After an endless amount of rumors that have arisen over the past year, Google announces closure of Stadia. The streaming gaming platform never managed to win a definitive place among the public, so the Mountain View giant decided to discontinue it and focus its technology on other services.
Stadia will continue to work until January 18, 2023, the date until which players will be able to continue using the service and the games in their library. In addition, Google will refund all hardware purchases made through its store, as well as purchases of games and add-ons made on the service.
It is worth noting that refunds will not apply to Stadia Pro subscribers, although they will be able to continue using the service without payment until it is unsubscribed. As for the controls, users should not return them despite the refund. Google has published an article with frequently asked questions, which you can read here.
“A few years ago we launched the consumer gaming service Stadia. And although their approach […] was built on a solid technological foundation, it didn’t get the user experience we wanted, so we made the difficult decision to discontinue it,” said Phil Harrison, Vice President and General Manager of Stadia.
But the closure of the platform does not mean that the technology it runs on will be thrown out. On the contrary, Google intends to use integrate it into your other services such as YouTube and Google Play. In addition, the Californians also plan to adapt it to their augmented reality plans, as well as offer it to third parties in the video game industry.
“We remain deeply committed to games and will continue to invest in new tools, technologies and platforms that bring success to developers, industry partners, creators and cloud service customers,” added the head of Stadia.
Stadia says goodbye to many good intentions and little success
The closure of Stadia has been announced after countless rumors questioning its continuity over the past year. The first major wake-up call came in February 2021 when Google stopped developing video games for the platform and closed his studios in Los Angeles and Montreal dedicated to this work.
Meanwhile, in July, the people of Mountain View announced they were cutting developer fees for selling their games on Stadia. The intention was to get the attention of more studios as well as captivate more players with a larger catalog. However, this does not seem to have produced the expected results.
Finally, in February of this year, it became known that Google had removed Stadia from its list of priorities. The company intended to change its strategy and focus its efforts on games to provide its structure to third parties. Something that supposedly will do under the brand Google flow.
This will allow those interested to bring their games to the cloud on their own, taking advantage of Stadia’s technology. This is how the Peloton brand of exercise bikes was launched. laneexercise video game for Peloton Bike and Peloton Bike Plus subscribers.
The confirmation of Stadia’s closure makes it clear that the platform was a very interesting bet, but it was never the passion of the crowd. In fact, most of the criticism that Google has received has been related to too traditional distribution strategy. That is, users must pay for each game separately – regardless of the benefits for Stadia Pro subscribers. This led to it being quickly overshadowed by competing alternatives like Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Source: Hiper Textual
