Users who purchased hardware through the Google Store, as well as Stadia players who purchased games or add-on content, will be granted refunds, Harrison said. Google projects that the majority of refunds will be completed by the time the service shuts down.
When the service launched three years ago, it was critiqued for input lag issues — even as the promise of playing a AAA shooter like “Destiny” on a mobile device was genuinely enticing for many consumers. Our reviewer, Gene Park, described the tech as “unplayable at times, magical in others,” in a 2019 review.
Later in the year, Park concluded that the service had improved. Still, at the time, the product was hard to recommend to anyone but early tech adopters.
The announcement represents an abrupt reversal from Google’s assurances just a few months ago about Stadia’s future. In July, a Stadia player on Twitter asked the company if it intended to shutter Stadia soon. Responding from the service’s official Twitter account, Google said in no uncertain terms that “Stadia is not shutting down” and reiterated its commitment to supporting the service with more games.
Unfortunately, Stadia will now be interred alongside the over 200 other canceled projects in Google’s graveyard such as its defunct social media venture, Google Plus, and mobile virtual reality platform, Google Cardboard.
Stadia’s phased demise also comes at an ambivalent time for the future of handheld cloud gaming. On Sept. 28, Verizon unveiled the Razer Edge 5G, a handheld Android gaming device made in partnership with Razer and Qualcomm that can play games locally as well as stream them from a game console or directly from the cloud. A week earlier, Tencent and Logitech debuted the Logitech G Cloud, which allows players to stream games from Xbox Game Pass and Nvidia GeForce Now.
While Stadia will soon be dead, Harrison said the technology behind it will continue to live on through Google’s other projects.
“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,” Harrison wrote. “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.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
