All software and hardware purchased on Stadia will be refunded though Google's Play Store
Published: 29th September 2022 | Source: Google Blog | Author: Mark Campbell
It's official, Google's winding down its Stadia streaming platform
Google's Stadia project was an ambitions project that promised to bring gaming to the cloud, moving gaming away from powerful PCs and TV attach boxes and onto the world wide web. Through Stadia, high-end gaming could be achieved on any tablet, smartphone, smart TV, and PC, moving hardware requirements away from gamers and onto Google's server farms. No more expensive consoles, no need for PC hardware upgrades, just gaming on the cloud.
Today, Google has confirmed that their Stadia project has ended in failure, on January 18th, Google will be closing down their Stadia service. Refunds will be issued to anyone who purchased Stadia hardware or games in mid-January 2023, so gamers that have invested in Google's Stadia platform will have their investments recouped.
Simply put, Stadia never became successful enough for Google to continue pushing the platform. While Google has proven that cloud gaming can work, they did not give their customer a reason to invest in their platform. Nvidia's GeForce NOW service and Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming platform took advantage of the existing Xbox and PC gaming ecosystems to give gamers access to a large library of content, and Stadia, in contrast, played host to relatively few games and practically no exclusive content to entice gamers to try the service.
Below is what Google's General Manager of Stadia, Phil Harrison, had to say about Stadia's planned closure.
For many years, Google has invested across multiple aspects of the gaming industry. We help developers build and distribute gaming apps on Google Play and Google Play Games. Gaming creators are reaching audiences around the world on YouTube through videos, live streaming and Shorts. And our cloud streaming technology delivers immersive gameplay at massive scale.
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.
We’re grateful to the dedicated Stadia players that have been with us from the start. 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. We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023. We have more details for players on this process on our Help Center .
The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts — as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed. We remain deeply committed to gaming, and we will continue to invest in new tools, technologies and platforms that power the success of developers, industry partners, cloud customers and creators.
For the Stadia team, building and supporting Stadia from the ground up has been fueled by the same passion for games that our players have. Many of the Stadia team members will be carrying this work forward in other parts of the company. We’re so grateful for the groundbreaking work of the team and we look forward to continuing to have an impact across gaming and other industries using the foundational Stadia streaming technology.
While Google had promised to support their Stadia platform long term, the reality is that Stadia has become the latest in a long line of Google projects to be axed after a short service life. While Stadia's technology will live on through other parts of Google, Stadia itself will soon become a thing of the past.
You can join the discussion on Google axing Stadia on the OC3D Forums .