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The moment that everyone knew was going to come had finally arrived. Stadia, Google’s controversial game streaming service, will be discontinued, the tech giant has revealed in an official statement.
Phil Harrison said today in a blog post that Stadia
“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.”
Harrison made this announcement today. On January 18, 2023, Stadia will be put out of its misery forever.
The good news is that the genuine Armageddon scenario will not be occurring for Stadia clients. As a result of Google’s decision to issue refunds, loyal Stadia users won’t risk losing possibly hundreds of dollars on terrible games.
According to the post:
“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.”
Although this does not include payments made to the subscription service known as “Stadia Pro,” nor does it include hardware refunds for purchases made outside of the Google Store, it is still a very excellent value overall.
Existing Pro users will not be charged to play from this point on until the closure date, which is currently unknown. The controllers can still be usable when used as wired USB controllers, and a movement to get Google to unlock the Bluetooth connection is already getting underway.
The technology behind Stadia will be included in a Google Cloud service that will be known as “Immersive Stream for Games.” Google has made some progress in marketing the function as a method to play games on low-powered devices, such as Peloton exercise equipment.
The first promise that was made regarding Google Stadia was never fulfilled.
It was billed as a gaming platform that would benefit from Google’s international scale and streaming ability. The service, which ran a game in the cloud and streamed each individual frame of video down to your computer or phone, operated the game.
Even though it was an innovative service, it didn’t take long for rivals to emerge with advantages over it: bigger size, better hardware, better ties with game creators, and better games overall.
According to reports, the service did not take off immediately and apparently fell short of Google’s projections for the number of users by “hundreds of thousands.” After that, Google moved fast to defund the division, which resulted in the high-profile collapse of its in-house development studio before the company had the opportunity to create even a single game.
When Google launched Stadia, the company’s reputation for killing products was (and still is) at an all-time high. This reputation continues to this day. Because buying a game through a streaming service only works if that service continues to operate, having faith in the firm that manages the streaming service is necessary before making a purchase.
The vast majority of people who use the internet had the preconceived notion that the service will be discontinued. As a result, the official Google Stadia account tweeted just two months ago that Stadia would be closing down.
“is not shutting down.”
Stadia’s demise became a self-fulfilling prophecy as a result of Google’s tarnished image in the gaming industry.
No one purchases games from Stadia because they believe the platform would eventually be taken down, and because no one purchases games from Stadia, the platform is eventually taken offline.
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