As expected, Google will shut down Stadia after only a few years

Dear Google, can you stop running out of products that are okay? Can you please run something for more than a few years before you give it the ax or otherwise spoil it? In case you don’t know, Google recently announced the closure of Stadia. Stadia was announced in 2019 as the first major game streaming service.

You shouldn’t download the games you wanted to play. You shouldn’t have to spend thousands of dollars on a gaming PC. You could just play your games on your low-end phone or laptop. Stadia was a service that I really enjoyed and it has so much potential that Google has squandered every turn because the higher tiers have no patience or vision.

I remember playing Cyberpunk 2077 and even though I haven’t played it for a long time, during my time in Night City, I’ve never had a game bug or random cars falling from the sky or anything remotely close to it. And this was at launch! Stadia has offered a lot of promises and I am very sad to know that it is closing because it was a great product and I am furious because it proves once again that Google is terrible for consumers.

In the blog post where Phil Harrison speaks of the closure of Stadia, blames the fact that Stadia “did not gain traction with the users we expected”. This is a weak excuse when Google went out of its way to make sure Stadia was a flop. I’ve praised Stadia in the past for the potential it had, but I was aware of the warning signs. He started and acquired game development studios only to break them up in a very short amount of time. They hired three key names to help run the project and then ousted two. Stadia launched without the key features it promised. It had a paltry bookcase at launch. The business model of paying for a subscription and full pricing for games (unless it was part of the Pro Library) was not attractive to customers (although it’s not a terrible business model in my opinion). Google has a long track record of creating a service and then closing it after a couple of years (which it proves once again with Stadia). So please, Harrison, don’t blame consumers when in fact the problem is with the company.

Now, there is more important information to note. First, Harrison said players will have access to their game library until January 18, 2023 so they can complete any play throughs. Second, customers will be reimbursed for all hardware purchases through the Google Store, as well as for all purchases of games and add-on content through the Stadia store. Most of the refunds are expected to be completed by mid-January 2023. The latest very important news to note about Stadia is that while Google shuts down Stadia as we know it, the technology will be used for other Google products and they will try to sell it to. others in the industry.

Since the launch of Stadia, I have been convinced that video games are increasingly directed towards the cloud and this is another step forward. We have seen Amazon launch their own cloud-based gaming service, Amazon Luna. Microsoft has introduced cloud gaming for Xbox (although I understand it’s not the best yet). Many high-end games are launched on the Nintendo Switch via cloud versions. We may not be able to use Stadia after January 18, 2023. However, we will likely continue to use Stadia in other ways and through other companies for many years to come. What do you think about Google’s closure of Stadia?