are doing it I don't feel like I am getting away from being an open mine anyway.

I get that. The downside is we have to trust someone. I already pay Microsoft for OneDrive and I use Windows so there's that.

One part is definitely that I think Google collects to much info, but the other part is that I just don't trust them not to kill apps/services that I like. They've done it enough now that I'm leery of using any of their stuff. I understand that this take isn't rational for services like Maps or Gmail, but it definitely prevents me from ever trusting anything new from them like Stadia until it really becomes a long term almost ubiquitous product like YouTube.

I mean, outside of the proletariat rising up and seizing the means of production, how am I supposed to live my life in this Boring Dystopia that doesn't even have Keanu Reeves around to help guide me on my life quests?

I basically come down on the side of, this is a small risk and the only way to reduce the risk to zero requires going off the grid OR devoting a bunch of my ever-shrinking free time to manage my devices/services to the nth degree.

Alas.

In Stadia news, does Ubisoft+ work with Stadia? Thinking about trying out Valhalla for a month and then cancelling.

Top_Shelf wrote:

In Stadia news, does Ubisoft+ work with Stadia? Thinking about trying out Valhalla for a month and then cancelling.

Yes, although to get the higher tier of video quality, you'll need to subscribe to both Ubisoft+ and Stadia Pro.

Hm. I'm already subbed to GeForce Now, so maybe I'll try that route.