Published , by Asif Khan
Published , by Asif Khan
Google is no stranger to taking risks and admitting defeat. Most of the public failures in the history of the company have been chat apps, but sometimes Google shuts down truly innovative and cool things. Google Reader, iGoogle, and now Google Stadia joins the pile of shuttered projects born out of innovation and the hard work of the teams based in Mountain View, California. Google Stadia VP and General Manager of Stadia Phil Harrison announced the platform will be winding down.
Here's the full statement from Phil Harrison's blog post:
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 today's news is a gut punch to any Stadiacs out there, the good news is that the platform will stay live until January 18, 2023. In a truly classy move, all game and DLC purchases made through the Stadia Store and all hardware purchased in the Google Store will be refunded to customers.
While Google Stadia may be dying, the underlying technology will live on and potentially be applied to other Google projects like YouTube, Google Play, and even upcoming AR projects.
As the Internet's #1 Google Stadia Influencer on the internet, this is devastating news. Shacknews thanks the entire Google Stadia team for their tireless efforts to bring cloud-based video game streaming to the masses.
We will all get to celebrate Google Stadia's third anniversary on November 19, 2022. Let's all send off the platform with a Stadia-tastic celebration of the magic of cloud-gaming!