Google announced the end of its Stadia cloud gaming service early next year, thus ending its ambitious proposal for video games.
Google Stadia , the technology firm’s cloud gaming service, will finally close in January 2023.
The company’s ambitious project will end less than 3 years after it was launched on the market and all users who purchased hardware and video games from Stadia will receive a refund for their purchases.
As announced by Phil Harrison , Vice President and General Manager of Stadia , in an update published on the company’s official blog , Google will no longer support its service, although they did not reveal the exact reasons why this radical decision was made. .
Google says goodbye to Stadia
“We are grateful to the dedicated Stadia players who have been with us from the very beginning. We will refund 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 game library until January 18, 2023 so they can complete the latest game sessions. We expect to have most of the refunds completed by mid-January 2023. We have more details for players about this process in our Help Center, ” said Harrison.
Although the project has been cancelled, the video game streaming technology in the cloud that powered Stadia could be used in other Google products in the future since, in the words of the executive, the firm “remains deeply committed to gaming. ”.
“We see clear opportunities to apply this technology through other parts of Google such as YouTube, Google Play and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts – as well as making it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming. We remain deeply committed to gaming, and will continue to invest in new tools, technologies, and platforms that drive success for developers, industry partners, cloud customers, and creators,” Harrison wrote in the post.
An advanced service for the time
First announced at the 2019 Game Developers Conference (GDC) , Google Stadia ended up being released in November of the same year, but without the features that the company promised would revolutionize the video game industry. With an entry price of US$129, the specialized critic determined that the service was disappointing for its price since it did not have 4K resolution with HDR in all its areas and other basic components that were missing during its launch.
Unfortunately for the company, this disappointment continued for the next few years that Stadia was active and due to connection problems or lack of attractions such as exclusive high-quality video games, it was soon forgotten by the vast majority of Stadia enthusiasts. industry.
In April 2020, Google relaxed the requirements to play Stadia games , making them available to anyone with a Gmail account as long as they lived in a country where the service was available. Users had to buy the games from Stadia’s own store or subscribe to Stadia Pro for $9.99 a month to access the list.
Although the closure of Stadia is a blow to Google and those who considered that this type of service would be the “future of video games”, the truth is that there are still other cloud gaming platforms that continue this ambition with certain similarities. and/or differences. Examples include Amazon Luna , Xbox Cloud Gaming beta , NVIDIA GeForce Now , and PlayStation Plus Deluxe .