Google will be shutting down Stadia in January 2023. Google’s Stadia was a video game streaming service that was announced on March 19, 2019. The service would allow gamers to play video games on any device as long as they had a stable internet connection. The Stadia service is not available in all countries and it does not support all devices. The company previously announced that it will be working with publishers to bring their games to the new Google game streaming platform, Stadia.
Google has announced that it will be shutting down the Stadia game streaming service. This is a huge blow to the company, and to game streaming in general. The announcement came with no warning, and Google has not given any indication of why they are shutting down the service. It’s possible that they’ve simply found out that it isn’t profitable enough for them to continue running it.
It’s true that there are other services in the market, such as Geforce Now and Xbox Cloud, but Google wanted to take a different approach by offering a differently priced streaming service.
In a blog post, Google said that it has decided to focus on other areas of its business instead. They want to make sure they are not just competing with other game streaming services but also with other video streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
In the post, Phil Harrison, Vice President and General Manager at Stadia said “A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service”.
He added “We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Players will continue to have access to their games library and play through January 18, 2023 so they can complete final play sessions. ”
Google is not the first company to shut down a gaming service though. In the first half of this year, Sony announced to gradually shut off its PlayStation Now service whereas Microsoft announced a major push to Project Xcloud their game streaming platform.
Google is shutting down Stadia, at the start of the year they also announce to license Stadia tech to other companies. The shutdown of the gaming service is due to the company’s decision to focus more on its other products and services. The Shutdown of Stadia was long in the works with rumors floating around since the start of the year, Google shut down the rumors saying they are not shutting down.
