Google Stadia is shut down. Just three years after launch, Google’s big bet on cloud gaming will end on January 18, 2023.
His rapid demise is not a complete shock. Despite Google’s extravagant efforts to build hype around the service it called the “future of gaming,” the company’s grand plan has always been missing one key element: video games. Google didn’t release original titles for Stadia, but instead relied on third-party games to attract players – a costly undertaking that, according to Bloomberg, Google has spent tens of millions of dollars per port. With no flashy releases to show off, Google Reportedly approached companies like Peloton and Bungie about white-label deals for its streaming technology.
Google’s plan to shut down the service has been rumored since July, when the now-suspended Twitter account Murdered by Google speculated that Stadia would be ready towards the end of summer. At the time, Stadia’s official Twitter account little back claim that “Stadia does not close.” Two months later, that’s exactly what’s happening.
When the news of Stadia’s passing broke, it was unclear how much employees or even partners knew in advance. “We just learned that Stadia has closed and talks have begun about the next steps for our players,” a Bungie moderator wrote on the website. Destiny Forums. on reddit, a Stadia community manager responded to reports of a new user interface being “slowly rolled out,” puzzling those who heard of the shutdown. Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison said today in a blog post that “many of the Stadia team members will continue this work in other parts of the company,” without providing further details.
At launch, Google believed that Stadia would revolutionize an industry it had little to no experience with. In March 2019, the company announced that it would create its own in-house studio to work on original projects. That effort was led by industry titan Jade Raymond. Raymond, a founder of Ubisoft Toronto and Electronic Arts’ Motive Studio, as well as a then VP of Google, didn’t last long. By February 2021, Google reportedly cancelled multiple projects, closed two of its studios in Montreal and Los Angeles and laid off about 150 people. Raymond left the company as part of the transition and started working at a new studio, Haven. At least half a dozen employees followed her.
stadiums never recovered. Harrison announced the closure today, saying that while Stadia was built on “a strong technology foundation”, it “had failed to gain traction with users”. It’s a costly and embarrassing failure for Google, which also reimburses the cost of every piece of hardware purchased through its store, as well as games and add-ons purchased through Stadia’s store. The “majority” of those repayments, Harrison said, should be completed by mid-January.
The company’s focus now seems to be on the technology that powers Stadia, rather than the games themselves. Harrison said Google “sees clear opportunities to apply this technology in other parts of Google,” such as YouTube, Google Play and augmented reality projects. Harrison also said the technology behind Stadia would be made available to “industry partners,” adding that he still believed cloud gaming was the future. “We remain very committed to gaming,” Harrison said when announcing the demise of Stadia. It’s a hard promise to believe. Stadia was once the future of gaming. Now, it’s the past.