Stadia is dead…
Well, it was a good run – oh, who am I kidding? There were maybe a handful of people who were actually excited about Stadia (myself included). I still think cloud gaming is the future. However, Stadia was just ahead of its time.
Google has announced that on January 18th, 2023, the Stadia service will be shutdown. It has failed, but I attribute that to two very specific reasons outside of “it was just too soon.”
Firstly, Google has an infamous reputation for being a company that isn’t afraid to throw copious amounts of money at several ideas just to see what sticks. They have a history of abandoning projects that did not move the needle far enough according to the Google powers that be.
Secondly, there is an incredibly large base of gamers out there, that simply refused to give Stadia a chance. That in and of itself isn’t so egregious. It’s those individuals who didn’t give it a chance, and took it upon themselves to bad mouth the service regardless of whether or not they tried it.
Stadia proved time and again, that it was the most mature (in terms of technical capability) when compared to all the other cloud services out there. I’ve tried several cloud platforms. It was able to run Cyberpunk 2077 at the time of release, where other platforms were swarmed with bugs and issues. The UI was a lot simpler to use than something like GeForce Now, that will sometimes require you to log into individual stores multiple times to access your library.
On the plus side, if you were like me, and heavily invested into Stadia, you will be getting reimbursed for the hardware and any games you purchased while on the service (you will not be getting reimbursed for the monthly pro subscription, however). How seamless that refund pays out, remains to be seen. I did some backtracking, and I easily spent… well more than I’m willing to publicly admit.
Stadia was a great first attempt at something that I am positive, will be impactful in the future. For now, of the remaining cloud services (GeForce Now, Amazon Luna, and Xcloud), I think xcloud might be the most popular, given the various acquisitions by Microsoft. GeForce Now still holds a special place for me though, as I don’t need to repurchase games. But none have been as clean and seamless as Stadia. Sigh… so long Stadia.
