In a move that is sure to raise plenty of eyebrows, and worry Stadia supporters, Google has announced they're shutting down SG&E (Stadia Games & Entertainment) and no longer doing first-party games.
They make it clear in the announcement that Stadia as a platform isn't going away, and they believe game streaming is "the future of this industry" and so they will "continue to invest in Stadia and its underlying platform to provide the best cloud gaming experience for our partners and the gaming community". It gets more interesting though, as Google said they will be expanding to "help game developers and publishers take advantage of our platform technology and deliver games directly to their players" and they will be working with partners who want a streaming solution.
Google clearly mention how costly it is to create big AAA games, and as Amazon have seen it doesn't always work out and burns a lot of money. Instead, the focus will be to "focus on building on the proven technology of Stadia as well as deepening our business partnerships" and on that note they mentioned that Jade Raymond has left Google now too.
Sounds like Google are going to be licensing the tech and hardware behind Stadia, while continuing to build up Stadia as a store itself. It makes a lot more sense, as big costly exclusives from Stadia for Stadia won't have enough of a pull to pay-off, whereas pulling in more and more 3rd party popular games will and would cost Google less to do. So, it is the smart move overall. The Stadia tech is good too, and it clearly works so they're doing what they do best in this way.
The thing is, it's another nail in the coffin of the idea Google sold it all on originally. The talk about these huge games that could only work in the cloud, which you're not likely to see from a 3rd party developer since their games will need to run on PC and consoles too most of the time.
So don't expect any Google / Stadia first-party titles after this year, if any of them come out at all. To be clear though, Google note they are "committed to the future of cloud gaming, and will continue to do our part to drive this industry forward" and that the Stadia store will continue bringing in more titles. Still, it won't stop people mentioning the Google Graveyard.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Mohandevir Feb 5, 2021
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: LinuxwarperI'm pretty sure Eike meant hardware platform. PC as a platform has a wide variety of hardware configurations compared to consoles or dedicated servers, leading to higher support costs.Quoting: EikeSupport costs for a huge variety of systems, compared to cloud servers or console systems.Here we are on a site dedicated to gaming on Linux, hopeful that one day games will be natively released for the platform, and you raised the point that if developers decide to forego local releases entirely, which Stadia could lead to, then it would be because of support costs assosciated with supporting another platform. That means exclusion of support even for Windows, making it the entire PC platform. You just proved how Stadia can become a bad thing in the long run.
Exactly the same reason why cloud gaming won't kill PC gaming: consoles would have already done so, a while ago... And god did Microsoft tried! Remember, just before Valve launched Steam? Microsoft put all of it's weight on the Xbox telling everybody that PC gaming was a thing of the past and yet PC gaming is thriving. It's even stronger then ever before.
I'm quite sure that Stadia is in direct competition with the Playstation and the Xbox, not the PC. Google didn't call it "A console in the cloud" for no reason.
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Quoting: LinuxwarperQuoting: EikeSupport costs for a huge variety of systems, compared to cloud servers or console systems.Here we are on a site dedicated to gaming on Linux, hopeful that one day games will be natively released for the platform, and you raised the point that if developers decide to forego local releases entirely, which Stadia could lead to, then it would be because of support costs assosciated with supporting another platform. That means exclusion of support even for Windows, making it the entire PC platform. You just proved how Stadia can become a bad thing in the long run.
Yes, and I never said anything different. You said "there is no reason to not release game both locally and through cloud." There is! Variety of systems, hardware and software wise. I bought a single whitelisted Proton game and only Linux native games otherwise, but that doesn't mean I've got my eyes closed. There are - unfortunately - reasons why people/companies would not release games for Linux despite supporting Stadia. And yes, this is an additional threat for native PC gaming, and especially for native Linux gaming.
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Mohandevir Feb 5, 2021
Quoting: EikeQuoting: LinuxwarperQuoting: EikeSupport costs for a huge variety of systems, compared to cloud servers or console systems.Here we are on a site dedicated to gaming on Linux, hopeful that one day games will be natively released for the platform, and you raised the point that if developers decide to forego local releases entirely, which Stadia could lead to, then it would be because of support costs assosciated with supporting another platform. That means exclusion of support even for Windows, making it the entire PC platform. You just proved how Stadia can become a bad thing in the long run.
Yes, and I never said anything different. You said "there is no reason to not release game both locally and through cloud." There is! Variety of systems, hardware and software wise. I bought a single whitelisted Proton game and only Linux native games otherwise, but that doesn't mean I've got my eyes closed. There are - unfortunately - reasons why people/companies would not release games for Linux despite supporting Stadia. And yes, this is an additional threat for native PC gaming, and especially for native Linux gaming.
Yep, but PC gaming is a beast of it's own with sought out features that you can't find on any console. Any serious developper knows about that.
Microsoft tried to kill 32bit support... Remember? That was a much bigger threat to PC gaming than Stadia... Same logic applies.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 5 February 2021 at 1:32 pm UTC
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyIt'll work if people turn out to be willing to go there en masse. But if dropping local PC play means losing a bunch of sales, they'll grudgingly go back to it. Software makers of all stripes have been trying to move to subscription models and so forth practically since there's been software, and they only pull it off now and then. So we'll see.Wouldn't you say the conditions for moving to such models is better this time around? Before streaming began to rise as it has this past few years, there was only consoles. Weak argument to forego local releases on PC platform. But these days they can save themselves the trouble of software and hardware variety by making their games available on Geforce Now or Stadia. Cost cutting and get them that extra money they constantly want.
Quoting: EikeYes, and I never said anything different. You said "there is no reason to not release game both locally and through cloud." There is! Variety of systems, hardware and software wise. I bought a single whitelisted Proton game and only Linux native games otherwise, but that doesn't mean I've got my eyes closed. There are - unfortunately - reasons why people/companies would not release games for Linux despite supporting Stadia. And yes, this is an additional threat for native PC gaming, and especially for native Linux gaming.I was wrong, and you made a good point. I'm not trying to refute what you said but I'd say the software variety is to a good degree cause by the industry themselves. Take Tim Sweeney as example, for someone who often uses the two words "open platform" you'd think he would direct his company towards Vulkan API but he doesn't. Why? Most likely because he has agreements with Microsoft. It is instances like this that makes developing for Linux to high of a cost.
So the solution to reduce costs for PC is to standardize software for game development. But sadly developers largely don't do that, just look at Vulkan adoption, they gravitate towards software that are bad for consumers in so many of the cases. But I would bet they would never care to adress the issue by standardizing software, e.g striving to make Vulkan the graphics API for game development, because ultimately it comes down to they want money. And why bother making PC better when you can be lazy and rely on streaming.
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Mohandevir Feb 5, 2021
You got valid theoretical points, but seriously... Come on guys... The end of PC gaming (or PC altogether) has been announced so many times, in the last 20 years... I'm not affraid in the least.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 5 February 2021 at 1:45 pm UTC
Last edited by Mohandevir on 5 February 2021 at 1:45 pm UTC
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Quoting: MohandevirYou got valid theoretical points, but seriously... Come on guys... The end of PC gaming (or PC altogether) has been announced so many times, in the last 20 years... I'm not afraid in the least.You should be worried at very least. Change takes time, and it won't happen so suddenly that you will notice it. IPhone sold 2.2 billion units according to wikipedia (Nov 1 2008). Back then there was less predatory practices on PC. The bad practices of microtransactions and lootboxes was more prevalent and bigger on mobile than they were on PC. I'd say the reason why is because many smartphone owners, many who were not gamers, did not have preexisting expectations of games and what should be in them as opposed to console and PC gamers. In less than a decade (aligning roughly with IPhone popularity) the sewer slowly leaked to PC platform and now the platform is a cesspool. In last 20 years streaming had not been as big of a thing as it is now and many of game companies were not as big and as independent as they are now.
Last edited by Linuxwarper on 5 February 2021 at 2:15 pm UTC
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Mohandevir Feb 5, 2021
Quoting: LinuxwarperQuoting: MohandevirYou got valid theoretical points, but seriously... Come on guys... The end of PC gaming (or PC altogether) has been announced so many times, in the last 20 years... I'm not afraid in the least.You should be worried at very least. Change takes time, and it won't happen so suddenly that you will notice it. IPhone sold 2.2 billion units according to wikipedia (Nov 1 2008). Back then there was less predatory practices on PC. The bad practices of microtransactions and lootboxes was more prevalent and bigger on mobile than they were on PC. I'd say the reason why is because many smartphone owners, many who were not gamers, did not have preexisting expectations of games and what should be in them as opposed to console and PC gamers. In less than a decade (aligning roughly with IPhone popularity) the sewer slowly leaked to PC platform and now the platform is a cesspool. In last 20 years streaming had not been as big of a thing as it is now and many of game companies were not as big and as independent as they are now.
... And, if ever it happens, which I highly doubt, yourself, will have abandonned the platform for something better and PC gaming will die in absolute indifference. That's usually how it happens.
Seriously, there are games that are just unfit for console use. I don't see that going anywhere soon. As long as there will be PC Gamers, there will be PC Gaming.
Streaming doesn't offer what a PC offers. It offers an alternative to consoles.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 5 February 2021 at 2:39 pm UTC
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Quoting: Purple Library GuySecond, Stadia itself, at the server level, is Linux. That means:
2a) For a game to be on Stadia, developers had to develop it on Linux and
2b) The game has to be, somewhere out there, running on Linux.
Counterpoint: Android runs on Linux, but the development is so different that it's not like we see a bunch of Android <-> Linux cross-ports outside of things that started life on the Linux side.
The PS4/PS5 and Apple ecosystems are all underpinned by BSD, and I certainly don't see a ton of FreeBSD-native games.
Just because Stadia 'runs on Linux/Vulkan' doesn't necessarily mean that it's not also abstracted to heck on top of that. Could be something like Proton, or just another iOS/PS OS ecosystem style layer on top. Just because it's running the Linux kernel + video drivers doesn't mean it's 1:1 with your typical desktop Linux solution in terms of the libraries and things game devs are focused on.
'Stadia means Linux-native games' is of the same caliber as 'Android means Linux-native games', IMO. Technically correct (the best kind of correct!), but not what most of us here are hoping for, I feel.
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Quoting: GuestStadia we do know a little about, and there's been more than one developer to say that if it runs on desktop GNU/Linux, it'll run basically the same as on Stadia. In fact, and I quote, "if you have Linux binaries that don't link to libstdc++ (i.e. use Clang and libc++ instead) and don't use X11/Wayland there is a 99.99% chance that your existing binaries (yes, not just the code, the binaries) will work just fine on Stadia." From flibitijibibo, on porting Celeste to Stadia.I can't say that's a compelling argument. Celeste, although seemingly a good game, is a small indie game. It's nowhere the size of games like Metro Exodus and Cyberpunk in software complexity. So I'd say basing Stadia games being scaled to desktop Linux on Celeste doesn't come off as convincing. Fortunately Metro Exodus enhanced version is releasing this year, which is likely when it comes to Linux, so won't need to wait long for tangible proof.
Here is some food for thought; if scaling Stadia release to desktop Linux is quite effortless, then what does that say about gaming industry? To me it says they are not only greedy but also corrupt, assuming they aren't corrupt already and aren't safeguarding Windows ecosystem.
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Can't help but link to a YT video from Linus: The death of cloud gaming
The talk is right at the start of the video and takes about 15 min, but for a TL;DW that resonates with me:
Last edited by dubigrasu on 6 February 2021 at 2:48 pm UTC
The talk is right at the start of the video and takes about 15 min, but for a TL;DW that resonates with me:
QuoteThe pitch for stadia, really the pitch for cloud gaming in general to me, if you wanna truly take off, is that is supposed to deliver gaming experiences that were otherwise impossible.
...................................
The point is: the killer app for cloud gaming was supposed to be gaming experiences that we couldn't otherwise achieve. That was the sales pitch.
And what Google needed to do is understand that it was going to take time and have some fucking patience for a change.
Last edited by dubigrasu on 6 February 2021 at 2:48 pm UTC
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