Google shuts down its Stadia cloud gaming service
Google announced that it will officially shut down its Stadia cloud gaming service in January next year. All subscribers can continue to play on the platform until January 18, 2023, and will receive refunds for Stadia hardware, games, and additional content purchased through the Google Store or Stadia Store.
Stadia manager Phil Harrison said in the announcement: “A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.”
However, he also emphasized that while Stadia has not been successful in attracting consumer users, the technology behind it “has been proven at scale and transcends gaming.“
“We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts — as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed,” he added.
As early as two months ago, there were rumors that Google was going to give up Stadia by the end of the year, but at that time Google publicly replied on relevant social platforms, saying that Stadia would not be shut down, and it’s working hard to bring more great games to Stadia as well as Stadia Pro subscriptions.
Therefore, the sudden announcement of the shutdown of Stadia after two months also caught many players by surprise. Some studios may even be preparing the Stadia version of the game now, which will undoubtedly be a blow.
