This was to be the future of video games. Finally, a gigantic flop. Launched in 2019 by Google, Stadia offered a service of cloud gaming — a technology that delocalizes the execution of video games on powerful remote servers — allowing gamers to play anywhere, provided you have a good internet connection. Phil Harrison, director of Stadia, announced in a press release that the service will permanently close on January 18, 2023. Good news, all players will be reimbursed, also in mid-January, for all of their purchases.
“For the Stadia team, building and supporting Stadia from the start has been fueled by the same passion for games as our players. […] We are very grateful to the team for their innovative work and look forward to continuing to impact gaming and other industries using core Stadia streaming technology.”said Phil Harrison.
If Stadia is a failure, it is first of all because of its economic model of purchasing video games individually, while its main competitors, Microsoft or Sony, offer access to a video game catalog in exchange for a monthly subscription. Added to this is a technology that is still perfectible and difficult to implement, causing many disappointments, far from the promises of Google when the service was announced.
However, the company remains convinced of its technical success and will continue to develop it internally. In the meantime, Stadia joins the (long) macabre list of Google’s 274 aborted projects.