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Technology

Final Google Stadia Game, Released Today, Is A Piece Of History

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Image: Google

If you haven’t heard, Google Stadia is shutting down and closing shop next week. But before the never-quite-successful game streaming service dies, it has provided one neat (and free) little gift you can only play for a few days before it all goes offline.

Launched back in 2019, Google Stadia was a costly and massive investment from Google into the world of video games. Powered by the cloud aka a bunch of servers and off-site computers, Stadia’s big promise was instantaneous gaming on the go. No more updates or expensive consoles. And while it sometimes worked, the high cost of games, lack of features, small library, and internet costs ended up dooming the service. Sure, some superfans logged thousands of hours into it, but for most, it just wasn’t what they wanted or needed from a video game platform.

So it wasn’t surprising that in September of last year, Google announced the end of Stadia. In five days, on January 18, the video game streaming service will shut down. With the end so near, it seemed unlikely that Stadia would receive any new game releases. Yet, Google has published one final game. But don’t expect some big open-world RPG or remake. Instead, the final Stadia game is Worm Game, an internally developed title used to test Stadia long before it became a public service.

We probably were never meant to see or play this Snake-like test game as it sports fairly rudimentary graphics and kinda ugly menus. But in the final days of Stadia, it appears the devs working on the project were able to provide its community one final treat. Even better, anyone can play Worm Game as it’s free. (Which makes sense considering the Stadia store stopped working already.)

The game’s store page features this nice and touching description of the game and what it was used for:

Play the game that came to Stadia before Stadia came to the world. “Worm Game” is a humble title we used to test many of Stadia’s features, starting well before our 2019 public launch, right through 2022. It won’t win Game of the Year, but the Stadia team spent a LOT of time playing it, and we thought we’d share it with you. Thanks for playing, and for everything.

Is Worm Game some incredibly important or amazing thing? Not really. However, it’s still really cool to get a peek behind the scenes, and thanks to videos of Worm Game, this little piece of test software will be somewhat preserved for folks to look back at years from now.

In other cool End Of Stadia news, Google has confirmed that starting next week, it will start allowing players to unlock the Bluetooth functionally of its Stadia controller.

This is a nice way to make the controller—which has one of my favorite modern D-pads on it—more useful and easier to hook up to more devices. I doubt the devs who worked on Stadia for years were planning for the controller to be the only thing left of Stadia in 2023, but here we are.



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Technology

Fans Think Xbox Boss Just Revealed Game Pass Streaming Device

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Screenshot: Microsoft

Xbox fans have been waiting for a glimpse of a new, standalone Game Pass streaming device called “Keystone” since it was first teased at E3 2021. Now Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer may have just given it to them in his latest shelfie. It looks like a micro-Xbox Series S.

Microsoft has slowly been bringing Xbox Game Pass to more and more devices through cloud streaming. First it was phones. More recently it was certain brands of Smart TVs like Samsung’s. Earlier this year, the company confirmed it was working on a smaller add-on that people could buy to stream games to any display. It’s called Keystone, and so far Microsoft hasn’t shown what it looks like, possibly until today.

“Vault Boy left the shelter and stopped by my office to celebrate the #Fallout25 Anniversary,” Spencer tweeted along with a photo of a bunch of Xbox swag on a shelf. “Congratulations to the @Fallout @Bethesda teams on this major milestone for an iconic franchise.” The Microsoft executive has made a habit out of teasing upcoming reveals in the background of his pictures, however, and it didn’t take fans long to spot a strange-looking white device near the top:

It looks exactly like an Xbox Series S, only much smaller. A mark on the left could be an Xbox symbol while one on the right seems like a USB port. It seems similar in proportion to a Google Chromecast or Valve’s now defunct Steam Link, though it’s hard to tell based on the photo alone. It certainly looks a shade smaller than the Xbox controller just to its left. Notably, the Series S was first revealed on Spencer’s shelf as well. A response to Spencer’s tweet by the official Xbox account seems to imply it may be an older prototype.

While previous speculation was that Xbox’s Game Pass streaming device would be a smaller stick-sized dongle, the company told Windows Central in May that it had pivoted to a new “approach” for Keystone. “We have made the decision to pivot away from the current iteration of the Keystone device,” a spokesperson for the company said at the time. “We will take our learnings and refocus our efforts on a new approach that will allow us to deliver Xbox Cloud Gaming to more players around the world in the future.”

It’s still not clear exactly what the company meant by that, and it’s always possible that Spencer’s photo today was 1.) not meant to tease anything or 2.) was teasing something completely different from Keystone. Microsoft has also reportedly been working on a standalone optical drive attachment for the all-digital versions of its Xbox Series X/S. Both seem unlikely.

“It’s probably a mistake on my part,” Spencer said in a Kinda Funny Games appearance in July when describing the easter eggs fans look for on his shelf. He claimed there was no thought behind what appears on it during his video calls and other photos, and that it was simply a collection of gaming industry gifts and signifiers. The hosts were less than convinced.

Update: 10/10/22 2:58 p.m. ET: A spokesperson for Microsoft re-iterated that the device on Spencer’s shelf is an older prototype and that the company’s early statement that it had pivoted “away” from the current iteration.

      



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Technology

Microsoft Bug Says Elden Rings, GTA V Available On Game Pass

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Image: Elden Ring / GTA V

Earlier this week, some folks checking Microsoft’s Cloud Gaming beta website noticed something weird: listings for games like Elden Ring and Grand Theft Auto V not only said they were part of the company’s Game Pass offering, but would also be playable on the cloud.

Here’s a screengrab of Elden Ring’s page, taken by @klobrille, clearly showing both the “GAME PASS” badge and the fact that it’s playable on the Cloud Gaming beta:

Listings for Grand Theft Auto V (which has already been on the service and left) and, weirdly, Soul Hackers, all declared they were now on the subscription service. Even weirder is the fact that none of those things had ever been announced, which you’d think would be the case given the prominence of both Elden Ring and GTA V.

There’s a reason for that, of course. Microsoft have since told Eurogamer that the listings were a “bug.” “We’re aware of a bug that incorrectly displayed some titles as available with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate,” a representative says. “We rolled out a fix and this is now updated.”

Normally this kind of administrative, backend stuff wouldn’t be that exciting, but what got people interested here is that GamesCom is less than two weeks away, with Microsoft due to make a significant appearance (and a live presentation). And in June, Microsoft announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate users would be able to play “select” titles they own via Cloud Gaming, even if they weren’t part of the Game Pass catalogue.

Put those two things together and it seemed entirely plausible that Microsoft had simply jumped the gun on a couple of GamesCom announcements. Calling these listings a “bug” certainly seems to put a dampener on that enthusiasm, but GamesCom kicks off on August 22, just in case you want to keep an eye on things anyway.



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Business

Amazon, Nike, and Other Bidders Are Reportedly Circling Peloton

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Photo: Scott Heins (Getty Images)

After enjoying a lockdown-fueled peak during the pandemic, Peloton is now spinning out of control. Product recalls, plummeting stock prices, a major decline in demand and its bike’s dangerous cameos in not one, but two primetime TV shows have wiped roughly $40 billion from its market value in the last year.

Now, corporations are reportedly lining up to bid on the beleaguered exercise equipment manufacturer, with Amazon being the latest among several “potential suitors” to throw its hat in the ring, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

According to people familiar with the matter that spoke with the outlet, Amazon has been talking to advisers about a potential acquisition. Additionally, Nike is evaluating the idea of making an offer, the Financial Times reports, though these considerations are in the preliminary stages and it has not yet spoken with Peloton. Several experts have floated Apple as a possible buyer for Peloton, but that also remains speculation.

Peloton hasn’t initiated a formal sales process at this time, but there has been ample interest from outsiders about acquiring the company, a person familiar with the talks told CNBC. Its share prices shot up by around 30% on Friday after the news broke that Amazon might be eyeing it.

Nike and Amazon did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment. We’ll update this article with their response.

It’s not immediately clear how Amazon or Nike might incorporate Peloton’s technology or user base into their respective business models. A stronger argument can be made for the e-commerce giant though, as noted by the Journal. For one thing, Amazon’s logistics arm would be a serious boon amid Peloton’s ongoing supply chain issues. Not to mention that Amazon has a history of investing heavily in the health and wellness industry: It already has its own line of fitness bands, the Halo Band launched in 2020 and the Halo View that debuted in December, and scooped up Whole Foods for more than $13 billion in 2017.

Peloton’s existing subscription service could potentially be bundled with Amazon’s Prime membership program as well, something Amazon has done before with its previous acquisitions to pile on incentives for shoppers to sign up.

If Amazon does go through with the sale, Peloton’s offerings would become some of the most expensive hardware in its catalog. After Peloton hiked up delivery fees for some of its equipment earlier this year, the all-in price of its original stationary bike now stands at $1,745 while its treadmill retails for $2,845.

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Technology

Microsoft Announces the Next Subscription-Less Office Versions

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Photo: Sajjad Hussain (Getty Images)

Microsoft has announced an update to its productivity suite, Office 2021, for consumers along with a variant specifically geared toward businesses, Office Long Term Servicing Channel.

Like the version that came before it, Office 2019, Office 2021 is Microsoft’s standalone option for folks who don’t want to buy a subscription for the company’s cloud-enabled Microsoft 365. Office 2021 is set to roll out sometime later this year for both Mac and Windows, Microsoft 365’s corporate VP Jared Spataro said in a company blog post on Thursday. Meanwhile, Office LTSC will be available as a commercial preview beginning in April on both Mac and Windows, with a full release slated for later this year.

Microsoft will provide support for both products for five years, a slight downgrade from the seven-year warranty it’s offered with previous Office products. Each will come with OneNote and ship with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The one-time purchase pricing will remain the same for both personal and small business users, though there will be a 10% price increase for Office Professional Plus, Office Standard, and individual Office app purchases.

The company didn’t offer many details about what kind of new features and updates we’ll see with Office 2021, but it did confirm what users can expect with Office LTSC.

“New Office LTSC features will include accessibility improvements, capabilities like Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP in Excel, dark mode support across multiple apps, and performance improvements across Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint,” Shapiro wrote.

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While I’m sure Microsoft would prefer if businesses just switched over to the cloud already, it’s also clear that the company realizes not everybody can or even wants to do so. In Thursday’s blog post, Microsoft billed its one-time purchase version of Office as a “specialty product for specific scenarios.” These scenarios include where users are on regulated devices that can’t receive monthly updates, process control devices on a manufacturing floors that can’t be connected to the internet, or specialty systems that must stay locked in time and require a long-term servicing channel, it said.

In an interview with the Verge, Spataro framed the company’s decision as “a matter of trying to meet customers where they are.”

“We certainly have a lot of customers that have moved to the cloud over the last 10 months, that’s happened en masse really,” he told the outlet. “At the same time, we definitely have customers who have specific scenarios where they don’t feel like they can move to the cloud.”

Microsoft has previously maintained that even with its advertising push to convince users to move to the cloud, it plans to continue rolling out standalone, perpetual licenses for its Office tools for the forseeable future. And based on today’s announcement the company seems committed to that promise.

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Technology

Google Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus

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Screenshot: Google

Google Stadia, the late 2019 streaming platform that promised to revolutionize gaming by letting users stream games without needing to own a powerful PC or console, is altering course, getting out of the game-making business and will now offer its platform directly to game publishers alongside offering Stadia Pro to the public.

The company is announcing the news today, though Kotaku began to hear rumblings from sources close to Stadia last week that Google’s service was heading for a major change. One games industry source told Kotaku that Google was canceling multiple projects, basically any games slated for release beyond a specific 2021 window, though they believed games close to release would still come out. Today brings some clarification.

Google will close its two game studios, located in Montreal and Los Angeles. Neither had released any games yet. That closure will impact around 150 developers, one source familiar with Stadia operations said. The company says it will try to find those developers new roles at Google.

Jade Raymond, the veteran producer who helped build Assassin’s Creed for Ubisoft and moved on to EA several years ago before leaving to run game creation at Stadia, is exiting the company, according to Google.

Google will continue to operate the Stadia gaming service and its $10 monthly Stadia Pro service. It’s unclear how many, if any, exclusive games will still come to the service, though the company has indicated that it can still sign new games and will bring more third-party releases to the platform. It nevertheless will look to many like a draw down of the plan to have Stadia run as a bona fide competitor to console platforms.

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The company plans to begin offering its Stadia tech to publishers, opening up the possibility for Stadia to become the streaming tech for other video game companies. Google’s head of Stadia operations, longtime console executive Phil Harrison, will focus on pursuing these new partnerships.

“We see an important opportunity to work with partners seeking a gaming solution all built on Stadia’s advanced technical infrastructure and platform tools,” Harrison wrote in a blog post today. “We believe this is the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry.”

Google initially offered Stadia in a $129 Founder’s Edition bundle, which included a custom controller, a Chromecast Ultra (used for streaming games from Google’s servers to a TV), and three months of Stadia Pro, a subscription service that granted access to certain games.

Google promoted some exciting features, including the ability to let players pass control of a livestreamed Stadia game on the fly and to share savestates of games, but many of them weren’t available at launch and remained in testing phases.

The service’s best moments may have been when its third-party ports showed off the strength of the cloud gaming model, in which a game can run well on just about any device with a screen and a strong internet connection. Ubisoft games such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey ran well on Stadia. Destiny 2‘s Stadia support let players of that game drop in for an extra match or quest from their phone or laptop when they were far from their regular gaming gear. When Cyberpunk 2077 was faltering on everything else in December, it was running quite well on Stadia.

Still, without offering an all-you-can-play service nor offering killer exclusive games, Stadia struggled to get its footing. Meanwhile, Microsoft ramped up its xCloud cloud gaming service as part of its Game Pass Ultimate bundle, and Stadia became less and less alluring to the kind of hardcore gamer who can build buzz for a new gaming service.

Google seemingly built for the future with the creation of first-party studios and a leadership team consisting of accomplished studio heads and creative directors, but those efforts weren’t enough to stave off the fate many people feared when hearing about this Google initiative: that it would lose support from within before it got ample time to realize its potential.

Stadia isn’t quite done. The Stadia tech could still succeed. By many accounts, Stadia runs games great. But as a game-maker, Google appears to have packed it in. Said one source familiar with Stadia’s first-party operations, citing another tech giant’s widely publicized failure to create video games: “Google was a terrible place to make games. Imagine Amazon, but under-resourced.”

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