I’d forgotten that Jade Raymond left EA Motive to oversee this.
She’s leading their game studio working on first party titles not the “console” push itself. I can see the attraction, as the platform could enable all sorts of improved world simulation.
I guess they’ve figured that out.
Whether or not they end up with their own Halo is an entirely different story. Plus that’s YEARS away and the console may not be around by then. I mean, see Amazon which is still struggling with gamedev via Lumberyard, Amazon Studios (slew of canceled or failed games) etc.
I said the same thing in this thread from about 2 weeks ago
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1182297904830177280
Considering the number of failed and shuttered projects in under their belt, I’m pretty sure failure isn’t a problem. Of course nothing wrong with trying and failing because that’s how innovation works.
Yeah, there’s a story today about them opening a studio in Canada. My first thought is, “shouldn’t you have done that 4 years ago for your launch next month?” It speaks to the fly by the seat of their pants nature Stadia has as a product. Hard to have confidence in the platform.
I have a lot of confidence in the technology. That doesn’t mean it’ll survive, though.
The scepticism is warranted, but let me paint a 100% hypothetical, devil’s advocate scenario that would also explain this.
Maybe they got way more signups than they expected, and they’re all saying internally that they have a huge, massive hit on their hands. Now we can go to upper management and get the money we’ve wanted to start those internal studios!
I have no idea if that’s the case. I doubt it. But I don’t think we can know for sure what the internal situation has been there that led to these studios being built now.
I don’t want this future.
If it’s a massive hit they won’t need to go to the trouble of making 1st party games, they can just sell the service and rake in the sweet lucre. I don’t think that will happen, though. Exclusives matter.
I think I like Apple Arcade more than Stadia, and to me they totally do compete.
There you go, Apple Arcade has exclusives.
Yep. And it fills a gap that has opened in the market - casual fun games, that are low cost (unlike Nintendo), but have become a pain to research and buy because most are freemium traps.
What gap does Stadia fill?
Publisher control of the entirety of the supply chain for selling you video games.
Not needing to buy any new hardware. For example, what do I need to buy to get access to Apple Arcade? I don’t even know. What’s the minimum buy in where all the games work great? Does apple still have some kind of iPod that allows access to that stuff?
$330 for the most basic Ipad + $5 subscription. I’m making an assumption that they will run fine on the basic model but realistically I wouldn’t get anything less than the $450 ipad air.
Stadia hardware is single purpose vs iPad devices. When Stadia dies, you will have paperweights.
Stadia hardware is a Chromecast and a controller that will probably work as a generic Xinput device.
They do run fine on the basic $329 iPad (at least, what I’ve tried.) But I agree; the Air is a great choice if you don’t have enough use for the Pro.
The Chromecast is only needed for 4K gaming on a TV. I’d imagine most people will just try it on a PC or laptop with whatever they have first and then decide if they want to invest money on specific hardware.
I already own multiple chromecasts, even without stadia.
A chromecast is super useful on its own.
One advantage of Stadia is that hardware upgrades are (potentially) free for the user. No need to upgrade your PC or buy a new console – Google will periodically upgrade their cloud, just as they do for their regular cloud computing.