[ok_coo]

The Stadia closure sealed it for me. Such amazing tech for what it was, completely unable to see the long-term and stay dedicated to a tech that's obviously going to have increasing adoption into the future. Handed over that entire market to MS without a fight. It even had a perfect release window during COVID when everyone was home and wasn't able to find PS5 or Xbox to buy.

Everything around that product was a summary of how Google handles things now. I can't take any new product release seriously from them anymore.

[px43]

I feel like Google used to be really big on the "release early, release often" mantra. At some point they turned more into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. You can look in the windows and see them doing cool shit, but it never seems to make it to the general public.

Of course, most egregiously, they invented transformers like 6 years ago, and they've had LaMDA for over a year, and only let people see small glimpses of it. Also, Waymo has been around for almost 15 years, and seems to have some really neat tech, but people can't actually use it. Calico has apparently made some massive breakthroughs with ISRIB treatments, and bought up all the patents so they have exclusive access to it, but seem to be keeping everything to themselves.

I feel like Google Code could have easily dominated over GitHub, but then they just let Microsoft have it.

Google does so much cool stuff, and I'm grateful for the services that they offer, many of which I pay for. It just sucks that they've gotten so stingy lately about what they release. I hope that changes soon.

[fidgewidge]

Waymo is usable if you live in the right parts of the USA, right?

[px43]

My understanding is that in the bay area, they do silly demos from time to time, and let people ride in them for free, but it's not an actual usable service anywhere. Like I said, basically Willy Wonka. If something has changed I'd be interested to know about it. This article is only a few months old though, and it seems to be saying the same thing.

https://sfstandard.com/transportation/how-you-can-ride-new-w...

[fidgewidge]

I thought they were running a sort of taxi service in Arizona.

[wg0]

Biggest thing that was wrong with Stadia - over promising. Like 4k@60Hz over internet is too bold and maybe doable from within Google Offices or Bay Area and that isn't a market enough.

Could go a guaranteed consistent and stable 720p@60Hz with a YouTube kind of Ad revenue model. You play, you watch the ads every X Minutes and revenue streams shared with developers.

Indie developer's heaven it could be.

You don't want ads? As subscription model could be the way. Best would have been to pick up tons of past titles BioShock, Mafia etc by being the goto place for recent retro games and gradually gaining traction in triple AAA segment.

EDIT: Typos

[bushbaba]

Stadia launched without the full backing of google. Google could have easily foresee the public reaction, and mitigated it with a different pricing model or some guarantee that game purchases will be refunded if stadia closes down within 3 years of purchase.

[ethbr0]

Say what you want about Microsoft, but they executed with XBox and continued pouring money into it, because they knew its potential as a foothold in the living room was larger than its near-term revenue.

[endisneigh]

they didn't do the same with Windows Phone, though. survivor bias.

[belval]

Windows Phone had a market share so low (~3%) it just didn't make sense to keep pouring money into it when cheap Chinese Android phones were coming in troves and Apple/Samsung dominated the high-end segments.

The Xbox only true competitor is the PlayStation which is much more manageable. Even the first Xbox had a market share of 33% in the US. It's important not to mix up killing a product before its prime and pouring money into an established market for dominance. Windows Phone was the latter.

Cloud gaming (if we believe it will eventually catch on) does not have an established "winner" yet. Nvidia/Xbox/Luna (Amazon) are still trying to make it work and Google had a better approach than all of them with lower controller latency.

[ethbr0]

Point. At some point post-launch, you've got to appraise the situation and come up with a scenario where you win.

Windows Phone started too far behind, and the only scenario where it caught up was "Everyone stops making Android phones."

On the other hand, the path to XBox dominance seemed feasible.

[endisneigh]

What are you talking about lol. Windows mobile was before android and iOS. You’re seriously suffering from survivor bias. There’s was a very obvious path to success with Microsoft and mobile

[chem83]

Nor HoloLens (team laid off), or SPOT watches, or the Band etc. Survivor bias indeed.

[aliswe]

They put a billion dollars into the refunds of xbox red circled units, nd then sfter that billions more into rnd to make it what it is today. they definitely had a long term vision for it

[mort96]

Launching products without the full backing of the company sounds like a pretty large part of the mess.

[loudmax]

100% this!

The Google engineering underlying Stadia is impressive and there's still so much possible value. But Google management launched Stadia in such a way to minimize all of the benefits of online play, and maximize all of its shortcomings. And then price it in such a way to provide value to the smallest possible number of customers.

No amount of engineering talent can overcome a management that's dedicated to self-sabotage.

[bastardoperator]

The tech was the problem. I can spin up any cloud machine with moonlight and get better performance, play any game, and use any controller for the price of stadia and monthly fees.

[jpeter]

You could play AAA games on your smartphone with stadia. But google didn't advertise this at all