Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm ad executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you. I am back from vacation.
Speaker 1: I was detained a bit by Hurricane Ian, which obviously
Speaker 1: reaked terrible devastation across parts of Florida and some other regions.
Speaker 1: If you were affected by Ian, I hope you and
Speaker 1: your loved ones are all safe and well. Uh. I
Speaker 1: was merely inconvenienced, but that inconvenience meant that I was
Speaker 1: actually a little behind on the tech news. And if
Speaker 1: you follow tech news, then you may have heard that
Speaker 1: Google is shutting down its online cloud streaming game service
Speaker 1: called Stadia. And I thought we could talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what Stadio was and what went wrong and
Speaker 1: what comes next. But first we'll talk about the cloud
Speaker 1: game streaming world in general, because Stadia is just one
Speaker 1: of several services they're really aimed to revolutionize gaming, and
Speaker 1: this one ultimately fell short. It's also yet another example
Speaker 1: of a Google project that the company would pull the
Speaker 1: plug on. And I've done entire episodes about this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that you know, Google either launched or it
Speaker 1: acquired and then subsequently killed it off. So we're not
Speaker 1: going to dwell on that too much here, but it
Speaker 1: does play a big part, I think, in why Stadia
Speaker 1: failed ultimately. Well, first, before we get to any of that,
Speaker 1: let's talk about cloud streaming video game content in general. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not a new idea like a lot of
Speaker 1: things that emerged as cloud computing matured. It is and
Speaker 1: as a service concept like I'm sure you've heard of
Speaker 1: lots of things as a service, you know, like software
Speaker 1: as a service. In this case, it's games as a
Speaker 1: service and players pay a certain amount of money, typically
Speaker 1: a recurring subscription fee, and in return, they can access
Speaker 1: a library of games stored on the cloud, and they
Speaker 1: play the game on a home device. It could be
Speaker 1: really anything. It could be a handheld device, it could
Speaker 1: be a connected TV, it could be a video game console,
Speaker 1: it could be a PC or a smartphone, whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. Uh, we call this the client. It's the
Speaker 1: user side of this system. And meanwhile, the actual game
Speaker 1: is running on a server, probably somewhere that's not too
Speaker 1: far away, and we call the server the server and
Speaker 1: a client server system. That one's easy so the reason
Speaker 1: you want to have your server fairly close to wherever
Speaker 1: the client is is to cut down on latency and
Speaker 1: lag because the greater the distance between the player and
Speaker 1: the server, the more likely you will have latency. And
Speaker 1: that's particularly bad for Twitch based games, and by that
Speaker 1: I mean the games that rely on fast and accurate reflexes,
Speaker 1: not games streaming on the Twitch service. Now. Really the
Speaker 1: combination of cloud and edge computing is what has made
Speaker 1: these streaming services viable. But some services debuted before this
Speaker 1: kind of infrastructure really became robust. In fact, if we
Speaker 1: really want to go overboard, we can talk about stuff
Speaker 1: like bulletin board systems or b B s. So ages ago,
Speaker 1: before most people even knew there was an Internet that
Speaker 1: was in development, you know, there were some computer hobbyists
Speaker 1: who began to create software that would let you turn
Speaker 1: your computer into kind of a little host server. Other
Speaker 1: people could dial into your computer by using their own computers,
Speaker 1: which would be the clients, and a modem, so they
Speaker 1: would have their phone connected to this modem and they
Speaker 1: would literally type in a number that related to your
Speaker 1: computer's phone line and dial into your computer, so it
Speaker 1: was kind of like their computer was calling your computer
Speaker 1: on the phone, and what would happen later would be
Speaker 1: a conversation between the two machines. Now again this was
Speaker 1: in the old landline phone days. Mind you you know
Speaker 1: your computer would answer this call. The other person would
Speaker 1: then be able to do stuff on your computer through
Speaker 1: this connection. Not just any stuff, right, They couldn't do everything.
Speaker 1: They couldn't get like administrative control of your machine assuming
Speaker 1: you were running the right software, but they could do
Speaker 1: stuff within the context of the BBS software you were using.
Speaker 1: And a BBS host might allow users to leave messages
Speaker 1: for each other kind of like email, or maintain a
Speaker 1: forum that may or may not have a specific focus
Speaker 1: us to it, like there were bbs is that were
Speaker 1: really focused on things like sports, for example, or the
Speaker 1: computer calling in might even be able to play certain
Speaker 1: games that worked really well with bbs is, So typical
Speaker 1: things would be like dungeon crawling c RPGs, and this
Speaker 1: was a sort of peer to peer gaming and usually
Speaker 1: limited folks to a single player experience, but it was
Speaker 1: a start. This is also a great topic in general
Speaker 1: because it makes it very easy to explain clients versus servers.
Speaker 1: So the client in this case is the device that
Speaker 1: the end user has, whether it's a computer or a
Speaker 1: game console, or a handled device or smartphone, smart TV,
Speaker 1: web browser, whatever. The server is the machine on the
Speaker 1: other end that's actually running the processes, and the connection
Speaker 1: between client and server allows the client to access the
Speaker 1: servers capabilities, almost like the client was a natural extension
Speaker 1: of the server itself. In many ways, it goes back
Speaker 1: to the time sharing model of having dumb terminals connecting
Speaker 1: to a central computer, where you have multiple people each
Speaker 1: uosing a terminal that doesn't really do anything on its own,
Speaker 1: It just acts as an input output device for a
Speaker 1: centralized computing system. This is like that, but it is
Speaker 1: enabled via the Internet. Now, way back in two thousand,
Speaker 1: before the term cloud computing had even become a common
Speaker 1: phrase like that wouldn't happen until around two thousand six,
Speaker 1: but a company from Finland called g Cluster had a
Speaker 1: cloud computing concept and attended E three to show it off. Now,
Speaker 1: back then E three was a very big video game
Speaker 1: trade and industry show. And I say back then because
Speaker 1: well recently the conference has been struggling to remain relevant
Speaker 1: and in fact has canceled. The last couple of E
Speaker 1: three events. I think it's going through a real identity crisis,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like what role does E three
Speaker 1: play if any um, it's that I know that the
Speaker 1: the organization behind E three definitely wants it to remain
Speaker 1: a thing because it was a revenue generator. But from
Speaker 1: the moment it's kind of in limbo. Well, anyway, back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and the three G Cluster, this company
Speaker 1: from Finland, showed off a client server gaming service, or
Speaker 1: at least a technology not really a service yet, but
Speaker 1: the technology that would enable that kind of thing. The
Speaker 1: following year, in two thousand, one G Cluster revealed that
Speaker 1: it was working on a system that would let gamers
Speaker 1: by say a handheld system that connected to a more
Speaker 1: powerful back end through the Internet. And this would in theory,
Speaker 1: let layers access games that would normally be way too
Speaker 1: advanced and too demanding to play on a small handheld device.
Speaker 1: While the gamer's device would be relatively small and thus
Speaker 1: not able to pack in big old components like in
Speaker 1: a beefy GPU, the hardware that was actually running the
Speaker 1: games on the server side would not have those size restrictions, right,
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about how big or small
Speaker 1: your server is assuming you've got, you know, the physical
Speaker 1: space to house it, and that meant that you could
Speaker 1: have a very simple end device for the user to
Speaker 1: to take advantage of. We call this kind of model
Speaker 1: a thin client because the end user device, the client
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be particularly powerful. It just has to
Speaker 1: be able to receive the signal and to be able
Speaker 1: to display things and have the input output structure so
Speaker 1: that you can interact with whatever the software is. Well.
Speaker 1: With a fast Internet connection, this kind of model can
Speaker 1: work great. It can bring down the price of the
Speaker 1: hardware because the handheld device doesn't have to be packed
Speaker 1: to the gills with all these components, so it could
Speaker 1: be relatively inexpensive. The company g Cluster was still developing
Speaker 1: this technolog Gester wasn't anything for gamers to buy. At
Speaker 1: this point. There was no commercial use of it. It
Speaker 1: was more like, here's the the technology that would enable
Speaker 1: this to happen. In two thousand four, Soft Bank, the
Speaker 1: enormous Japanese company, acquired g Cluster, and g Cluster did
Speaker 1: provide the back end technology for several online gaming services,
Speaker 1: primarily in Europe and then later almost exclusively in Japan.
Speaker 1: UM and Eventually, another Japanese company called broad Media Group
Speaker 1: would acquire a majority steak in g cluster that would
Speaker 1: be in t S, but we're gonna move on. That
Speaker 1: was just one early example of the idea for cloud
Speaker 1: based gaming. Now. According to at least some sources, the
Speaker 1: first actual commercial cloud gaming service was on Life. Actually
Speaker 1: remember when that launched. That was the summer of now
Speaker 1: the company on Life, I've been around for several years
Speaker 1: before that working on the project. But they did that
Speaker 1: kind of in secret, not revealing it till they offered
Speaker 1: up a fifteen dollar per month subscription service. The company
Speaker 1: would later then drop the subscription service entirely. So instead
Speaker 1: what Online looked to make money on was to h
Speaker 1: to rent games to players, so players would be able
Speaker 1: to use the service for free, but to access games
Speaker 1: that would need to pay a certain amount per month
Speaker 1: depending upon the title. This model did not work out
Speaker 1: so well because within two years, on Life executives laid
Speaker 1: off the entire staff. They essentially cut all ties with shareholders.
Speaker 1: They made all shares null and void. They went through
Speaker 1: a court process to do that, so they didn't just
Speaker 1: declare it. It was actually a legal process they had
Speaker 1: to follow. They closed up shop, and they sold on
Speaker 1: Live's assets to at the time a secret buyer, who
Speaker 1: then opened up a brand new business called on Live
Speaker 1: Real Bold Move. The buyer was Louder Partners, and it
Speaker 1: was rumored that the original on Live executive teams sold
Speaker 1: the company way way below its actual value based on
Speaker 1: the technology it had developed and the patents that it owned. Anyway,
Speaker 1: on Live limped on for a couple more years until
Speaker 1: in Sony Computer Entertainment bought on Live's assets and it
Speaker 1: effectively ceased to be Now it's possible that Online could
Speaker 1: have made it, you know, and survived as a business
Speaker 1: with just a few different choices, but it's really hard
Speaker 1: to say because before the service launched, journalists expressed a
Speaker 1: lot of skepticism about whether the company would be able
Speaker 1: to provide a good experience to users. Some were doubting
Speaker 1: that Online would have the processing equipment needed to handle
Speaker 1: the extreme demands of high end performance gaming, and there
Speaker 1: was more skepticism that broadband access in general wasn't nearly
Speaker 1: robust enough to support this kind of service in the
Speaker 1: first place, that users would not get high resolution games
Speaker 1: that had low latency because the Internet connections just weren't
Speaker 1: there yet. That was the fear. Whether that was true
Speaker 1: or not, the press coverage definitely hurt on Live's chances,
Speaker 1: and not a lot of people bought into it. Certainly,
Speaker 1: there were reviews that found that if you had really
Speaker 1: bad internet connection, that would lead to poor performance. But
Speaker 1: you know, that seems pretty obvious to me. If you
Speaker 1: know you've got allows the internet connection, it should come
Speaker 1: as no surprise when you experience issues with a cloud
Speaker 1: based gaming service. That kind of goes hand in hand. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Sony absorbed on Live's assets, or at least most of them.
Speaker 1: Around the same time that on Live debut, a company
Speaker 1: called gei Kai announced its own cloud game streaming technology.
Speaker 1: Like on Life, this was a technology that the team
Speaker 1: at Geikai had been working on for several years before
Speaker 1: there was ever a public announcement. Geikai initially focused on
Speaker 1: creating embedded gaming services for other platforms such as Facebook.
Speaker 1: In Sony would gobble up gey Kai, just as it
Speaker 1: would later do for on Lie, and Sony would use
Speaker 1: guy Kais technology to build out its share Play, remote play,
Speaker 1: and PlayStation now offerings. All Right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back I'll talk about another
Speaker 1: streaming service or two, and then we'll really focus on Stadia. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about another cloud streaming service that appeared not
Speaker 1: long after these. This one appeared in and spoiler it's
Speaker 1: still around. That would be in Vidio's g force Now.
Speaker 1: When it first launched, it was known as Grid. It
Speaker 1: was part of in Vidia's Shield platform. The Nvidia Shield
Speaker 1: is essentially a set top box type of device that
Speaker 1: you connect to a television and it allows you to
Speaker 1: stream uh computer content to a TV. So, like other
Speaker 1: services I've mentioned, this one offered gamers the chance to
Speaker 1: access a huge library of titles in return for a
Speaker 1: recurring monthly subscription. It was in beta from all the
Speaker 1: way to twenty finally launched in February. Some would argue
Speaker 1: that was the perfect time to launch because it was
Speaker 1: just before we were all locked down due to the
Speaker 1: COVID pandemic. In Video created clients not just for the
Speaker 1: Shield streaming device, but also for Windows, Mac computers, and
Speaker 1: Android devices. It's even incorporated into some television's directly, so
Speaker 1: that some TVs have the g force now service built
Speaker 1: into them, and Video offers different tiers of subscriptions to
Speaker 1: g Force Now they escalate in price as they offer
Speaker 1: better performance. There's a free tier that lets you play
Speaker 1: games on what amounts to a quote unquote basic rig,
Speaker 1: and your session can last up to one hour apiece.
Speaker 1: So that means the server you're connected to isn't going
Speaker 1: to have all the fancy bells and whistles, so it
Speaker 1: can't deliver a high end experience, but it means you
Speaker 1: don't have to buy, you know, a better PC to
Speaker 1: run current games. You can use this basic rig and
Speaker 1: log into it as if it were your computer. Now,
Speaker 1: for nine dollars nine cents a month, you could connect
Speaker 1: to a premium rig and you could stay connected for
Speaker 1: up to six hours per session with a resolution of
Speaker 1: up to ten a d P at sixty frames per second,
Speaker 1: which is decent, but like pro gamers look at sixty
Speaker 1: frames per second, they're like, I can't play at that.
Speaker 1: I need much faster. For most people, how of her,
Speaker 1: sixty phrase per second is more than sufficient. It's really
Speaker 1: if you're talking about like elite levels of play. So
Speaker 1: if you go all the way up to nineteen dollars
Speaker 1: nine cents a month, you can connect to a rig
Speaker 1: with a g Force r T x processing card. Now,
Speaker 1: this used to be one of the flagship graphics processors
Speaker 1: from in Video, right the thirty eight and the thirty
Speaker 1: nine were the two top of the line graphics processors
Speaker 1: from the company. However, in Video recently announced a new
Speaker 1: forty lines who would get forty eight and the thirty
Speaker 1: eight is no longer like at the top of the
Speaker 1: heap anymore. This subscription tier would let you play up
Speaker 1: to eight hours percession, and you could get up to
Speaker 1: four K resolution and hundred twenty frames per second. Though
Speaker 1: I'd be shocked if you could do both at the
Speaker 1: same time for sustained lengths of time, because your Internet
Speaker 1: connection is a need to be pretty strong in order
Speaker 1: to do that. I mean, if you live somewhere where
Speaker 1: you've got a fiber connection or something like that, then yes,
Speaker 1: you could probably take advantage of that. I think for myself,
Speaker 1: considering the let's say mercurial nature of my Internet connection,
Speaker 1: I'd be lucky to be able to sustain a hundred
Speaker 1: twenty frames per second at four a K for any
Speaker 1: real length of time. Anyway, this is an example of
Speaker 1: a cloud based gaming service that's stuck around. It exists today.
Speaker 1: It provides something that a lot of gamers want that
Speaker 1: it provides access to a gaming rig that has a
Speaker 1: killer graphics card in it, and sure that machine happens
Speaker 1: to be in a warehouse somewhere. But considering how difficult
Speaker 1: it was to even find a new graphics card for
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, it's still a popular choice
Speaker 1: for a lot of gamers now. Recently, the availability of
Speaker 1: graphics cards has been improving and their prices started to
Speaker 1: come down from the insane markups that we were seeing.
Speaker 1: You know, back when Ethereum was both more valuable and
Speaker 1: dependent upon proof of work system, it is now a
Speaker 1: proof of steak system, so the demand for for high
Speaker 1: end graphics cards for things like crypto mining has drastically
Speaker 1: declined recently. So that gives gamers a better chance of
Speaker 1: making a gaming rig that has one of these cards
Speaker 1: in it for themselves, which means they wouldn't need to
Speaker 1: use this kind of service. But it's not like they
Speaker 1: are available everywhere, and they are still pretty darn expensive,
Speaker 1: So for a lot of people it may make more
Speaker 1: sense to pay say twenty bucks a month to get
Speaker 1: access to a system capable of those levels of performance,
Speaker 1: rather than you know, having to save up a couple
Speaker 1: of grand to build a rig and hunt around to
Speaker 1: find all the components you want all and now. There
Speaker 1: are a few other cloud gaming services out there. Shadow
Speaker 1: PC is one, though it tends to be marketed more
Speaker 1: as a cloud based Windows PC service rather than as
Speaker 1: a gaming rig service. EA has Project Atlas in development,
Speaker 1: which is both a cloud gaming platform for gamers as
Speaker 1: well as a development platform for game creators, so this
Speaker 1: isn't just games as a service, but game development tools
Speaker 1: as a service, including access to stuff like game engines.
Speaker 1: In two thousand nineteen, Microsoft launched a beta test for
Speaker 1: its cloud based gaming service, formally known as Xbox Cloud Gaming. However,
Speaker 1: it's pretty common for folks to refer to it as
Speaker 1: x Cloud Gamers who subscribe to the company's Xbox Game
Speaker 1: Pass ultimate automatically have access to this cloud gaming service.
Speaker 1: It's part of that subscription deal. The company first hinted
Speaker 1: about this service back in ten and officially launched it
Speaker 1: in late and at that point had more than a
Speaker 1: hundred games supported in the service. And then we have
Speaker 1: Google Stadium. Actually, to be clear, there are other services
Speaker 1: out there too. I don't mean to suggest that I've
Speaker 1: covered all of them. I haven't, but it is high
Speaker 1: time we talk about stadium. Google first announced Stadia in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen at the Games Developer Conference or g d C,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, an even more industry focused gaming event.
Speaker 1: E three is is largely used for like PR and
Speaker 1: marketing and networking as in, you know, business to business networking,
Speaker 1: not like computer networking. The Games Developer Conference is a
Speaker 1: little bit more focused on, you know, actual developers talking
Speaker 1: about their work. Google held a keynote during the twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen conference to show off the Stadia concept from the
Speaker 1: get go. Google's goal was to create a service that
Speaker 1: could be accessible across a wide range of devices, from
Speaker 1: computers to smartphones, to web browsers, to televisions and beyond.
Speaker 1: And I think of that as the Netflix strategy. I
Speaker 1: just I think of that as this is what Netflix does.
Speaker 1: You know. When Netflix was first branching out into becoming
Speaker 1: a streaming service, back when it was primarily a DVD
Speaker 1: rental business, one thing Netflix really focused on was getting
Speaker 1: a client out there for pretty much every platform you
Speaker 1: can think of. That included devices like the Roku, included
Speaker 1: smartphone operating systems like iOS and Android. It included apps,
Speaker 1: for Windows PCs. It included in browsers streaming capabilities for
Speaker 1: your various browsers. It included video game consoles and more.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm pretty sure there are refrigerators out there
Speaker 1: that have Netflix clients built into them. So essentially, Netflix
Speaker 1: wanted to be where the people are walking around on
Speaker 1: those what do you call him, oh feet and it
Speaker 1: totally worked. This was one of the many things Netflix
Speaker 1: did early on that helped it get an early head
Speaker 1: start on other premium video streaming services, you know, making
Speaker 1: sure it was available wherever people were turning their attention.
Speaker 1: If there's a screen, Netflix wanted to be on it,
Speaker 1: and that really paid off. So Google's approach with Stadia
Speaker 1: was set to try and follow this model, and it
Speaker 1: was already shown to be successful for videos, so maybe
Speaker 1: it could work for games as well. Moreover, Google demonstrated
Speaker 1: that the service would let players start a game on
Speaker 1: one device, they could pause their game, they could switch
Speaker 1: to a totally differ and device, and they could keep
Speaker 1: going in the game. So you could, for example, play
Speaker 1: a game on your phone and then pause the game,
Speaker 1: switch to your PC and then play a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Maybe pose its switched to your smart TV pick up
Speaker 1: right where you left off on your PC and keep
Speaker 1: on going. And it was a cool idea of this
Speaker 1: persistent game session that could exist across any platform you
Speaker 1: got your hands on. As long as you were logged in,
Speaker 1: you could continue the game experience. So think of it
Speaker 1: as a game in play and it just depends on
Speaker 1: how you want to play it at any given time.
Speaker 1: That was a cool idea, and the game was wherever
Speaker 1: you went, no matter what device you used to access it.
Speaker 1: That was kind of the pitch now. At the announcement,
Speaker 1: Google reps said the service could already support games of
Speaker 1: up to four K resolution and at sixty frames per second,
Speaker 1: and that they planned to build on that so that
Speaker 1: they would eventually have support for eight K resolution and
Speaker 1: one twenty frames per second, which really is an incredible
Speaker 1: amount of performance. Google also introduced a Stadia controller, which,
Speaker 1: if we're all being honest, looks a lot like an
Speaker 1: Xbox controller, complete with dual sticks and shoulder buttons and
Speaker 1: four face buttons. It also has a button that allows
Speaker 1: it to connect to things like Google Assistant as well
Speaker 1: as YouTube, and it connects to the Stadia service via WiFi.
Speaker 1: So the controller is a WiFi connected controller. The pricing
Speaker 1: for Google Stadia was a bit on the steep side
Speaker 1: initially anyway, So to get started playing on say a television,
Speaker 1: Let's say that you just wanted you wanted to play
Speaker 1: on your TV like it was a video game console. Well,
Speaker 1: assuming you didn't already have something that would work with Stadiu,
Speaker 1: it meant that you would need to purchase a hardware kit,
Speaker 1: and originally that would cost you a hundred thirty bucks.
Speaker 1: The hardware kit consisted of a controller and a chrome
Speaker 1: Cast Ultra device, so you could plug your chrome Cast
Speaker 1: into your television and this would allow you to stream
Speaker 1: content from a computer to your TV or just essentially
Speaker 1: make your television and Internet connected TV that would interact
Speaker 1: with these services. Both of these, by the way, would
Speaker 1: come with cables and and plugs so you could charge
Speaker 1: your controller and keep your chrome Cast plugged into power.
Speaker 1: It the chrome Cast if you if you've used a
Speaker 1: Roku or something like that, or an Amazon fire Stick,
Speaker 1: it's very similar to that. It just connects to your
Speaker 1: home network and allows you to stream content from the
Speaker 1: Internet to a television or similar device. That was the
Speaker 1: start a hundred thirty bucks. Now if you had a
Speaker 1: PC with the Chrome web browser and you had a
Speaker 1: compatible controller that you could connect either wirelessly or wired
Speaker 1: to your PC, you were already good to go. You
Speaker 1: didn't need the hardware kit if you just planned on
Speaker 1: playing on the PC. If you have already had a
Speaker 1: Chrome Cast Ultra and you had a compatible controller. There
Speaker 1: are only a few of them, but if you had
Speaker 1: one of them, then you could even play on the television. Now,
Speaker 1: it usually meant that you had to use your phone
Speaker 1: as a kind of liaison between your controller and the
Speaker 1: Chrome Cast Ultra. So it wasn't an ideal solution. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you look at the different ways
Speaker 1: to connect various pieces of equipment together in order to
Speaker 1: access Stadia, Google provided an extensive and incredibly confusing array,
Speaker 1: Like it all just depends on where are you accessing Stadia,
Speaker 1: Like what kind of platform? Is it a TV? Is
Speaker 1: it a computer? Is it a smartphone? Why kind of
Speaker 1: controller do you want to use? And is their support
Speaker 1: for that kind of controller on that platform? Uh? And,
Speaker 1: like I said, it is a pretty confusing group of
Speaker 1: of specifications. It almost looks like a Bingo card And um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go through all of it because
Speaker 1: it wouldn't matter anyway. Stadium is not going to be
Speaker 1: around much longer, so there's not much point in talking
Speaker 1: about other than to say, I think it's another very
Speaker 1: typical Google thing in that Google tends to make products
Speaker 1: that work really well for engineers and less well for
Speaker 1: everybody else, And if you're not an engineer, the system
Speaker 1: will not seem intuitive or simple or easy to set
Speaker 1: up or follow. If you are an engineer, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: of course this all makes sense. That's not to say
Speaker 1: that you know, your average person couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 1: It just I feel like there's a steeper learning curve
Speaker 1: with Google products in general. All Right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: another break. When we come back, we're gonna talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the Stadia service as it was intended, uh,
Speaker 1: some of the pricing that was involved with the actual service,
Speaker 1: and what ultimately led to Google deciding to say bye
Speaker 1: bye to Stadia. But first, let's take this quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: Let's assume that you wanted to play Stadia on your
Speaker 1: television and you didn't currently have a Chrome Cast, Ultra
Speaker 1: or any other platform that was compatible with Stadia. On
Speaker 1: top of the initial hardware kit purchase of a hundred
Speaker 1: thirty bucks you then had a monthly subscription to contend with.
Speaker 1: So the purchase of a hardware kit would give you
Speaker 1: three months of service, and after that you would have
Speaker 1: to spend nine dollars and ninety nine cents per month
Speaker 1: to stay connected to the Stadia service. And you could
Speaker 1: demo some games for free, like get a like a
Speaker 1: demo level of a game, or a demo amount of
Speaker 1: time with a game, and a few titles were included
Speaker 1: as free on the service. Um later on you would
Speaker 1: have a free tier and a Premium tier. Premium tier
Speaker 1: had access to more titles than Free did. But either way,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to have a game in your collection permanently,
Speaker 1: you had to buy a copy of the game on Stadia.
Speaker 1: That often meant buying a game at full price, so
Speaker 1: like up to sixty bucks for the Triple A titles
Speaker 1: at the time, and buying a title did not mean
Speaker 1: you were downloading it. All it meant was that you
Speaker 1: would have access to that game for as long as
Speaker 1: Stadia was a thing. You can kind of see where
Speaker 1: that's gonna go later on in this episode. So if
Speaker 1: you purchased let's say Assassin's Creed, one of the Assassin's
Speaker 1: Creed games on Stadia, you would be able to play
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed. Even if you let your premium subscription laps
Speaker 1: and you went to a free subscription. You would still
Speaker 1: be able to play Assassin's Creed. You would not be
Speaker 1: able to play at the highest resolution or frame rates,
Speaker 1: but you'd still be able to access it. Now, if
Speaker 1: you didn't buy any games on Stadia and you were
Speaker 1: just relying on the free titles that were available to you, well,
Speaker 1: if you let your premium subscription laps, that selection would
Speaker 1: get much smaller because free tiered subscribers got only a
Speaker 1: handful of games. Premium got a little bit more, but
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have access to all the games. You would
Speaker 1: have to purchase them. Now, even with that model, it's
Speaker 1: still cheaper than a full game console. Right, It's still
Speaker 1: less expensive than going out and buying the latest Xbox
Speaker 1: or the latest PlayStation, particularly if you also subscribe to
Speaker 1: Sony or Microsoft's online subscription services. Right. If you do those,
Speaker 1: then you have an ongoing cost with those those game companies.
Speaker 1: So Stadia was cheaper than Microsoft or Sony's approach. If
Speaker 1: you also we're subscribing to their online offerings. If your
Speaker 1: internet connection is good, then it could mean you would
Speaker 1: be able to play games at incredible resolution and great
Speaker 1: frame rates. But even despite the fact that the technology
Speaker 1: was solid, Stadia really struggled to find a strong customer base.
Speaker 1: Like I said, Google did introduce a free version of
Speaker 1: the service. In this is where you really would think
Speaker 1: this service would take off. You have a free version
Speaker 1: where you can access this cloud game service. You've got
Speaker 1: a world that ends up going into lockdown, so you
Speaker 1: have people who are stuck at home with very little
Speaker 1: to do. It seems like it's the ideal time for
Speaker 1: this kind of thing to really catch on, and yet
Speaker 1: it didn't. Now, the free version was a little throttled
Speaker 1: compared to the premium one, so you know, you didn't
Speaker 1: have as high resolution, you didn't have as good of
Speaker 1: a frame rate as you would if you had the
Speaker 1: premium subscription, but you could still use it. Uh you know.
Speaker 1: That was the big tradeoff, right, was that you had
Speaker 1: a slightly less uh powerful experience, and you didn't have
Speaker 1: access to as many free games on the platform. You
Speaker 1: would have to pay for more of the games, but
Speaker 1: the actual monthly service would be free, So yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the tradeoff. Now, a big reason that Stadia failed
Speaker 1: might have been the fact that there were already other
Speaker 1: products on the market that we're competing with Stadius model,
Speaker 1: or that at least partially overlapped with what Stadia was
Speaker 1: trying to do. There were a lot of gamers out
Speaker 1: there already who had a console, or they had a
Speaker 1: gaming PC or both, so they were already set, right.
Speaker 1: They already had a device that played games. Uh, the
Speaker 1: digital model has been around for a long time, so
Speaker 1: people were already used to buying games digitally and downloading
Speaker 1: them to these devices. You had Microsoft it was already
Speaker 1: offering the x cloud service, so that was already very
Speaker 1: similar to what Stadia was doing. But on top of
Speaker 1: all of this, on top of the fact that there
Speaker 1: was already serious competition out there, is the fact that
Speaker 1: Google's reputation for killing off its services is widely known.
Speaker 1: As I said earlier, the company is absolutely infamous for
Speaker 1: launching stuff and then abandoning it later. Though to be fair,
Speaker 1: Google many times will strip old products for parts essentially,
Speaker 1: and then use those those components to build into other services.
Speaker 1: So while a fully formed product might go away aspects
Speaker 1: of that product can be worked into other Google services
Speaker 1: down the line. So gradually certain Google services get more
Speaker 1: robust and full of features, and others just disappear. Anyway,
Speaker 1: one sign of trouble early on was that Google would
Speaker 1: often hold promotions in which the company would give out
Speaker 1: free hardware to people. You know, so they were selling
Speaker 1: this hardware kit for a hundred thirty bucks, right, But
Speaker 1: multiple times over the past couple of years, Google would
Speaker 1: hand out these hardware kits. There was a point where
Speaker 1: people who were subscribed to YouTube Premium, we're able to
Speaker 1: get a free hardware kit. They just had to sign up.
Speaker 1: And so that's how I got my Stadia controller. I
Speaker 1: was already subscribed to YouTube Premium. Actually, funny story, I
Speaker 1: was not originally subscribed to YouTube Premium. I was subscribed
Speaker 1: to a different Google service that you guessed it. Google
Speaker 1: ultimately killed off, and then they rolled over the people
Speaker 1: who had subscribed to that older service into YouTube Premium,
Speaker 1: and I just kept it because I turned out I
Speaker 1: liked being able to watch YouTube without commercials. Anyway, That's
Speaker 1: how I ended up owning a Stadia controller. It's actually
Speaker 1: upstairs in my living room collecting dust. This was just
Speaker 1: one example of Google handing out this hardware. Google also
Speaker 1: held promotions in which it would give away the controllers
Speaker 1: to people who purchased a specific game on the Stadia service.
Speaker 1: This happened a few times. So instead of paying a
Speaker 1: hundred thirty dollars for the hardware kit and then up
Speaker 1: to sixty dollars to purchase a title on the service,
Speaker 1: you could just spend the sixty bucks. You could buy
Speaker 1: the game on the Stadia service, and then Google would
Speaker 1: ship you a hardware kit for free. The company held
Speaker 1: that kind of offer a couple of times over the
Speaker 1: last two years, with different titles. Now until recently, the
Speaker 1: official stance from Google was that Stadium was sticking around
Speaker 1: for the long haul. In fact, as recently as July
Speaker 1: twenty nine, two thousand twenty two, a Twitter user with
Speaker 1: the handle blue Fire demon forty four sent Google a message,
Speaker 1: and it was a prescient message. The message read quote
Speaker 1: incredible that I really have to ask this, Are you
Speaker 1: closing down soon? End quote? And the response from the
Speaker 1: Stadia team was that Stadium was not shutting down. Flash
Speaker 1: forward to September nine, and that story had changed, and
Speaker 1: we're going to get there Momentarily before that, though, Google
Speaker 1: also briefly had a department that was dedicated to developing
Speaker 1: games for stadium, so they weren't just going to be
Speaker 1: a distributor for games, they were going to develop games
Speaker 1: for their own platform. Ultimately, however, Google decided to dissolve
Speaker 1: that department. Perhaps they discovered that the production process for
Speaker 1: video games is really intense and a ton of work
Speaker 1: and money has to go into creating a high profile
Speaker 1: video game. But whatever the cause, the press picked up
Speaker 1: on how leaders within this games division and Google were
Speaker 1: transferring to other departments, which was kind of signaling that
Speaker 1: Google was abandoning this whole game development idea. Still, that
Speaker 1: could have meant that Google would just simply be a
Speaker 1: distributor for games, right maybe they decide, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is too hard, we don't want to we don't
Speaker 1: want to dedicate resources to it. Let's do it for
Speaker 1: other stuff. We'll just distribute games through Stadia. That just
Speaker 1: ultimately wasn't enough either. Google also cut back on the
Speaker 1: personage it demanded from developers for revenue share. You're likely
Speaker 1: aware that Android and iOS both take a cut from developers.
Speaker 1: It's a healthy source of revenue for these companies. Um.
Speaker 1: Google had a certain revenue share percentage when it first
Speaker 1: launched Stadia, but then reduced that percentage so that developers
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to share as much of the money that
Speaker 1: they were making on Stadia. This was an effort to
Speaker 1: try and foster a stronger developer community on Stadium. Didn't
Speaker 1: really work because again, for developers to commit to a platform,
Speaker 1: they need to see that there's an audience there, and
Speaker 1: if there's no audience, then it makes no sense to
Speaker 1: make that investment. Right if you were to make a
Speaker 1: lemonade stand, You're not gonna put your lemonade stand in
Speaker 1: the middle of a forest, away from any trails, because
Speaker 1: you're not going to see any customers. You'll get eaten
Speaker 1: by bears. What you do is you set up your
Speaker 1: lemonade stand. You know at the end of like the
Speaker 1: course for a marathon. You're gonna get a killer business
Speaker 1: that way, So you know, you pick your moments. So
Speaker 1: this was, you know, one of the things that developers
Speaker 1: were doing. They saw like, well, Stadius just doesn't have
Speaker 1: enough people there, doesn't make sense for us to devote
Speaker 1: our resources toward developing for Stadia. Some developers did they
Speaker 1: were working on. In fact, some of them were working
Speaker 1: on it up until the announcement that Google was closing
Speaker 1: down the service. Uh, and that also ends up being
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale that not only are our customers affected
Speaker 1: by this, but developers are affected by it too, And
Speaker 1: it almost feels like, you know, it's Google being Google
Speaker 1: shutting down something all over again. Now, on the technical side,
Speaker 1: Google build out data centers around the world, and that
Speaker 1: meant that most gamers were not that far away from
Speaker 1: the closest Stadius servers. So the actual experience of using
Speaker 1: Stadia from a technical perspective was pretty darn good. Like
Speaker 1: the latency issues were mostly eliminated, and reviews of Stadia
Speaker 1: praised the technical performance of the platform and said, now,
Speaker 1: this is impressively effective. But ultimately Stadia just didn't gather
Speaker 1: enough customers. So again September two, Phil Harrison, the general
Speaker 1: manager for Stadia, posts a blog post that says that
Speaker 1: it just hadn't gained enough quote traction with users end quote,
Speaker 1: and so ultimately they had to make the decision to
Speaker 1: sunset Google Stadia. And you know, this really seems to
Speaker 1: be an area where Google struggles frequently. Maybe it just
Speaker 1: has a real marketing issue when it comes to reaching
Speaker 1: a broad audience. There are Google devotees who will follow
Speaker 1: events like I O, which is Google's big developer conference
Speaker 1: each year. There are fans who will follow that stuff closely.
Speaker 1: They will await each auduct launch eagerly with anticipation. But
Speaker 1: beyond that small group of fans, I don't think there's
Speaker 1: as much interest in the general market, which is pretty
Speaker 1: surprising given that the Android operating system is the dominant
Speaker 1: operating system in the smartphone market around the world. There
Speaker 1: are way more Android phones than there are iOS phones.
Speaker 1: But Google is not really able to tap into that base.
Speaker 1: Again and again, We've seen it many times. The fact
Speaker 1: that the company has this long track record of abandoning
Speaker 1: projects might very well have something to do with they're
Speaker 1: not being enough people using Stadium. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people were just scared off. They just assumed, like, Oh,
Speaker 1: if I buy into this, Google is going to abandon it,
Speaker 1: and then I'm not gonna be able to use it anymore.
Speaker 1: So I'm not even gonna bother. It becomes a self
Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy because of Google's history of dumping projects, and
Speaker 1: obviously stating is is not helping that reputation because it's
Speaker 1: another abandoned project and only is a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1: It continues to perpetuate that that view of Google products
Speaker 1: in general. Now, Google said that it's going to start
Speaker 1: to shut down Stadius servers in January, and that leads
Speaker 1: us to talking about refunds. Now, remember when I said
Speaker 1: that you can purchase games on Stadia, but you don't
Speaker 1: download the games that you purchase like that, You don't
Speaker 1: save those to any local device. They live in the cloud,
Speaker 1: and you continue to have access to your purchase library
Speaker 1: as long as there is a service to use. But
Speaker 1: since the services going offline in January, what happens to
Speaker 1: your games? Google is working on that now. One thing
Speaker 1: that the company is offering is refunds on hardware and
Speaker 1: software purchases that includes stuff like downloadable content a k
Speaker 1: a d l C. This is content that supp laments
Speaker 1: a game, it expands games in different ways. So you
Speaker 1: can get refunds for your purchases on Stadia. You can
Speaker 1: get a refund for your hardware kit, and you can
Speaker 1: get a refund for any of the games or DLC
Speaker 1: that you purchased through the Google store. In some cases,
Speaker 1: Google is working with game companies in an effort to
Speaker 1: transfer game files from Stadium to other platforms, which means
Speaker 1: that players would then be able to continue to play
Speaker 1: their purchased titles elsewhere without losing any progress. So instead
Speaker 1: of just like, Okay, well you can't play Assassin's Creed
Speaker 1: on Stadia anymore, um, we're working with Ubisoft so you
Speaker 1: can play Assassin's Creed through their surface. They're trying to
Speaker 1: go one step further than that and say, we're also
Speaker 1: making sure that you're in the exact same place in
Speaker 1: the game when you pick it up on Ubisoft as
Speaker 1: you were when you were on Stadium. This, by the way,
Speaker 1: is a case by case scenario. It may not apply
Speaker 1: to all titals across the board that we're supported on Stadia,
Speaker 1: but I think it's a pretty decent move on Google's part.
Speaker 1: The premium users will not be refunded their subscription fees,
Speaker 1: so that nine dollars cents per month that's gone like
Speaker 1: that is not getting refunded, and the fate of Stadia
Speaker 1: really does bring into focus a huge issue with the
Speaker 1: as a service model in general, and that is, if
Speaker 1: the service platform fails, you can lose all your stuff
Speaker 1: on it. With Google, the company is at least giving
Speaker 1: players a chance to salvage their purchases, either by refund
Speaker 1: or by moving the data to another service, or both.
Speaker 1: But sometimes companies just go under and that's it. Pof
Speaker 1: all that stuff that was on those servers can be gone.
Speaker 1: This is one of the big cons stacked against all
Speaker 1: the other pros that are part of cloud based services.
Speaker 1: So there are pros. I don't want to just dismiss
Speaker 1: cloud based services in general. I think there are real
Speaker 1: value to cloud based services. But the pros include things
Speaker 1: like you don't have to invest thousands of dollars in
Speaker 1: equipment to run the software you depend upon. So if
Speaker 1: you wanted to access the latest games at really good settings,
Speaker 1: you didn't have to spend five thousand dollars to build
Speaker 1: a gaming rig um. You don't have to purchase maintain
Speaker 1: an upgrade storage for all your data using cloud based storage,
Speaker 1: right you know someone else is using computers to store
Speaker 1: your information. You don't have to find space in your
Speaker 1: own home and transfer things and back up things if
Speaker 1: you don't want to, although you should always have a
Speaker 1: local backup if you can. But but you know you
Speaker 1: don't have to do all that. That's a huge benefit, right,
Speaker 1: not being responsible for maintaining these various devices for things
Speaker 1: like gaming rigs. That also includes not having to upgrade
Speaker 1: your graphics processing card every few years. So there's also
Speaker 1: other benefits, right. With cloud based services, there's often a
Speaker 1: way to share work or material between users that makes
Speaker 1: things way easier. Like online photo albums are a great
Speaker 1: example of this. You don't have to get physical copies
Speaker 1: of photos produced and then put those photos into photo
Speaker 1: albums and then track down that friend of yours to
Speaker 1: inflict upon them every excruciating detail of your last vacation
Speaker 1: to Myrtle Beach. You can just send them a link
Speaker 1: to an online photo album and then you can pestor
Speaker 1: them about whether or not they looked at the dang thing.
Speaker 1: But if the company that provides this hosting service goes under,
Speaker 1: if that photo album platform goes under, well, then your
Speaker 1: photos disappear too, and that's a big risk. You don't
Speaker 1: actually own anything tangible with these cloud based services. What
Speaker 1: you're really doing is purchasing access to the service. That's it.
Speaker 1: You don't own music on streaming music services, you don't
Speaker 1: own videos on the streaming video services. You own a
Speaker 1: way to access that content, but if the platform goes away,
Speaker 1: your your access to that content goes away, and you
Speaker 1: can feel like you just sunk money into something that
Speaker 1: that was taken from you. And that's a real big
Speaker 1: problem with the as a service model. It's the big
Speaker 1: difference between owning physical media and using a streaming service,
Speaker 1: one of the many big differences I should say. As
Speaker 1: for Google, I think that it's pretty likely Google is
Speaker 1: going to incorporate Stadia technology into other services. They've said
Speaker 1: as much that they're going to use some of the
Speaker 1: technologies they developed for Idea to do other things, which
Speaker 1: makes sense. This way, Google can still make use of
Speaker 1: the work that they put into building Stadium. It's just
Speaker 1: that it won't be for cloud based gaming anymore. Anyway.
Speaker 1: That's the story of cloud gaming in general and Stadia
Speaker 1: in particular. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: cover in future episodes, reach out to me. You can
Speaker 1: reach out on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff h
Speaker 1: s W, or you can download the I Heart Radio
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Speaker 1: you will find little microphone icon. If you click on that,
Speaker 1: you can leave a message up to thirty seconds in length.
Speaker 1: Let me know what you would like to hear in
Speaker 1: future episodes, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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