Google Stadia never mattered, and it never had a chance

Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service will soon be no more, as the company announced that it’s shutting down the service early next year. Google had ambitious plans for Stadia when it launched, but it never presented any threat to established players like Sony or Microsoft. And because of Google’s general lack of commitment to anything but its biggest cash cow — digital advertising — Stadia never really stood a chance.

Google's first presentation of Stadia at GDC 2019 was a discussion about its high-level ambitions that appeared disruptive. You’d be able to stream games to all of your devices! You could even play a YouTube video and jump into a game! Jade Raymond, a veteran in the industry, was in charge of establishing the company's own game studio to create exclusive titles.

It was easy to imagine with Google. One of the largest tech companies in the world, who knows a lot about streaming, might be able to succeed where other companies failed. It worked when Stadia launched in November. While things were messy and there were still many missing features, you could still play a few video games with an internet connection. 

Things started to fall apart from there. While the company did add a free Stadia tier six months after launch and addressed small issues like making the Stadia wireless controller work with computers, there just weren’t many people playing Stadia games. Google offered some promotions to try and get Stadia into more peoples’ hands, but they weren’t enough.

The company declared the end of its development studios in February 2021. It announced that Stadia would no longer be used by its in-house development studios. Instead, it will offer Stadia to other partners as a platform to build upon. Stadia will be closing its doors for good, almost two years after the announcement.

Stadia didn't make a dent in the end. It was a good thing that it lit a fire under Amazon. They launched Luna cloud gaming about a year after Stadia. Microsoft began rolling out Xbox Cloud Gaming in April 2021. But cloud gaming hasn’t turned the gaming industry upside down when it arguably had the prime opportunity to. When we were all stuck at home early in the pandemic and couldn’t find PS5s, Stadia felt like it should have been the perfect solution to let vast numbers of people easily play games right from whatever screen is in front of them.

Cloud gaming is still too frictional, as Sean Hollister, my colleague, wrote in March 2021. Can the game be played on my internet connection? Is the game available on the platform I choose? Do I need to purchase it separately or as part of a subscription. Stadia was no exception to this. Contrast that with my Nintendo Switch, which lets me slot in a game cartridge and just start playing, and you can see why cloud gaming still hasn’t quite caught on. (Cloud gaming is also an option for a handful of Switch games, and it’s generally not a good one.)

It’s clear Stadia never mattered all that much to Google, either. It takes years to develop big-budget videogames, but Google shut down its own studios just over a year after Stadia was launched. If Google wasn’t willing to invest in its own platform, why should other developers? 

Developers that did support Stadia were as surprised as everyone else about Thursday’s news. Bungie, on its Destiny 2 forums, said that it “just learned” about the shutdown and would send information to affected Stadia players “once we have a plan of action.” Mike Rose of No More Robots tweeted his frustration at Google’s lack of communication, saying that “hours later and I still have no email from Stadia, and no clarity on what’s happening with our games, deals, anything.” Even Stadia employees apparently had little notice.

Cloud gaming isn’t dead. Xbox’s offering is pretty good and getting better. Same with Nvidia’s GeForce Now. PlayStation shut down PlayStation Now, but it added cloud streaming to its most costly PlayStation Plus tier. Amazon’s Luna is expanding, too. Logitech has just announced a dedicated cloud gaming device. Google will soon send Stadia, the cloud gaming service that made headlines, to the graveyard.