Stadia to shut down in January 2023

Google is to shut down Stadia, its cloud based gaming service, on the 18th January 2023.

Launched 3 years ago this November, it struggled from day one to live up to its promise. Google created a first party gaming development studio just to create games for the service, but then closed it down 14 months later.

They continued to insist the service was doing ok in 2021, but it's now clear they missed their customer targets by hundreds of thousands.

They will continue to sell the services of Stadia's underlying streaming technology to third parties. As well as hinting on using the technology within Youtube, Google Play and AR.

In light of this news, when the service shuts down any Stadia specific hardware (controllers, TV boxes) will become redundant, and all commercial games and add-ons purchased in the store will be gone. Therefore Google have stated they will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchased made through the Google Store, as well as all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Most refunds expected to be complete by mid-january 2023.

Just read that too.

It shows that even if you are a top 10 world's richest company, it takes more then money and resources to make a gaming service successful. Google could easily have just kept Stadia running at a loss, but their user numbers must have really dropped to a pint where it was pointless.

Have you every tried Stadia? If so what did you think? And if not, what kept you away?

I tested it out earlier this year as I had a free 3 month trial. The game streaming worked fine. Games were responsive and graphics looked good. I used an Xbox controller with it streaming through a PC, but also tested it on mobile with an 8BitDo Pro 2 controller. All worked well.

I can't say how well it worked on slower connections as I only tested it on full fibre. But based on when I tested other services it might have struggled. When I was using fttc, getting about 50 mbps, PlayStation Now streaming worked well, but Xbox Gamepass Ultimate Streaming didn't and would often degrade graphics to keep up or have stuttering framerate or paused in gameplay. But on full fibre zero issues, so streaming gaming is only with it if you have a really decent connection. I doubt it comes well on mobile when travelling unless you are in 5G.

So why did it fail? And why didn't I continue using the service beyond the trial?

The simple answer is the content included in the monthly subscription was limited, with most games behind a paywall. When you have a service like Xbox Gamepass Ultimate, and now PlayStation Plus Premium, which both offer an extensive library of games included in the subscription, and both offering a wide range of these as a streaming service, why would you opt for a Steaming service where you have to still buy most games you want to play on top of the monthly subscription?

You could argue this is the same in Playstation, but it's not the same. On PS you can buy games and you can subscribe to PS Plus, but games you purchase in the PS Store are yours to keep forever regardless of subscription. With Stadia the games you bought relied on the Stadia streaming service running.

And this is the same issue video streaming services have. Netflix and Disney+ are successful because they have a lot of content, but also because you have access to everything. No in app purchases. Your subscription gives you access to everything. Amazon Video by contrast only offers a fraction of its overall content included in the Prime subscription, with the rest either accessible with additional subscriptions or direct purchases. And that's why out isn't as popular. Thru still have a lot our customers though because of their unique business model of the video bundled with Prime's free shipping feature, which is the real reason people subscribe.

So basically people want to subscribe to a service and gain access to all its content, not have to make additional purchased once inside.

I also think Google's Stadia marketing was bad. Unless you already knew what it was I didn't think many understood its purpose.I

And the pandemic probably was the biggest highlight for Stadia. Most streaming services gained a lot of new customers during the 2 years because many were stuck at home looking to entertain themselves. Netflix, Disney, Gamepass, PSPlus, Sky Tv sets all saw huge increases in users and hours used. If Stadia couldn't capitalise on that perfect situation for such a service it would have instantly highlighted its failure.

It will be interesting to see what they mean but integrating Stadia technology into Google's other services.

With Google Play could they be thinking of adding non Android games to the service that would use streaming? Could be an interesting idea.

But Youtube? How would streaming game technology be utilised in a video streaming service?

I have had a thought. Google also have their VR technology in the form of Meta Quest 2. Could they be looking at combining the 2 technologies for streaming VR gaming?