@@mrbisshie and PlayStation now has a similar thing too with a massive game catalogue. Still for download, not streaming, but who cares? If my internet were fast enough for stadia, I can also download a whole title in a reasonable time.
Google brought a couple of indies to a multi-decade library fight. The only way I could possibly have seen Stadia stand a chance (without spending boat loads of cash) would have been to partner with someone like Steam.
@@mrbisshie The main issue I have with Game Pass Ultimate is that games leave it all the time and become impossible to stream. It makes me not want to put hours into games if it means I can't play them in the future. Maybe if they ensured that games would leave download but become cloud only, so you could still purchase them to play locally but you never had the cloud access taken away?
This was like the most predictable cancellation of all time. Not sure how they thought it would be possible to achieve success in such a short timespan. Hell, even Microsoft struggled to make a profit for the first few years on the original Xbox, and that had some compelling games and features. Stadia had literally nothing going for it.
Just speculating, Google devs fell to survivorship bias, they saw Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, Valve and a ton of other companies succeed so they thought all the work to make games successful in the market was done for them and all they had to do was start a service, not knowing how much work is involved in the whole process before, during, and after launching a service and its games. They assumed the market was extremely fickle, that users would just buy and buy and buy whatever is available or just not buy whatsoever, and they thought to themselves "this is Google, of course people would buy and invest in our products"
@@theamazingwam7998 Replace “devs” with “management” and I think you’re onto something! (Especially remember they brought on a bunch of “business-experienced” executives over the last decade)
@@theamazingwam7998 it’s also part of how internal office politics works at Google. Your performance is measured in product launches first and foremost. It’s why Google has so many launches of the exact same product after shutting down an old one that was on life support instead of directly investing in the original product. It’s also why UA-cam gets so many pointless redesigns and reskins. And devs and project managers that are put in charge of maintenance and updates are completely overlooked in Google’s hierarchy, it’s why practically nothing they make is properly maintained!
@Kanaba Nakamura Of course, the elite class of internet user that has inherintely superior user experiences but is too ignorant, naive, and stubborn to undestand why no one else agrees with their position. For every 5,000 users not paying for better services there is 1 that more than makes up the cost.
I was in the stadia beta and it was okay but nothing amazing, too much latency. Later got a Shadow cloud PC and the latency and quality with Parsec made me immediately realize Stadia was going to fail hard.
@@BD-zn4kx tbh idk how every service isn't just trying to copy Shadow at this point. They give you a full on PC in the cloud for cheap to do whatever you want with. I had no issues with them and minimal latency and even used it for VR with minimal issues. If I had not upgraded my computer I would totally still be using them.
Stadia didn't need a box. What Stadia could have done was be the next Steam, but separate itself as a hybrid-service. Gives users the option to download games & their save data to any PC or possibly any supported platform, with the option to pickup progress via cloud at any time when they're on the go. Cross-save functionality and a mindset of on-the-go playstyle would have been a great incentive for users to try the platform.
@@AlejandroCab98Yeah Google should have gone with the GeForce now approach. I don't think renting out full PCs would also work (didn't Shadow go bust like a year ago as well?).
Am I the only one that feels like this is a rare feel good win for old/traditional tech. I mean, I’m all for new technology, but it’s nice to think that sometimes we don’t live in a world where owning nothing and having no product rights is just inevitable.
It honestly failed because it wasn't a subscription, game pass is actually being used so i wouldn't call this the end of the "You will own nothing" era when only the most garbage streaming service ceased existing.
Not to be depressing, but you still don't really own anything on a console. Even with a physical disc, it's just a glorified activation key, where you need to download essential day one patches and other data just to play your game. Eventually the online functionality of any console will be shut down, and good luck trying to play your games then.
@@blackdressbess195 which still sucks, but AT LEAST after the initial download(s)/installation and handshakes finish you can still play those games without a connection, as opposed to streaming services.
I use a shadow VM PC. It's great because it's basically just a high powered PC you rent out and you can download games on steam that you can use in any other PC you might want to buy. Cloud gaming is the future, it just needs to be done right and it's being done great with Shadow. The main issue is that it's not very profitable for the developers, but price will go down in the future.
For me it was that games needed to be bought extra. Heck, I use Nvidias cloud gaming thing because it has a free tier. Sure, I need to wait a few minutes before I get to access it and I can only play for an hour but during the active university period, that was often enough.
I genuinely had no idea it was still around. I wasn’t even totally sure it had gotten off the ground to begin with, sometimes I thought maybe it died the way Google Glass did, and sometimes I thought it was just a rumored project that was coming out “soon.” So, you know, not the strongest start.
stadia was literally an engineer from Google's way of getting a promotion cause the only way to get promoted at Google is starting a project, doesn't matter if it's successful
@@theletters9623 oh yeah. Look into it, they have internal terms for these kinds of things, something like fund, develop, dump. Startups from Google have like a 95% chance to fail
@@MrThhg yeah. Actually it’s weird. Look at the first one. It originally said something like “facts” and now it’s been edited…. Something ain’t right here.
I remember them advertising being able to do some stuff like join UA-cam streamers live. I think that was the potential way to really differentiate themselves. Posting save states as part of UA-cam let's plays or seamlessly joining online matches together might have worked and been good marketing. Releasing it with at least 1 free exclusive online title with large matches and paying streamers to play it could have worked.
Just like most tech failures, there's a lot that the people involved with learned. This was a good thing, even if consumers saw very little benefit. I'm ALWAYS in support of try-but-fail in tech. And Google saw this as tech that just happened to involve gaming. Kudos to them.
The most baffling thing about Stadia is that everyone told them that their business strategy was trash and they chose to go ahead with it anyway, even tho it clearly wasn't working from the very start.
The weird part is that Google already has a gaming platform: Android. Android handhelds by third parties are already selling well without any help from google. Just look at Razer and GPD. The Nintendo Switch proved that an arm device without a crazy amount of computing power can be industry leading if it just has games. They should have created a version of the play store that requires controller focused development, then sold a higher end android console. They could have called it the Pixel Play or something. It could be a portable platform or it could be as large and powerful as a traditional console. Android can already do it all. Then they could have bought some publisher support and exclusives. It even provides a good selling point: An android device is an android device. Maybe you can play that smaller indie game you bought for your pixel console on your phone or on a portable android console when you're away. Throw in cloud saves and that's real value to the consumer. If they had just put that Stadia money and effort into Android, they could have had a competitive gaming platform by now.
The company that writes browsers and even programing languages was not smart enough to figure out that latency would kill the idea since day 1. I always wondered what the hell they were thinking.
Loved how when you watch a UA-cam live you clicked on the "Play on Stadia" button and then you joined the streamers lobby and all that in 2 seconds. No install instant access. RIP Google Stadia. Maybe one day we will have this level of comfort again. Also loved the 500 vs 500 matches on Fortnite Stadia.
I couldn't even get through this video without my wifi signal dropping out. Really bold of Google to assume the general public was ready for Cloud based gaming.
GeForce Now is actually pretty good. About two years ago when my PC broke, I decided to get a subscription to play games with my Chromebook until chip prices went down. Ended up never actually getting a new PC, it works perfectly. Honestly I think the only thing stopping Cloud Gaming from really taking off is the fact that too many Publishers (cough cough 2K) still refuse to allow streaming services to host their games. Which is ridiculous seeing as the publisher makes just as much money whether the player is using their own PC or a cloud service, but such is the gaming industry.
I’m skeptical of any “games as a service” crap. There’s too much opportunity with Cloud Gaming for companies to nickel and dime customers even worse than they are now.
Do you really trust Nvidia not to muck it up if the go all out in game streaming? They'll make the equivalent of the 70 series cost 2000 dollars and make it so that you have to pay for the service to run their stuff since no one but rich people buy physical hardware anymore and every year the price will go up. Also Comcast will start charging you for better latency and will artificialy limit everyone who doesn't pay thier 22 dollar 'gaming fee'
GeForce Now is pretty good but their catalog is pretty limited, only about a tenth of my Steam library shows up as available to play. Also it doesn't sync for other stores so you have to manually check what they have from Epic, Origin, and Ubi.
Stadia was for People who had enough money for a good internet connection, enough money to spend on a subscription service + any games they wanted that weren't included with said subscription service BUT not enough money for a decent pc or current Gen console, or approximately maybe 3 people on the whole planet
The reason why games had to be ported to Stadia was because Stadia ran on Linux systems, and Google didn't wanted to pay licences to Microsoft to use Windows (who owns Xbox). Google was paying studios to port their Windows games to Google's own Linux OS. I believe this was one of the reasons for the downfall of Stadia, because devs couldn't simply bring their game to the service before porting it, and Google spent a lot of money funding said ports, otherwises publishers couldn't care less. Google could've have solved this the same way Valve did for Steam on Linux and the Steam Deck: Translation Layer. Google could've forked Wine and made their own version of Proton for use on Stadia's servers, that way Windows games wouldn't have to be ported to service.
When they announced and released Stadia, I was immediately like „this is gonna fail within 2 years or so“ and I think a lot of people did think so too, so it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. But at least kudos to Google to reimburse their customers in full. If they would be a smaller company they wouldn’t do that.
it was probably not done for morally good reasons. the legal department likely told the higher ups that it be better to give refunds for non subscription fees to avoid any legal issues and just eat an certain loss.
I think you hit the nail on the head with not being a subscription model. It just should have been - I and others would have tried it out. But when there is Gamepass with an awesome subscription model and Amazon with an OK sub model as competitors, there’s no reason I should buy something through Stadia when I know I can buy them through steam, epic, or Microsoft and keep them without an internet connection.
I just pray this serves as a warning to every company thinking about developing a game streaming service. There isn't a more horrific idea in the industry than these censorious companies having control over what you can and can't play.
I remember the commercials for Stadia, they literally did nothing to explain what stadia even was or how it worked. The commercials consisted of people dancing around, and the name “Stadia” being shouted over and over. That’s it. I remember having to look it up just find out what it even was. I honestly feel that Google killed Stadia with their TERRIBLE attempt at advertising it.
Stadia should've been a storefront for local download AND a streaming platform. That way it would've been a service most gamers could consider, and there needs to be some serious competitor to Epic and Steam.
I think what they should have done was to release a compact controller that goes around your phone that was convenient to take it with you anywhere, and ad storage for games on it, make it so single player games don't lag or take up space in your phone, then just make it so you can use it for stadia games and regular phone games, like it would all be backed up on the cloud, you can just continue in your computer at the end of the day
As a person who has been a gamer for 20 years or so, I knew for a fact that Google Stadia would fail sooner or later after first hearing about the description of the way the system works around the time Stadia was first introduced.
I played death loop on my Xbox1 via streaming. It was nice to not have to download the whole thing since I don't have the best internet. The gameplay was pretty solid with some minor graphical glitches due to lag. Completely playable though. Streaming is a great addition to an existing game system but there's no way I would trust that route as a primary gaming method. Not yet
I will give stadia credit, if your pc/hardware wasnt powerful enough and you didnt own your own streaming pc, it worked wellish. but it had high internet requirements.
I mean if you used Stadia on a Chromecast + had a new 5G router, you could definitely use Stadia without any input delays and quality issues. Even if everyone had this, what would make Stadia fail was its marketing and poor choices. I remember getting Stadia during quarantine and playing RDR2 for hours straight, sometimes nearly for days without stopping. This changed my life, and I am thankful for Stadia being a part of my life.
@@BowChickaWow Exactly, It was the only platform that allowed you to stream RDR2 (in my country at least) and it worked flawlessly. I had a wonderful time playing on mac with a projector.
Too many dumb people who believe the google's lies. There are too many gaming hardware out there that are cheaper than Stadia and it does not need a Nasa Internet to play singleplayer games.
I remember when they got rid of first party support. I knew it was done. If you can't support your own platform why on earth would you expect someone else to?
as a guy who primarily consumes youtube videos as my source of entertainment, hours a day, when Stadia came out I felt like you did, wow so much awesome content is gonna come from this! Thank you Stadia, I never ever considered using your service and I appreciate all the awesome videos!
Cloud games should be able to use centralized servers and google owned super-computers to offer someting unique, instead we get worse version of console experiences
The latency was a death sentence to the platform regardless of how strong the hardware was. Even turn based games would've been disorienting to play because of it. Unfortunately light isnt going any faseter, and neither would cloud based gaming latency.
An internet plan fast enough to support such a system is actually quite expensive in most countries, if you can even get one, since large parts of the European internet still rely on slow copper cables. And the target group of more casual gamers are usually not the kind of people who go out of their way to get a better connection as long as Netflix is running ok. So who did they think was actually gonna use the service??
I was at gamescom, and yep, there were still some people there pushing for cloud gaming. In Germany. You know, the one place in europe that has the worst and most expensive internet. I have lost all my hope for humanity.
As a person who used Stadia since the beginning until now and I have to say it was fun playing on my phone anywhere (depending on data speeds). Beat Cyberpunk and the free games you got were great some months. Starting a game on my phone and then switching to my TV and not missing a beat was great
When they announced it, I said on Twitter that it would be one of the countless Google projects that they would give up on and BOY WAS I RIGHT. Google breaks up with products more than...I can't think of a joke...
Honestly, stadia would have worked had they included the games in the subscription price, but that would require them to care, which just isnt something google does.
Many towns, cities, regions still don’t have reliable high-speed internet, or if they do is download only. Plus, prices for such a service in many areas are _insane_ (looking at you USA). Was doomed to fail.
I ignored it at first because on the local internet I couldn't justify the bandwidth... then last year my family got Fiber. So it became possible. But the subscription/purchase model still had me shying away from committing.
as anyone with any form of rural internet like me can tell you, if you didnt live in a city close to one of thier offices you were basicly SOL from all the latency, framedropping, compression, sticking inputs, and more i think that I cant remember. you basicly had to live in a big city with EXTREMELY good internet or it wouldnt work. I have been stuck remoting into my gaming pc for a full year now and its painful. if I want playable framerates I need to turn the compression down to .5 MB per second which means I regularly need to stand still to let all the data reach my screen so I can actually read dialog or in some cases even tell enemies apart from scenery. I did figure out a way to speed up the sync tho, and it requires putting the camera directly above my head for about 5 seconds so it can grab more data and store it as I move around an area.
To join live an UA-camr gamer as he plays in Stadia was one of the promises. Massive multiplayer with fully destructible large scenarios was another promise.
All I remember is the stadia ads were so vague that I didn’t understand what service it was even selling. Just a bunch of posing and dancing around it’s logo
I still remember hearing a lot of people being really optimistic about Stadia and then the day of or the day after it released they went from optimistic to "this is bad" lol. I always thought it was dumb and guessed that it wasn't going to last long or just not be as good as everyone was hoping it would be. I'm glad people got refunds though since they could have easily not have done that. And I do hope all the Stadia Exclusives make their way to other platforms. I can't believe they passed on Kojima's next game being a Stadia Exclusive because it was a single player game. Single player games will never not have an audience and a lot of people love Kojima's games.
I really hope this isn't the final nail in the coffin for cloud gaming. I live in a country where (good) GPUs and other PC parts are really expensive and cloud gaming allowed me to not miss out on modern games
Stadia had very few rts games, which was a shame. I thought it was the perfect platform to play those on. But even if it had I didn't dare invest too much into it because I was afraid it would be killed by Google.
My issue with these mega companies trying tk get in to gaming is… why be the device or console manufacturer? Why not do the far easier and almost instantly profitable route of Publishing games? Why not harness all the money and tech and help indies up their game? Idk seems so stupid to want the thing that takes so much more money and work than a easy way in to the gaming market.
Fun fact: Google's internal metric for achievement and promotion is governed by launches. The more products or services you're a part of launching, the more likely it is that you'll be moving up inside the company. Most skilled employees know to bail on a project as soon as it's out the door so they can get in in the ground floor of the next new project. As you can imagine, this has something of a catastrophic effect on the long term support and development of released products. Ever wonder why Google chrome has had an issue with memory leaks for over a decade? Now you know.
Stadia would have worked if it completely replaced the need for a GPU or gaming PC. It just needed to support *all games*, not just a small selection, so that people saw it as an "instead of" investment rather than an "in addition to" investment. They should have added a pricing tier that gave access to a cloud PC running Steam, even if it was higher latency / more expensive than Stadia-native games it would have saved a lot of peoples' wallets during the GPU shortage.
Everyone keeps saying it's "too early" for cloud gaming tech. It's not "too early" it's just a stupid, unworkable idea for the majority of people and situations. The speed of light isn't going to get any faster. Cloud gaming just can't match running the game on your own hardware. Even if they could increase the speed of light and solve the latency issue... can it do 120hz? 144hz? 300+? Ultrawide? Super ultrawide? Multi-monitor? There's just no way it can compete.
Honestly, I was never even able to get past the fact that they advertised via unskippable 20s UA-cam ads, never mind the inherent flaws with the product itself
Losing Stadia itself is no big deal and was entirely expected, but losing the exclusive games definitely sucks for preservation. Easily the worst aspect about Cloud Gaming is the fact that emulation/preserving games without the service is physically impossible; unlike with movie/TV streaming services, you can’t just screen record a game and have the same experience as playing it. Even the Zeebo, a Brazil-exclusive console where you could only download games off the internet, has managed to get most of its games preserved after the service shut down. Cloud gaming as an alternative cheaper platform for games is fine, but never should they have exclusivity, or else we’ll see cases like this again.
Stadia was a nich product for gamers w/ really good internet. These are a small group of people with not a lot in common; gaming taste wise. Exception is people who play online games very competativly whose numbers are also small and are better served by a PC. There is no reason to have a cloud gaming console until amazing internet is more common than free drive space.
If they had made stadia a box, made porting PC games much easier, and designed android into it without it being a android device, they really could have had a hit. It would also give them time to develop the cloud services more. Imagine if all android phones could download and play any stadia game through cloud service. Yes some places it won't work well but in many locations it could have been great. They also should have wanted single player games as those games usually in worst situations can be replayed at a last save. There is no playing a replay of a online match. Although the reason they wanted more online games is so they can include more micro transactions so that stadia can repeatedly get money from the fees they charge for those micro transactions.
The only way to combat latency is to have servers in basically every town. And even then unless the town has a decent internet setup latency will still be an issue. And unless the gave was made to be streamed, it's nearly impossible to port it to a streaming service. I just think it's funny people are making such a big deal out of it. I was streaming games over 3G internet years ago. I just was using a remote connection program to run games on my PC at home. My phone could do it but it was too laggy because it was just a Droid incredible, a single core cpu and such. I was using my laptop and my phone's internet. I was getting about 130ms ping with big spikes but remember this was 3G internet you were lucky to get below 200ms on average. I think that's the future of streaming, peeler using their own computers or hardware which would allow for low latency.
It always boggles the mind just how removed from reality big tech can be when it comes to cloud and streaming based services and what the average US consumer has in terms of actual internet speed and quality. Sony etc with 4K streaming, Google etc with cloud gaming. Maybe this is all good in say South Korea and other places with truly high speed internet but here? With Comcast etc? Pff, we're lucky if we can even get 1080p video streaming without visual artifacts and VBR content, like "auto" quality on UA-cam here, being not unheard of dropping to 480p just to play a relatively short video. Even with the most expensive plans any of the ISPs offer here this is not out of the ordinary.
Oh they had such a hard time though, I mean they launched in a pandemic where everyone had to stay home and find ways of entertain themselves, and when graphic cards were almost impossible to find for people trying to make gaming pcs.
Imo the biggest problem with stadia is a product market fit issue. Gaming can be of two types - casual and serious Serious - The gamers have gaming devices and don't really need the service Casual - they need a different style of game. I think to make it work they could have a more thoughtful roll out (for big titles), tie in with android gaming (bigger games) and integration with the gaming content on UA-cam
Stadia failed for one simple reason. It had no reason to exist. Cloud gaming sounds fancy but lag is a pain, and constant connection is a terrible requirement. There was literally no benefit to use Stadia. It was just pointless.
the funny thing is, it's Google we're talking about. it could have been making them a billion dollars a year profit, they would still shut it down. because they're google.
In order to fall you need to be upright, Stadia never took off, they never advertised it after a few months and barley anybody used. The release was garbage and the game quality never improved too much.
I am with you, a subscription service that failed to subscribe properly... bad idea. Imagine if you had subscription access and could download a handful of games to a console that temporarily bricked itself if you didn't keep up your subscription? There would be a bit of a delay to play the game for the first time as you download it, but repeat game use isn't penalized. With enough room on a dedicated console a few good choices could be stored there, so it doesn't need to be a case of which single game you currently have 'unlocked.' Que up a few new games every now and then to replace ones you are bored of, and play your current favourite while they download. Not 100% streaming, but the subscription service would have held a lot of interest if done... you know, like a subscription service!
The biggest problem - Cloud doesn't need an separated plaform, Steam could just gave you an option to either download or play by the cloud. There no special philosophy for that They just sold a feature as separate thing, that's why it failed
A physical console release during 2020 is a terrible idea, people still have issues getting PS5/Xbox Series S and I doubt Google would be able to fight back the chip shortage.
For a company that is supposed to know everything about you, its rather ironic that Stadia failed because they didn't understand consumers
It’s what they get for launching a Gaming Service with a name that sounds like an artificial sweetener.
That's because Alphabet doesn't want to understand you, it wants to mold you and exploit you.
@@Gala-yp8nx At least it's an accurate representation in that respect.
Same with Facebook/Meta and their failing VR business
@@kotzpenner that's because most people don't wanna live in a world where Mark Zuckerberg has total power over you
I keep forgetting matpat is like, a technology and business consultant, so seeing him in corporate settings is like a mental flashbang
I'll never forget that the man went to the Vatican and gave a copy of Undertale to the fucking pope
I’m amazed he even finds the time for this, but all three of his channels have like big production teams now, I imagine.
@@ziqi92 yeah. Matt does still take part in production it's just more spread out.
@@ziqi92 GT has been a business for over half a decade now
timestamp?
I always knew Stadia was going to fail fast but Google blew my expectations away with that speed run.
The moment I seen what Xbox was doing to compete with Google, I knew they were effed. Why would anyone pick Stadia over Gamepass?
@@mrbisshie and PlayStation now has a similar thing too with a massive game catalogue. Still for download, not streaming, but who cares? If my internet were fast enough for stadia, I can also download a whole title in a reasonable time.
Google brought a couple of indies to a multi-decade library fight. The only way I could possibly have seen Stadia stand a chance (without spending boat loads of cash) would have been to partner with someone like Steam.
@@mrbisshie The main issue I have with Game Pass Ultimate is that games leave it all the time and become impossible to stream. It makes me not want to put hours into games if it means I can't play them in the future. Maybe if they ensured that games would leave download but become cloud only, so you could still purchase them to play locally but you never had the cloud access taken away?
I expected them to make it closer to 5 years, I was pleasantly surprised.
This was like the most predictable cancellation of all time. Not sure how they thought it would be possible to achieve success in such a short timespan. Hell, even Microsoft struggled to make a profit for the first few years on the original Xbox, and that had some compelling games and features. Stadia had literally nothing going for it.
Just speculating, Google devs fell to survivorship bias, they saw Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, Valve and a ton of other companies succeed so they thought all the work to make games successful in the market was done for them and all they had to do was start a service, not knowing how much work is involved in the whole process before, during, and after launching a service and its games. They assumed the market was extremely fickle, that users would just buy and buy and buy whatever is available or just not buy whatsoever, and they thought to themselves "this is Google, of course people would buy and invest in our products"
@@theamazingwam7998 Replace “devs” with “management” and I think you’re onto something! (Especially remember they brought on a bunch of “business-experienced” executives over the last decade)
@@theamazingwam7998 it’s also part of how internal office politics works at Google. Your performance is measured in product launches first and foremost. It’s why Google has so many launches of the exact same product after shutting down an old one that was on life support instead of directly investing in the original product. It’s also why UA-cam gets so many pointless redesigns and reskins.
And devs and project managers that are put in charge of maintenance and updates are completely overlooked in Google’s hierarchy, it’s why practically nothing they make is properly maintained!
@Kanaba Nakamura Of course, the elite class of internet user that has inherintely superior user experiences but is too ignorant, naive, and stubborn to undestand why no one else agrees with their position. For every 5,000 users not paying for better services there is 1 that more than makes up the cost.
No one cans projects like Google.
I was in the stadia beta and it was okay but nothing amazing, too much latency. Later got a Shadow cloud PC and the latency and quality with Parsec made me immediately realize Stadia was going to fail hard.
Stupid bots
I always thought OnLive was better than stadia tbh
@@DJC0M3RAD3 Which is now PS Plus Premium.
Shadow is based
@@BD-zn4kx tbh idk how every service isn't just trying to copy Shadow at this point. They give you a full on PC in the cloud for cheap to do whatever you want with. I had no issues with them and minimal latency and even used it for VR with minimal issues. If I had not upgraded my computer I would totally still be using them.
Stadia didn't need a box. What Stadia could have done was be the next Steam, but separate itself as a hybrid-service.
Gives users the option to download games & their save data to any PC or possibly any supported platform, with the option to pickup progress via cloud at any time when they're on the go.
Cross-save functionality and a mindset of on-the-go playstyle would have been a great incentive for users to try the platform.
Its basically impossible to one up steam anyone who pc games has a grand sunk already and its just crazy hard to out compete steams service
You are describing Shadow PC.
@@AlejandroCab98Yeah Google should have gone with the GeForce now approach. I don't think renting out full PCs would also work (didn't Shadow go bust like a year ago as well?).
@@dustojnikhummer Nope, Shadow is still in business
@@qfrax But they did file for bancrupcy, didn't they? I hope they succeed, it seems like a service many are willing to pay for
Am I the only one that feels like this is a rare feel good win for old/traditional tech.
I mean, I’m all for new technology, but it’s nice to think that sometimes we don’t live in a world where owning nothing and having no product rights is just inevitable.
It honestly failed because it wasn't a subscription, game pass is actually being used so i wouldn't call this the end of the "You will own nothing" era when only the most garbage streaming service ceased existing.
Not to be depressing, but you still don't really own anything on a console. Even with a physical disc, it's just a glorified activation key, where you need to download essential day one patches and other data just to play your game. Eventually the online functionality of any console will be shut down, and good luck trying to play your games then.
@@blackdressbess195 which still sucks, but AT LEAST after the initial download(s)/installation and handshakes finish you can still play those games without a connection, as opposed to streaming services.
I use a shadow VM PC. It's great because it's basically just a high powered PC you rent out and you can download games on steam that you can use in any other PC you might want to buy. Cloud gaming is the future, it just needs to be done right and it's being done great with Shadow. The main issue is that it's not very profitable for the developers, but price will go down in the future.
Cloud gaming is old as ancient and nobody likes it because it is logically bad in everywhere. VR is the real deal
For me it was that games needed to be bought extra.
Heck, I use Nvidias cloud gaming thing because it has a free tier. Sure, I need to wait a few minutes before I get to access it and I can only play for an hour but during the active university period, that was often enough.
paying to pay even more
stadia had a free tier, you just had to buy the games and that's it
I genuinely had no idea it was still around. I wasn’t even totally sure it had gotten off the ground to begin with, sometimes I thought maybe it died the way Google Glass did, and sometimes I thought it was just a rumored project that was coming out “soon.” So, you know, not the strongest start.
Pretty sure Google glass just moved into being a corporate product.
stadia was literally an engineer from Google's way of getting a promotion cause the only way to get promoted at Google is starting a project, doesn't matter if it's successful
that explains a lot, actually
@@theletters9623 oh yeah. Look into it, they have internal terms for these kinds of things, something like fund, develop, dump. Startups from Google have like a 95% chance to fail
Couldn’t have happened to a better company. What a shame. 😊
god these bots are fking annoying and getting outta hand, but emotional damage is hilarious name got to give it that.
@@MrThhg yeah. Actually it’s weird. Look at the first one. It originally said something like “facts” and now it’s been edited….
Something ain’t right here.
@@MrThhg I think they take their name and pic from a random person in the comments
Gotta love your local home grown, good natured mom & pop company lol
@Emotional Damage How do get these?
I remember them advertising being able to do some stuff like join UA-cam streamers live. I think that was the potential way to really differentiate themselves. Posting save states as part of UA-cam let's plays or seamlessly joining online matches together might have worked and been good marketing. Releasing it with at least 1 free exclusive online title with large matches and paying streamers to play it could have worked.
You are spot on, Google had to go all in, or then might as well not have tried.
Just like most tech failures, there's a lot that the people involved with learned. This was a good thing, even if consumers saw very little benefit. I'm ALWAYS in support of try-but-fail in tech. And Google saw this as tech that just happened to involve gaming.
Kudos to them.
There are some questions in life that will go unanswered. And then there are questions like "Why did Stadia fail?"
The most baffling thing about Stadia is that everyone told them that their business strategy was trash and they chose to go ahead with it anyway, even tho it clearly wasn't working from the very start.
The weird part is that Google already has a gaming platform: Android. Android handhelds by third parties are already selling well without any help from google. Just look at Razer and GPD. The Nintendo Switch proved that an arm device without a crazy amount of computing power can be industry leading if it just has games. They should have created a version of the play store that requires controller focused development, then sold a higher end android console. They could have called it the Pixel Play or something. It could be a portable platform or it could be as large and powerful as a traditional console. Android can already do it all. Then they could have bought some publisher support and exclusives. It even provides a good selling point: An android device is an android device. Maybe you can play that smaller indie game you bought for your pixel console on your phone or on a portable android console when you're away. Throw in cloud saves and that's real value to the consumer.
If they had just put that Stadia money and effort into Android, they could have had a competitive gaming platform by now.
The company that writes browsers and even programing languages was not smart enough to figure out that latency would kill the idea since day 1. I always wondered what the hell they were thinking.
Loved how when you watch a UA-cam live you clicked on the "Play on Stadia" button and then you joined the streamers lobby and all that in 2 seconds. No install instant access. RIP Google Stadia. Maybe one day we will have this level of comfort again. Also loved the 500 vs 500 matches on Fortnite Stadia.
With recent reports of how wildly successful Xbox Gamepass has seemingly been monetarily, Google really missed out.
Still in absolute awe that the head of Stadia just thought ISPs would give Stadia users more bandwidth out of the goodness of their fucking hearts.
I couldn't even get through this video without my wifi signal dropping out. Really bold of Google to assume the general public was ready for Cloud based gaming.
GeForce Now is actually pretty good. About two years ago when my PC broke, I decided to get a subscription to play games with my Chromebook until chip prices went down. Ended up never actually getting a new PC, it works perfectly.
Honestly I think the only thing stopping Cloud Gaming from really taking off is the fact that too many Publishers (cough cough 2K) still refuse to allow streaming services to host their games. Which is ridiculous seeing as the publisher makes just as much money whether the player is using their own PC or a cloud service, but such is the gaming industry.
I’m skeptical of any “games as a service” crap. There’s too much opportunity with Cloud Gaming for companies to nickel and dime customers even worse than they are now.
Do you really trust Nvidia not to muck it up if the go all out in game streaming? They'll make the equivalent of the 70 series cost 2000 dollars and make it so that you have to pay for the service to run their stuff since no one but rich people buy physical hardware anymore and every year the price will go up.
Also Comcast will start charging you for better latency and will artificialy limit everyone who doesn't pay thier 22 dollar 'gaming fee'
GeForce Now is pretty good but their catalog is pretty limited, only about a tenth of my Steam library shows up as available to play. Also it doesn't sync for other stores so you have to manually check what they have from Epic, Origin, and Ubi.
Thats a good thing, not everyone has a fast internet connection
I actually use nvidia shadowplay via Moonlight as my method of remoting into my pc for both regular and gaming stuff.
RIPBOZO, saw this happening the moment it was released.
Google gets data storage, Google don’t understand games
Stadia was for People who had enough money for a good internet connection, enough money to spend on a subscription service + any games they wanted that weren't included with said subscription service BUT not enough money for a decent pc or current Gen console, or approximately maybe 3 people on the whole planet
Please don't tell me you think only 3 people out of billions can't afford a console. How stupid are you mate?
I remember watching the reveal live and everyone in the chat was calling it the ouya 2.0💀
The reason why games had to be ported to Stadia was because Stadia ran on Linux systems, and Google didn't wanted to pay licences to Microsoft to use Windows (who owns Xbox). Google was paying studios to port their Windows games to Google's own Linux OS.
I believe this was one of the reasons for the downfall of Stadia, because devs couldn't simply bring their game to the service before porting it, and Google spent a lot of money funding said ports, otherwises publishers couldn't care less. Google could've have solved this the same way Valve did for Steam on Linux and the Steam Deck: Translation Layer. Google could've forked Wine and made their own version of Proton for use on Stadia's servers, that way Windows games wouldn't have to be ported to service.
When they announced and released Stadia, I was immediately like „this is gonna fail within 2 years or so“ and I think a lot of people did think so too, so it’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
But at least kudos to Google to reimburse their customers in full. If they would be a smaller company they wouldn’t do that.
it was probably not done for morally good reasons. the legal department likely told the higher ups that it be better to give refunds for non subscription fees to avoid any legal issues and just eat an certain loss.
I think you hit the nail on the head with not being a subscription model. It just should have been - I and others would have tried it out. But when there is Gamepass with an awesome subscription model and Amazon with an OK sub model as competitors, there’s no reason I should buy something through Stadia when I know I can buy them through steam, epic, or Microsoft and keep them without an internet connection.
I tried stadia and they didn't even have a search bar to look for games... Come on Google
Well they don't even use their own Google search so they believe gamers are stupid and not using it
I just pray this serves as a warning to every company thinking about developing a game streaming service. There isn't a more horrific idea in the industry than these censorious companies having control over what you can and can't play.
Microsoft, Sony, and Nvidia are still at it. This didn't stop the anti-ownership trend, it just proved Google can still shit the bed
*Laughs in DRM*
I remember the commercials for Stadia, they literally did nothing to explain what stadia even was or how it worked. The commercials consisted of people dancing around, and the name “Stadia” being shouted over and over. That’s it. I remember having to look it up just find out what it even was. I honestly feel that Google killed Stadia with their TERRIBLE attempt at advertising it.
Kinda what happened to ouya in a way don't you think
I swear that's a Simpsons bit from 25 years ago.
I agree. I mean half the internet thought you had to pay for the basic service. They should have advertised it better.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD you talking about the artsy black and white Mr Plow ad? It was more like 30 years ago 😜 I'm old....
the ads certainly were colorful.
Stadia should've been a storefront for local download AND a streaming platform. That way it would've been a service most gamers could consider, and there needs to be some serious competitor to Epic and Steam.
You mean to steam? Who tf uses epic
@@mondaysinsanity8193 I mentioned them both, re-read.
@@grandsome1 i know im saying epic isnt a competitor at all
@@mondaysinsanity8193 By what metric?
@@mondaysinsanity8193 They have 15% of the market. That makes them a competitor.
I think what they should have done was to release a compact controller that goes around your phone that was convenient to take it with you anywhere, and ad storage for games on it, make it so single player games don't lag or take up space in your phone, then just make it so you can use it for stadia games and regular phone games, like it would all be backed up on the cloud, you can just continue in your computer at the end of the day
As a person who has been a gamer for 20 years or so, I knew for a fact that Google Stadia would fail sooner or later after first hearing about the description of the way the system works around the time Stadia was first introduced.
I played death loop on my Xbox1 via streaming. It was nice to not have to download the whole thing since I don't have the best internet. The gameplay was pretty solid with some minor graphical glitches due to lag. Completely playable though. Streaming is a great addition to an existing game system but there's no way I would trust that route as a primary gaming method. Not yet
I work on a team that develops a Unity package, and we've been dreading having to support Stadia. The day it was announced dead, we celebrated hard.
As one of about a dozen happy Stadia users worldwide, I'll miss the platform. RIP Stadia..
Entirely fair. Maybe it'll have a good successor, or at least a better one.
I will give stadia credit, if your pc/hardware wasnt powerful enough and you didnt own your own streaming pc, it worked wellish. but it had high internet requirements.
I mean if you used Stadia on a Chromecast + had a new 5G router, you could definitely use Stadia without any input delays and quality issues. Even if everyone had this, what would make Stadia fail was its marketing and poor choices. I remember getting Stadia during quarantine and playing RDR2 for hours straight, sometimes nearly for days without stopping. This changed my life, and I am thankful for Stadia being a part of my life.
@@BowChickaWow Exactly, It was the only platform that allowed you to stream RDR2 (in my country at least) and it worked flawlessly. I had a wonderful time playing on mac with a projector.
Too many dumb people who believe the google's lies. There are too many gaming hardware out there that are cheaper than Stadia and it does not need a Nasa Internet to play singleplayer games.
I remember when they got rid of first party support. I knew it was done. If you can't support your own platform why on earth would you expect someone else to?
as a guy who primarily consumes youtube videos as my source of entertainment, hours a day, when Stadia came out I felt like you did, wow so much awesome content is gonna come from this! Thank you Stadia, I never ever considered using your service and I appreciate all the awesome videos!
Cloud games should be able to use centralized servers and google owned super-computers to offer someting unique, instead we get worse version of console experiences
The latency was a death sentence to the platform regardless of how strong the hardware was. Even turn based games would've been disorienting to play because of it. Unfortunately light isnt going any faseter, and neither would cloud based gaming latency.
Stadia would be outstanding for games where time and latency issues have more give. Turn based games, etc.
An internet plan fast enough to support such a system is actually quite expensive in most countries, if you can even get one, since large parts of the European internet still rely on slow copper cables. And the target group of more casual gamers are usually not the kind of people who go out of their way to get a better connection as long as Netflix is running ok. So who did they think was actually gonna use the service??
I was at gamescom, and yep, there were still some people there pushing for cloud gaming. In Germany. You know, the one place in europe that has the worst and most expensive internet. I have lost all my hope for humanity.
Ultimately, internet speeds on average are not fast enough to make it entirely doable the way it came out. And the pricing is just...ugh
google's refunds are the PEAK of reasonable. there is NO REASON at all to refund anyone the subscription cost, since it is a service after all.
I feel like it shouldve been like a streaming service, but for gaming, you could play cyberpunk on your phone, you could do well- anything
My dude was literally just describing the Nintendo Switch during the 2020 bit
As a person who used Stadia since the beginning until now and I have to say it was fun playing on my phone anywhere (depending on data speeds). Beat Cyberpunk and the free games you got were great some months. Starting a game on my phone and then switching to my TV and not missing a beat was great
When they announced it, I said on Twitter that it would be one of the countless Google projects that they would give up on and BOY WAS I RIGHT. Google breaks up with products more than...I can't think of a joke...
Let's hope that this video earns him back his $240.
2010 me: Wow tech is amazing, can’t wait to see what they come up with next!
2022 me: •Resigned sigh after seeing all of it come and go•
If they would have marketed that you can play the games on ur phone with any controller anywhere ur at might have thrived better
Honestly, stadia would have worked had they included the games in the subscription price, but that would require them to care, which just isnt something google does.
Many towns, cities, regions still don’t have reliable high-speed internet, or if they do is download only. Plus, prices for such a service in many areas are _insane_ (looking at you USA).
Was doomed to fail.
I ignored it at first because on the local internet I couldn't justify the bandwidth... then last year my family got Fiber. So it became possible. But the subscription/purchase model still had me shying away from committing.
as anyone with any form of rural internet like me can tell you, if you didnt live in a city close to one of thier offices you were basicly SOL from all the latency, framedropping, compression, sticking inputs, and more i think that I cant remember. you basicly had to live in a big city with EXTREMELY good internet or it wouldnt work. I have been stuck remoting into my gaming pc for a full year now and its painful. if I want playable framerates I need to turn the compression down to .5 MB per second which means I regularly need to stand still to let all the data reach my screen so I can actually read dialog or in some cases even tell enemies apart from scenery. I did figure out a way to speed up the sync tho, and it requires putting the camera directly above my head for about 5 seconds so it can grab more data and store it as I move around an area.
I had genuinely never heard of Stadia.
It's just trash. But it is better of you heard about Quest 2 that sold really well. Better than Xbox series X at least
To join live an UA-camr gamer as he plays in Stadia was one of the promises. Massive multiplayer with fully destructible large scenarios was another promise.
If google took this seriously, they could have beaten Microsoft and playstation as easy as it takes me to snap my fingers.
All I remember is the stadia ads were so vague that I didn’t understand what service it was even selling. Just a bunch of posing and dancing around it’s logo
The best part of Stadia was the free Assassin’s Creed Odyssey PC code I got for playing the beta for 5 minutes because the lag was so bad.
8:51
Google: So it did work after all, huh...
I still remember hearing a lot of people being really optimistic about Stadia and then the day of or the day after it released they went from optimistic to "this is bad" lol. I always thought it was dumb and guessed that it wasn't going to last long or just not be as good as everyone was hoping it would be.
I'm glad people got refunds though since they could have easily not have done that. And I do hope all the Stadia Exclusives make their way to other platforms.
I can't believe they passed on Kojima's next game being a Stadia Exclusive because it was a single player game. Single player games will never not have an audience and a lot of people love Kojima's games.
I really hope this isn't the final nail in the coffin for cloud gaming. I live in a country where (good) GPUs and other PC parts are really expensive and cloud gaming allowed me to not miss out on modern games
Don't worry bro is being of could gaming gfn boosteroid xbox and some so many great could gaming out there stadia was suck that why it death
Stadia had very few rts games, which was a shame. I thought it was the perfect platform to play those on. But even if it had I didn't dare invest too much into it because I was afraid it would be killed by Google.
There is no reason to have a cloud gaming console until amazing internet is more common than free drive space.
I love your videos man
You have two amazing channels
The other channel is operated by his brother.
@@Kodeb8 🤓
My issue with these mega companies trying tk get in to gaming is… why be the device or console manufacturer? Why not do the far easier and almost instantly profitable route of Publishing games? Why not harness all the money and tech and help indies up their game? Idk seems so stupid to want the thing that takes so much more money and work than a easy way in to the gaming market.
Fun fact: Google's internal metric for achievement and promotion is governed by launches. The more products or services you're a part of launching, the more likely it is that you'll be moving up inside the company.
Most skilled employees know to bail on a project as soon as it's out the door so they can get in in the ground floor of the next new project. As you can imagine, this has something of a catastrophic effect on the long term support and development of released products.
Ever wonder why Google chrome has had an issue with memory leaks for over a decade? Now you know.
I was in sf back when google announced it at GDC, two developers at a coffee shop said “ I bet google will kill it before it takes off “ hah
I still remember the stadia ads, it’s weirdly nostalgic
Stadia’s name and logo would always make me think it was some kind of sugar alternative, like Splenda or something lol
"tech companies don't like to put all eggs in one basket"
I beg to differ
I remember getting so many ads for Stadia
Stadia would have worked if it completely replaced the need for a GPU or gaming PC. It just needed to support *all games*, not just a small selection, so that people saw it as an "instead of" investment rather than an "in addition to" investment.
They should have added a pricing tier that gave access to a cloud PC running Steam, even if it was higher latency / more expensive than Stadia-native games it would have saved a lot of peoples' wallets during the GPU shortage.
Honestly, it's time for a knowledgehusk gaming console.
Every time I re-find this channel it's done some sort of rebranding lol.
Everyone keeps saying it's "too early" for cloud gaming tech. It's not "too early" it's just a stupid, unworkable idea for the majority of people and situations. The speed of light isn't going to get any faster. Cloud gaming just can't match running the game on your own hardware. Even if they could increase the speed of light and solve the latency issue... can it do 120hz? 144hz? 300+? Ultrawide? Super ultrawide? Multi-monitor? There's just no way it can compete.
Honestly, I was never even able to get past the fact that they advertised via unskippable 20s UA-cam ads, never mind the inherent flaws with the product itself
Oh my god yes.
_So_ many unskippable ads for a fat pile of vaporware.
Losing Stadia itself is no big deal and was entirely expected, but losing the exclusive games definitely sucks for preservation. Easily the worst aspect about Cloud Gaming is the fact that emulation/preserving games without the service is physically impossible; unlike with movie/TV streaming services, you can’t just screen record a game and have the same experience as playing it. Even the Zeebo, a Brazil-exclusive console where you could only download games off the internet, has managed to get most of its games preserved after the service shut down. Cloud gaming as an alternative cheaper platform for games is fine, but never should they have exclusivity, or else we’ll see cases like this again.
Stadia was a nich product for gamers w/ really good internet. These are a small group of people with not a lot in common; gaming taste wise. Exception is people who play online games very competativly whose numbers are also small and are better served by a PC. There is no reason to have a cloud gaming console until amazing internet is more common than free drive space.
Imagine having lag in single players games....Google really didn´t know the first thing about their potential clientcbase
If they had made stadia a box, made porting PC games much easier, and designed android into it without it being a android device, they really could have had a hit. It would also give them time to develop the cloud services more. Imagine if all android phones could download and play any stadia game through cloud service. Yes some places it won't work well but in many locations it could have been great. They also should have wanted single player games as those games usually in worst situations can be replayed at a last save. There is no playing a replay of a online match. Although the reason they wanted more online games is so they can include more micro transactions so that stadia can repeatedly get money from the fees they charge for those micro transactions.
The only way to combat latency is to have servers in basically every town. And even then unless the town has a decent internet setup latency will still be an issue.
And unless the gave was made to be streamed, it's nearly impossible to port it to a streaming service.
I just think it's funny people are making such a big deal out of it. I was streaming games over 3G internet years ago. I just was using a remote connection program to run games on my PC at home. My phone could do it but it was too laggy because it was just a Droid incredible, a single core cpu and such. I was using my laptop and my phone's internet. I was getting about 130ms ping with big spikes but remember this was 3G internet you were lucky to get below 200ms on average.
I think that's the future of streaming, peeler using their own computers or hardware which would allow for low latency.
It doesn't work as advertised, you don't own the games you buy, and... well... it doesn't work.
Everything here Is absolutelly new to me, you learn something new everyday i guess
It always boggles the mind just how removed from reality big tech can be when it comes to cloud and streaming based services and what the average US consumer has in terms of actual internet speed and quality. Sony etc with 4K streaming, Google etc with cloud gaming. Maybe this is all good in say South Korea and other places with truly high speed internet but here? With Comcast etc? Pff, we're lucky if we can even get 1080p video streaming without visual artifacts and VBR content, like "auto" quality on UA-cam here, being not unheard of dropping to 480p just to play a relatively short video. Even with the most expensive plans any of the ISPs offer here this is not out of the ordinary.
8:45 ah yes, every companies dream. Forget you have the service and charge you every month while you are not aware.
Oh they had such a hard time though, I mean they launched in a pandemic where everyone had to stay home and find ways of entertain themselves, and when graphic cards were almost impossible to find for people trying to make gaming pcs.
Imo the biggest problem with stadia is a product market fit issue. Gaming can be of two types - casual and serious
Serious - The gamers have gaming devices and don't really need the service
Casual - they need a different style of game.
I think to make it work they could have a more thoughtful roll out (for big titles), tie in with android gaming (bigger games) and integration with the gaming content on UA-cam
On the upside, you only paid $240 instead of infinite theoretical dollars if stadia had continued
Stadia failed for one simple reason. It had no reason to exist. Cloud gaming sounds fancy but lag is a pain, and constant connection is a terrible requirement. There was literally no benefit to use Stadia. It was just pointless.
*That outro is killer.*
the funny thing is, it's Google we're talking about. it could have been making them a billion dollars a year profit, they would still shut it down. because they're google.
With what happened with Relogic and Terraria, I already knew it was gonna fail.
For the longest time I thought you were your brother.
In order to fall you need to be upright, Stadia never took off, they never advertised it after a few months and barley anybody used. The release was garbage and the game quality never improved too much.
I am with you, a subscription service that failed to subscribe properly... bad idea.
Imagine if you had subscription access and could download a handful of games to a console that temporarily bricked itself if you didn't keep up your subscription? There would be a bit of a delay to play the game for the first time as you download it, but repeat game use isn't penalized. With enough room on a dedicated console a few good choices could be stored there, so it doesn't need to be a case of which single game you currently have 'unlocked.' Que up a few new games every now and then to replace ones you are bored of, and play your current favourite while they download.
Not 100% streaming, but the subscription service would have held a lot of interest if done... you know, like a subscription service!
The biggest problem - Cloud doesn't need an separated plaform, Steam could just gave you an option to either download or play by the cloud. There no special philosophy for that
They just sold a feature as separate thing, that's why it failed
A physical console release during 2020 is a terrible idea, people still have issues getting PS5/Xbox Series S and I doubt Google would be able to fight back the chip shortage.