Google has announced that it will stop its game streaming service, Stadia. This service will be shut down permanently on January 18, 2023.
Google will refund all hardware and software purchases to users. Anyone who purchased a Stadia controller will receive a refund, as well as any additional games and content purchased through the Stadia Store. Repayment is expected to be completed by mid-January 2023.
Google has said it will use the technology that powers Stadia in other parts of the company, such as YouTube, Google Play and augmented reality (AR). Members who work at Stadia will continue to work elsewhere in the company.
Google Stadia launched in March 2019 and was met with skepticism from the industry due to Google’s tendency to close businesses that don’t start paying off immediately. Also, many criticized the high costs of the games considering that the user does not directly own them.
The service continued for a while, even though two years later Google announced that it was closing its own game development studio and the head of the product department left the company.
For a long time, the company pretended that everything was going well and that there was no problem, which we know was not the case.
However, the demise of Stadia doesn’t necessarily mean the demise of cloud gaming as a whole, as Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon remain committed to their services. These platforms were always meant to be a long-term investment for these companies, but that’s not something Google is known for accepting.
This decision of Google can have a direct impact on the purchase of Activision by Microsoft. Google closed its studios when Microsoft bought Bethesda Studios. Now, the purchase of Activision has not been without influence in their decision. However, this purchase by Microsoft is under investigation so as not to harm the industry, which may have happened right now.
