The number one search engine company and tech company in the world is pulling the plug on yet another promising yet underwhelming service. Stadia’s Vice President and General Manager Phil Harrison shared a blog post stating that they’ve decided to shut down Stadia for good. The cloud gaming service will be available till January 18, 2023, and then disappear from existence.
Related: Cloud Streaming will be the dominant gaming platform by 2025
Harrison said Stadia was built on a strong technology foundation, but the platform didn’t gain enough traction with gamers, hence the decision to shut it down completely. He also added that Google will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases completed via Google Store as well as game and add-on content purchases. Google believes most of the refunds will be done by mid-January, 2023.
Google will continue to use the underlying technology that powered Stadia across other platforms and products such as YouTube, GooglePlay, their upcoming Augmented Reality projects, and many others. The Big Tech also said most of the Stadia team will get to keep their jobs and work for other Google divisions.
The tech giant launched Stadia back in November 2019, showcasing Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and a few notable AAA games followed eventually; however, the service never fully reached its potential. Limited availability and lack of variety of games were some of the main obstacles the cloud gaming service had to overcome.
Nvidia, Xbox, Tencent and Logitech are all in for cloud gaming
While Stadia wasn’t that hot with gamers, other cloud gaming services like Nvidia GeForce Now and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate are delivering high-quality content with decent performance and are beloved among gamers.
Multiple data research companies suggest the future of gaming lies in the cloud as well. One of the latest researches suggests the cloud gaming market will grow by $5.7 billion from 2021 to 2026.
Back in August, Mobidictum’s Emre Can Kartal interviewed NVIDIA’s Senior Product Manager Candice Mudrick about the future of Nvidia GeForce Now and it seems like despite being a hardware maker is all in for cloud gaming and has no plans to pull back.
