A few years ago Google launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. Stadia allowed streaming games for consumers. Google is shutting down Stadia as it hasn’t gained traction with users.
Google is refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Players will continue to have access to their games library and play through January 18, 2023 so they can complete final play sessions. Google expects to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023.
The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. Google sees clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and their Augmented Reality (AR) efforts — as well as make it available to industry partners.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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and nothing of value was lost …
Another one bites the dust. Add another one to whatgooglekilled.com
Edit: killedbygoogle.com is the real website
Yet another corpse to throw on the mountain of dead Google products. Any company that relies on Google for more than Gmail or Android is a fool.
Don’t be logged on when they shut it down, you might wake up and find yourself trapped in an Isekai! (Yeah, I watch a lot of anime.)
On a more serious note, this is why I’m really down on the decision to route functionality of software through remote servers, which is often done even where it isn’t remotely necessary. It transforms purchases into rentals, and enables the seller to brick your property without warning. There really is a push on to render private ownership of software effectively impossible, and private ownership of the hardware it runs on largely meaningless.
Kudos to Google in this case, providing adequate warning and fairly comprehensive refunds. That was very much the right thing to do, and I’ve been burned before by companies that sold me hardware knowing that they had plans to render it useless in just a few months.
Indeed, this is generally my beef with “the cloud.” I’ve seen lots of incidents in business settings where someone’s business data was lost because the remote server was killed due to nonpayment or bankruptcy or some other reason.
In all fairness if your physical data center is in a building where you didn’t pay the rent it might have the same fate…
I don’t know about where you live, but here the landlord is allowed to kick you out, but he doesn’t get to keep your stuff. Sure, you’ll need to find someplace you can plug the server into the mains to access your data again, but it’s notionally there.
I’m sure their four users will be mortified.
I tried playing a single game on Stadia. It was BEYOND unplayable. I could have tried harder to sample other games, but I don’t really game that much in the first place. When I do, I definitely enjoy it though. They SAY that the technology works. I don’t really think it does. I would prefer to just download a REAL game and play it like God intended. No frame-rate problems, no stuttering, just play it, and don’t think about it. Even gaming online presents its own set of problems. Biggest one, IMO, is player dropout. Second is the game dropping entirely, also usually due to player dropout, which creates server sync problems.
As much as this should not be the case, I really do think that a lot of what comes out of big tech companies is built and tested by people who cannot imagine ever being outside of their highly connected world where there is constant >1 GB/sec connectivity.
There are too many products that just need instant, high bandwidth, and I guess free, internet at all times.
“We tested this in the office in Silicon valley, in downtown San Francisco, even as far away as downtown Los Angeles. It’ll work anywhere.”
Well your experience is the exception not the rule. I used stadia for over 2 years exclusively over wifi with a 100 Mbps connection and it was nearly flawless. At the end of the day though it really doesn’t matter.
Well your experience is the exception not the rule. I used stadia for over 2 years exclusively over wifi with a 100 Mbps connection and it was nearly flawless. At the end of the day though it really doesn’t matter.
Well your experience is the exception not the rule. I used stadia for over 2 years exclusively over wifi with a 100 Mbps connection and it was nearly flawless. At the end of the day though it really doesn’t matter.