Google is shutting down Stadia

Google is shutting down Stadia, its cloud gaming service. The service will stay dwell for gamers till January 18th, 2023. Google shall be refunding all Stadia {hardware} bought by the Google Store in addition to all of the video games and add-on content material bought from the Stadia retailer. Google expects these refunds shall be accomplished in mid-January.

“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia,” Stadia vice chairman and GM Phil Harrison stated in a blog post. “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.” Employees on the Stadia workforce shall be distributed to different components of the corporate.

Harrison says Google sees alternatives to use Stadia’s know-how to different components of Google, like YouTube, Google Play, and its AR efforts, and the corporate additionally plans to “make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed,” he wrote.

The writing has been on the wall for Stadia for some time now, most not too long ago when Logitech introduced its new cloud gaming handheld final week and Stadia was one of many few cloud gaming providers not talked about. But Stadia has been going through rumors of its demise virtually from the beginning. Google has a behavior of killing tasks only some years after they launch, and Stadia, a cloud gaming service from an organization with few ties within the gaming business, appeared like a primary candidate for an early demise.