It’s the end: three years after a thunderous launch, Google Stadia is already closing its doors. In a few months, the streaming video game service available since 2019 will definitely stop.
A page turns : the Stadia video game service will stop. We have known for a long time that Stadia had failed to win the hearts of players and that the service was far from meeting Google’s expectations in terms of the number of users. But we had no idea how much.
This is undoubtedly the reason why Google has just officially announced the discontinuation of Stadia. The Mountain View giant explains its decision as follows: “A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia’s approach to consumer game streaming was built on a solid technological foundation, it didn’t take the route to users we expectedso we have made the difficult decision to begin terminating our Stadia streaming service.”
Google Stadia will stop on January 18, 2023
Google gives players a little respite, the time for them to finish their current games. They will therefore keep their library of games until January 18, 2023when Stadia will shut down. Google will refund all users who have subscribed to a subscription intended to extend beyond this date. The majority of refunds are expected to be made by mid-January 2023.
Google explains that the refund will apply to hardware purchases (Stadia controller, Stadia Founder’s Edition, Stadia Premiere Edition…). Finally, in one of its press releases, Google specifies that all purchasing features are already blocked. As of today, it is no longer possible to acquire new games, make in-game purchases, etc.
Google failed to win against Microsoft
However, last August, Google denied rumors that Stadia was going to close. In a burst of optimism, the company explains that Stadia’s technology platform can be reused in other services, such as YouTube, Google Play or augmented reality tools. Google also plans to make it available to its partners. Still, it’s a blow for players who had believed in this platform from the start.
Google Stadia will therefore not have lived very long. The appearance of competing services, and in particular Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming which offers a wider range of games and exclusives, probably has something to do with it. More flexible, more efficient, more extensive and now counting more than 10 million users, the Microsoft service has succeeded in establishing itself among players, especially since it is directly included in the Xbox Game Pass offer. . Difficult for Google to fight under such conditions.
Source: Google