When will Google shut down Stadia?

A good model will be to start working on a new startup with a competing product as soon as google launches something. In couple of years when they shut down, provide migration paths. Swim in $$$.

I understand the cynicism of this community to Stadia but implore you all to think a little broader.<p>Stadia is different, with this product Google is trying something really innovative. For one, the fact that Stadia actually costs money should be a signal of Google&#x27;s long term ambition here. Yes, Fiber also cost money but was bogged down by the hell that is infrastructure development.<p>Stadia will require a substantial engineering effort from Google to make this work. The latency and network requirements are a great test to gauge network requirements as we move into 5g, AR, and self driving cars.<p>Gaming is huge and if Google can be the first to provide (viable) steaming as a service they can really threaten some of the incumbents like Twitch, Sony, Microsoft, etc.<p>Obviously Google doesn&#x27;t have the best track record here but I&#x27;m excited to see them tackle this challenge.

Google’s different brands remind me of MSFT of the early 2000s. No rhyme or reason. More chaos and throwing spaghetti at the wall. No issues changing or deprecating APIs and products like this on a whim.<p>They certainly dont inspire trust in anything but their flagship brands like Gmail that have been with us for decades.

Honestly, as soon as Google announces a new product, my first thought is to wonder how long until it is shut down. Google has completely lost my trust in relying on any of their products. Even when they come out and claim that this product will not be cancelled, for reals this time, pinky promise, etc. I simply can&#x27;t believe them.

What is going on with Google?<p>I used to think Google had the best product team in the world. In some ways I thought they defined what modern product management is&#x2F;was.<p>Now I have no clue what they are thinking with their product launches as of late. All of their products (and marketing) invoke this conservative, risk-adverse blandness that tries to appeal to everyone and in turn appeals to no one.

The criticism of Google Stadia <i>and</i> the defense of its concept in this thread are correct.<p>There is a successful future in cloud gaming and nobody denies that. However, it&#x27;s extremely likely to be delivered by a company with both the technical chops <i>and</i> industry chops, including a deep existing library. Google only has one of those, and they didn&#x27;t even nail the technical side convincingly.<p>Look toward Microsoft or Sony instead; all the pieces are there for them to waltz in and drink Stadia&#x27;s milkshake. And we know they&#x27;re working on it. It&#x27;s Disney+ all over again.

With Stadia&#x27;s &quot;negative latency&quot; technology, it&#x27;s like it&#x27;s already shut down.

Very surprised of general negative sentiment towards Stadia. Why is it like this? Because it&#x27;s Google, the evil company?<p>Seriously, if any startup launched it in its current state, people would be cheering and blaming it on a new tech&#x2F;new challenges. But cause it&#x27;s a very big corporation with top talent it means that they have to release top quality product every time? What the hell...<p>I&#x27;m very excited about the project, although not really interested in it at the moment. I don&#x27;t think its target audience is hardcore gamers, so why all of you are so over dramatic? Possibly, feeling happy that &quot;real&quot; gaming isn&#x27;t going anywhere anytime soon?<p>Obviously, there are problems and challenges, but I&#x27;m pretty sure that sooner or later it will get better. That&#x27;s what the MVP is for, isn&#x27;t it?

This makes me shed a solitary tear for Google Reader :&#x27;(<p>And another solitary tear from the other eye for Google Inbox :,(

This is a grammatical nitpick, but I see it over and over and over.<p>The title says &quot;When Will Google Shutdown Stadia?&quot;<p>It should be &quot;Shut Down&quot;, which is a verb phrase. A &quot;Shutdown&quot; is a noun, eg, &quot;There will be a shutdown in March.&quot;<p>Another common example of this:<p><pre><code> You need to log in. (long in == verb) What is your login. (login == noun)</code></pre>

I really don’t get the hate... I’m reading that in general UX is pretty good. I only have a Switch so haven’t been able to play RDR2 or AC Odissey... The solution seems perfect for me given the price point and I’m seriously considering picking it up.<p>When I worked for Nintendo we broadly called the segment I’m in “lapsed gamer” and it’s actually a pretty big niche...<p>What I read between the lines is that people are pissed that Stadia doesn’t address the “core gamer” demographic well (this kind of reaction is recurrent - see the Wii!), but might this not be a <i>great</i> go-to-market strategy?

There&#x27;s an easy product fix for this. Offer every game purchase with the option for a one-time key conversion, ideally managed through the game publisher. In the event of a Stadia shutdown you could easily port your purchase over to another single platform of your choice. This stragegy de-risks the platform and would go a long way toward alleviating consumer fears.<p>We saw similar strategies around the launch of Steam. Sure you&#x27;re just buying a download code, but if you send us $5 for postage we&#x27;ll mail you a physical disc to go with it. Same concept.

I feel that we are a little bit too hard on the big G on this one. They simply have their own inner startups, which they kill if product gains no traction.<p>We should look at how many startups from YC die within 4 years and make the comparison. I might be wrong, but the ratio could be very similar.<p>Still, Stadia will fail for sure ^^

Cloud gaming is solution looking for a problem. It&#x27;s not customer demand driven. Nobody want&#x27;s cloud gaming (at least not yet).<p>They haven&#x27;t shown anything compelling why this would be a game changer for end users.<p>The games are not more fun or unique than on any other platforms.<p>Any of the cloud arguments also hold for consoles or PCs on internet connected games.<p>I think the site may be a bit optimistic.

Brutal, but fair given the track record of so much out of Mountain View. I’ve always detected a certain sense of tragicomedy about Google; their money-printing ad machine is something they’ve always seemed to feel deep shame about, which drives (and also pays for) all these other things that they give up on when they realise they’ll never come close to that kind of commercial success again.

&quot;Google kills all their products&quot; is a bit of an overused meme trotted out at any launch... But for Stadia it&#x27;s a pretty legitimate concern, I&#x27;d say.<p>The model where you&#x27;re still &quot;buying&quot; the games ties you to the ongoing operation of the service much more strongly than in many of their services where an eventual migration might be a little painful, but it&#x27;s still possible.<p>The counterargument would be that they&#x27;ve deployed a ton of network capacity and GPU resources for cloud computing anyway, and so Stadia is just riding on those coattails... But it&#x27;s certainly not a promising track record.

Although Stadia might fail, I see cloud gaming (i.e. streaming A&#x2F;V) as a revolution for multiplayer games. We can now have all kinds of complicated physics and particle engines, since all players are known to experience the exact same “world model”. It might help a lot with anti-cheat technology as well. It’s pretty exciting!

FYI this is run by the incorrigible Jason Scott of textfiles.com&#x2F;BBS Documentary&#x2F;Archive Team fame: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;textfiles&#x2F;status&#x2F;1196447880728453120" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;textfiles&#x2F;status&#x2F;1196447880728453120</a>

My theory is this was a ploy to make use of idle cloud resources Google invested in for GCP. If that is the case I have much less fear of it just being shut down since its just gravy on top.

I don&#x27;t know why everyone is so pessimistic about Stadia. All my Google+ circles are super excited about it.

Just in: Google kills Cloud Print <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;chrome&#x2F;a&#x2F;answer&#x2F;9633006" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;chrome&#x2F;a&#x2F;answer&#x2F;9633006</a>

Let&#x27;s make it a sweepstakes. Everyone choose a date and put in $1. Person closest to the date wins the pot.

I feel like this product is just a trojan horse for Google to gather and sell customer data in some form. I&#x27;m just not convinced that Google has any real interest in the video game industry itself at least not in the same way as a Sony, MS or Nintendo. Further to that, this offering just feels so half hearted that it almost certainly will go the same way as most Google &quot;experiments&quot; - I would avoid putting any money into their budding gaming ecosystem as a consumer.

Stadia will stay. Google needs this to happen since they need one more revenue stream. There is no way it gets shut down. All of the other products that Google was quick to cancel didn’t represent long term key businesses for Google. To shut down Stadia would be akin to shut down their self driving division. Microsoft lost billions with the Xbox before it was profitable and the brand stablished itself in the market. Google recognizes it will be that kind of marathon with Stadia.

This should say more about treating software as a service than Google itself. Many companies have created then cancelled products, been bought out then had their products cancelled, or simply went out of business. We simply don&#x27;t talk about it as much with other companies since they are either smaller or, in the case of larger companies, they were slower in transitioning to online services so products simply lost support rather than no longer being available.

The timer is based on historical averages of Google products. Seems like a decent heuristic, except niche products like Youtube app for the Nintendo 3DS is included<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gcemetery.co&#x2F;youtube-nintendo-3ds&#x2F;?ref=lifespanrecent&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gcemetery.co&#x2F;youtube-nintendo-3ds&#x2F;?ref=lifespanrecen...</a>

After all the bad PR I decided to sit down, put aside emotions, and honestly evaluate with myself how I felt about Stadia as a video gamer.<p>I realized that I actually would really like video game streaming. It would be really neat to pop open whatever game I&#x27;m playing on a tv in another room, or on a chromebook or some other non-gaming device.<p>The problem is Stadia also wants to control the game library and the hardware. I&#x27;m not okay with either of those. Really, I just want to stream from the ps4 in one room to the TV in the other room. And, I bet there&#x27;s a way to do that already (going to look more into it later). Either way, it&#x27;s not a multibillion dollar venture, so I think that&#x27;s why google wants to be <i>streaming, renting a computer, and owning your game library</i>, all in one. I don&#x27;t care about the other two services. I have hardware and I have game libraries.

Game streaming requires tens of gigabytes worth of data downloaded every hour, resulting in choppy gameplay because of the latency. Their production product seems more like a beta release. They may be too early to market and could see them shutting it down relatively soon.

I fear that Stadia could bring change to gaming as publishers might decide that streaming is the way to go against piracy, technical difficulties of users and distribution costs. Maybe it would allow them to externalize support to Google even. Another step to take software away from the user.<p>It would restrict things like modding and user modifications of games, which I value rather highly. The fear that I suddenly loose access to software is also present since I certainly am one of these backwards hoarders. I saw people loosing some of their digital media when GFWL shut down.<p>Still, in context of this page I believe that there is life in the old dog yet, even if the dog isn&#x27;t old at all.

In general, Google runs its operation like a family of startups still (even given their new departmentalized org chart), and for any new Google product, I consider the operational expected life to be the operational expected life of a startup company announcement.<p>Google doesn&#x27;t have a process internally (AFAIK) equivalent to series funding, but the processes they do have are functionally equivalent; if management decides a project isn&#x27;t worth investing in, teams get re-assigned and that&#x27;s it.<p>And companies that can offer a 10+-year support cycle on their products announce fewer new initiatives a year.

It blows my mind that anyone would support something like this. You&#x27;re spending full price on a _streamed game_ that will be instantly remove when a) Google deems the service not profitable and closes the doors, rendering your money wasted, b) rights expire for certain games, c) some PR nightmare occurs from a CEO of a game company or something and they respond by removing affiliations.<p>Digital games are bad enough in that they can be pulled out out of the respective stores whenever, but when you can&#x27;t even have it downloaded to your own console? Get out of here. What utter nonsense.

I kinda want this to turn into a game. Maybe by being able to buy a ticket and bet that it is X days before&#x2F;after the D-day. Whoever is closest at the time of the actual shutdown will win the whole prize pool.

Gamers Nexus has a scathing review of Stadia that is amusing: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=i6dyrtnLU_w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=i6dyrtnLU_w</a>

Perhaps they will switch to an LTS model for some services, committing to at least 5 years of support.<p>For comparison in the game industry, Sony has publicly committed to 10 years of support for each numbered PlayStation console generation, and that seems to have worked out pretty well, with generations spaced about 7 years apart.<p>(Sadly the PSVita&#x2F;PSTV didn&#x27;t get that support, nor did some services like PlayStation Vue, PlayStation Home, or Qore; also many multiplayer game servers have shut down after a couple of years, rendering the games unplayable online.)

I appreciate the sentiment here, but this feels incredibly reactive and preliminary.<p>Stadia should have more clearly set launch expectations: there are only a few games worth playing for, most of the cool cloud features aren&#x27;t there, etc, etc<p>But that doesn&#x27;t mean all of those things aren&#x27;t coming? For all intents and purposes, this was a soft launch. Sure Google is going to burn a ton of consumers by launching before the true value-adds are there, but it doesn&#x27;t mean that one-day Stadia won&#x27;t be worth buying.

I honestly wonder what it will take at this point to change Google&#x27;s culture of how they launch products.<p>They haven&#x27;t had a success in a while, bluntly. Perhaps the &quot;Google way&quot; of launching a half finished product over vague windows and iterating after that doesn&#x27;t actually work? Or if it ever worked, doesn&#x27;t work now when Google isn&#x27;t a plucky underdog and the products aren&#x27;t competing with other unfinished platforms but often mature, feature complete alternatives?

Honestly, i cant even name one google hardware product that had a typical industry longevity..<p>Smart watches were here and there long before Apple jumped in and made it main stream, and just like iPhone they made an industry out of it.<p>Google should stick with what it does best, like Android model (even wear OS model). Let the market for <i>a new product</i> starts maturing, then use the its software&amp;services to beat the crap out of others.

Don&#x27;t forget there is already <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;</a>

In the source they cite (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gcemetery.co&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gcemetery.co&#x2F;</a>), do they consider only products that have died? Or do they track all products that have started? (hopefully they have right censoring, otherwise it seems they&#x27;re underestimating the average lifespan).<p>I&#x27;m having a hard time finding the data in tabular format.

I think that this project has the economics to work, so, even if Google abandons it, somebody should eventually build it. Why I think streaming games is a powerful thing: Piracy. It will be more difficult to get a ilegal copy of a game that was never released to the public, only run on servers. But yes, kind of sucks to who wants to test games or live in third world countries.

The idea of game streaming seems sound... at least for certain genres. But having to buy games exclusive to that device is ridiculous, especially when considering Google&#x27;s graveyard. There is just a whole lot of doubt shadowing it. If anyone can do game streaming correctly, it will end being Steam or something, a platform where most gamers already have games purchased.

Interesting parallel story about Sun&#x27;s &quot;Sun Blade&quot;. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mcclure111&#x2F;status&#x2F;1196557401710837762" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mcclure111&#x2F;status&#x2F;1196557401710837762</a><p>Summary: they solved a technical problem without a clear user story, and were ultimately too early. Sounds a lot like Stadia.

Most of those products killed without any transition path are actually consumer products without revenue. So my rule of thumb: if Stadia manages a chunk of other Google business to depend on itself (which makes it much harder to be deprecated), then probably it&#x27;s okay to use it. Integration into Youtube or Ads would be a good sign of their commitment.

Also worth checking out: the &quot;near death&quot; page on the Google cemetery website: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gcemetery.co&#x2F;tag&#x2F;near-death&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gcemetery.co&#x2F;tag&#x2F;near-death&#x2F;</a>. Lots of obscure products you probably haven&#x27;t even heard of.

I have zero interest in Stadia personally and I would consider myself a gamer. I just feel like I want less latency and video over internet doesn&#x27;t seem like it&#x27;s going to catch up with a 4-6ft video cable direct to my monitor &#x2F; TV.<p>If Stadia is successful I can see it being a way to pay for new data centers for Google&#x27;s cloud infrastructure.<p>If you consider that most consoles last a 4-5 years, they cost ~$299-500 over that period, that&#x27;s ~$39-$125 per year for the generation. Instead of the users owning the machine locally, Google installs a consoles worth of power in a data center. Once the generation is over, the data center is still there and Google has put all that money into a semi-new server datacenter infrastructure that can be rolled into Google&#x27;s Cloud service offerings. &quot;Kids&quot; &#x2F; Gaming money then pays for &quot;Adults&quot; &#x2F; Cloud Server infrastructure. The idea sounds great as long as there are enough gamers who don&#x27;t mind the latency.<p>I am unfamiliar with the lifespan of a Google data center but I imagine it&#x27;s around 5+ years.

It sure sucks to invest in a product and then see it shut down. However, I like the idea of a company that constantly tries new things, iterates and is not afraid to pull the plug if it doesn&#x27;t work rather then have hundreds of zombie products that suck the profits.

I (half) surprised to see there are more than one Google product cemetery sites<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;killedbygoogle.com&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gcemetery.co&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gcemetery.co&#x2F;</a>

I tried Stadia and had a wonderful first experience on my Mac. Mac is relevant here because it&#x27;s still worse for gaming, with access to fewer titles.<p>If the product is good, I&#x27;ll pay for it. With streaming bundling, they can create a solid business.

I liked the halloween google graveyard: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;leftoblique&#x2F;status&#x2F;1179476277549400064" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;leftoblique&#x2F;status&#x2F;1179476277549400064</a>

Gonna share this on my Google+!

Haven’t tried Stadia, but I imagine the input lag problem is not resolved. FPS games will likely be unplayable.<p>I tried Steams version which steams a video from your gaming pc to another pc on local host and the input lag is still noticeable

I give it 2021 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;codyogden&#x2F;killedbygoogle&#x2F;issues&#x2F;444" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;codyogden&#x2F;killedbygoogle&#x2F;issues&#x2F;444</a>

To be frank, I don&#x27;t want and don&#x27;t think Google Stadia will go down.<p>I don&#x27;t want it to go down because, I&#x27;m sure Google will lobby with ISPs to improve their latency and ISPs in many countries have long hidden their pathetic latency behind bandwidth&#x2F;data numbers.<p>I don&#x27;t think it will go down, because once latency issue is fixed there&#x27;s no debilitating issue with stadia and western reviewers who are bearish about Stadia are forgetting how big mobile gaming is in Asia. Many of those mobile gamers haven&#x27;t owned a console let alone a computer and Stadia in their cheap android mobile would be first console quality game they experience.

I have no idea how it works, but it would be fascinating to learn about how the video is encoded&#x2F;decoded in such a latency sensitive environment.

This seems like it will be a more difficult one to shut down since it is a subscription service from the start. More likely to be profitable early.

I hope this service grows, but right now there are no incentives to jump in. Pay $130 to play old games + pay full price for more old games.

The ads are unappealing, reviews are not favorable, the name does not really sound like an entertainment product.<p>A dead on arrival product.

$$. When it doesn’t make enough, shut down. That’s what they are all about, bets. They don’t hold onto the bag too long.

Has anyone implemented an AI based prediction for this? OR is it as simple as saying &quot;in 45 months&quot; ?

you should change it to a bidding war. would be fun to watch as the predictions change every day

Q10 shows big $$ lost from Stadia, investors brings heat to the CEO. Shit rolls down hill

Google understands that the Xbox is what keeps Windows alive, and making $$$ for MS.<p>They want to get into the gaming industry, but take a gordian knot solution. They don&#x27;t want to compete against consoles. They want to be a console for computers, regardless of OS.<p>Do they kill things? Yes. But, if those things are making billions.<p>Video games make billions.<p>Survey says?

Not all heroes wear capes. Props to the developer who made this. This is perfect.

Wow, it&#x27;s really amazing me how much people hate Stadia. It&#x27;s a perfect storm of Google + subscription gaming, so I guess it&#x27;s not surprising, but I do wonder if there&#x27;s a whole bunch of people behind the ones with the pitch forks who like the idea, even a bit.

This is a prototype for thin client. It&#x27;s a more advanced chromebook.

Hah, excellent joke&#x2F;insight! If this goes viral it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy - people realizing Google likes to kill their services will say &quot;Stay away from Stadia, it&#x27;ll hurt if you get into it and they kill it&quot;.

Counter is optimistic :D

This won&#x27;t be shutdown and I&#x27;m betting on it now. If it ends up doing badly, they will pivot chrome into another gaming platform similar to steam and the browser will become a Swiss army knife app where you do almost everything.

I&#x27;m still bitter about them closing Google trips

Nice joke and nice irony. I actually think that Stadia will be very successful in the long run, and I think Google will never shut it down. Same for GCP.<p>(Just IMHO, and not much to substantiate my prediction.)

They already blew it with the name...

I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if it&#x27;s gone in 2 years or less. Stadia&#x27;s launch has been nothing short of disastrous.

When will they shutdown Waymo?

*Shut Down

make it shorter

This may be the first Betteridge exception I&#x27;ve seen.

Consider Stadia for what it is: it&#x27;s someone gaming the system (if you pardon the pun) to become a VP. Once that position is secure, and once all the rest of top brass on the project is promoted, it will begin its inexorable march towards shutdown. So I give it a couple of years. The only way of avoiding this fate is if it gets viral and Google starts making at least a billion a year on it (their official threshold for caring about a business), chances of which seem infinitesimally slim.

So like, what is the counterargument? Google keeps projects alive that drain resources for longer?<p>I guess I don&#x27;t understand what people want here.

Sorry, but pet peeve. Shutdown is not a verb. (should be &quot;shut down&quot;)<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;notaverb.com&#x2F;shutdown" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;notaverb.com&#x2F;shutdown</a>

This title is such click bait lol. Granted this service was a terrible idea in the first place, and WILL be shutdown, but this is a hypothesis, extrapolated over hundreds of companies that have nothing to do with each other.

The end goal for google with this tech isn&#x27;t stadia, it&#x27;s something completely new. It&#x27;s loading and playing a game as easily as you load and watch a youtube video right now.<p>Stadia&#x27;s just the beta test to get the hardware running, tested and get developers familiar with the backend platform they need to develop for&#x2F;port too.<p>Video games are one of the few really massive and lucrative markets which Google can move into and make a dent on their balance sheets.<p>So yeah Stadia will probably get canned at some point, but the technology will probably go onto bigger and better things.