[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?

[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.

[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