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Comment by tmpz22 | Hacker News Reader

1) The reddit post this article is based on is titled "Stadia has officially gone 40 days without a new game announcement/release, feature update, or real community update" [1]. Presumably the Stadia team is US-based and took a 2 week holiday during this time, meaning they didn't release right before their holiday and had nothing to deliver immediately after. Not an excuse, especially because other industry competitors are really active during the Christmas season because thats when so many sales are, but you see other studios like Dice's Battlefield V go utterly dark during this time.

2) reddit.com/r/stadia is pretty bullish on the tech otherwise

3) reddit.com/r/stadia has Google employees as moderators which is against "reddiquette" but pretty common on product-oriented subs. Take that as you will.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/eusxgc/stadia_has_o...

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Little bit silly about how on one end people stand united with gamedevs about the poor work/life balance and excruciating crunch time, yet they will complain when a company doesn't release any update during the holidays.

You're conflating two different sides of the industry (as is the parent comment.) A game dev studio is not expected to have monthly updates for any but the largest games. A store or platform, on the other hand, lives and dies by its content.

Playstation Plus has a batch of free games each month for $5 a month, Xbox has something similar, Steam has sales and endless new content on the regular, Epic has given away several games a month for a couple years now. Once a month updates at a $10 subscription is table stakes here.

> A store or platform, on the other hand, lives and dies by its content.

I agree that content is important, but if you're talking about new games, Google doesn't have much control, the developers works on those not Google.

> Playstation Plus has a batch of free games each month for $5 a month, Xbox has something similar

But this isn't about the free monthy Stadia content. Stadia has been giving 2 free games the first of every month since launch and has not slipped a single day. The two games for February were just announced.

> I agree that content is important, but if you're talking about new games, Google doesn't have much control

Doesn't matter, Google's gonna get the flak for it. People bought hardware and a subscription from Google. If they're not getting value from it, for whatever reason and whomever's fault, they're going to be mad at Google.

Why did Google release a platform if they didn't have enough games lined up and ready? I assume they're hoping they'll be able to weather this negative sentiment and do have games planned in the wings, but we'll see.

Give the cadence in which Stadia could release new content, it would make sense to have had that pipeline filled so that they could release a new game every day.

At some point, there will be a zero-install gaming service like Twitch/Itch and devs can connect directly to fans for realtime playtesting, etc. So much, so little.

I think its less about the gap but more about the fact that the product was released in a not suitable state and then left like that for 40 days. If they had released it mid year and fixed all of the issues before the holidays people would be ok with that.

It gives off the vibe that this is another one of googles random side projects that no one really cares about and will be scrapped in a year. Which is extra concerning since people have spent real money on the hardware and games.

And in this case you only get to keep the hardware you bought, not the games since they are not physical.

Though I don't think the hardware would be all that usable if the service was shut down.

The Chromecast is a Chromecast, and the controller works on my PC with steam just fine. (Although it appears wireless doesn't work)

Seems a bit silly to assume they're the same group of people, no?

Meanwhile on Switch eShop: 10 to 20 new games released every single week of the year (many of them mediocre, but still).

When you’re a massive global video game streaming service, you’re supposed to plan ahead a bit, don’t you think. This is not a mom and pop store.

It's tough to compare a company's first few steps into gaming to the established machine that is Nintendo.

Especially since the Switch eShop was pretty slow at launch. Not to mention a certain other Nintendo product that ends with U.

Not necessarily, because: They can already see what the other major platforms in this space are doing, and learn from it. They are already a large company that has other income with which to support this service through its initial growth. They can hire/poach people from these existing companies to help give them a kick start.

I know just saying it makes it sound easy, but responsible executives and teams should be capable of doing better.

I think a company with Google's resources would have hired people with the necessary experience to run the project.

They're a "me too!" company that pretends they are the leader in all the projects that others are doing, and merely offer a service/product to tick a box next to their competitors.

The only case where this isn't true is Search (but getting worse), AdWords, and YouTube. But everything else is not uniquely Google (eg. Drive, GMail, phones, Android, Chromebooks).

Then they may or may not abandon the project based on the uptake, leaving the adopters high and dry. I personally would not risk buying anything from them based on their proven approach to product launches.

All the consoles go through the same thing every time there's a new generation. The consoles have never been backwards compatible, each generation invalidates your previous library. And they always begin with tiny libraries.

Here we are in 2020 and only now have Sony and Microsoft begun talking about backwards compatibility in future console generations.

Never is a strong word.

The initial version of the PS2 had dedicated hardware to be fully compatible with PS1 games.