Hasta la vista Stadia
Stadia controller. © Alphabet.
Google/Alphabet officially confirmed that it’s shutting down Stadia, its cloud gaming service launched in 2019. Phil Harrison, the company’s general manager, explained in a blog post that as the service hadn’t met with the expected success, the company would pull the plug on Stadia on January 18. Users won’t get short-shrifted, however. Google promises to fully reimburse them for all the Stadia hardware purchased through the Google Store, as well as for all the games and additional content bought from the Stadia store. The payment process will happen automatically without the need to place a refund request. Though games are no longer sold, users can keep playing theirs free of charge until the lights-out date. The company states that the Stadia staff will be folded in other departments.
Ironically, one of the key reasons that Stadia didn’t work out is that users lacked confidence in Google, which has a reputation for suddenly phasing out products. Stadia is Google’s 274th service to get dumped.
⇨ The Verge, Jay Peters, Alex Cranz, “Google is shutting down Stadia.”
2022-09-29
