Google is shutting down Stadia

Players will continue to have access to their games library until January 18th 2023, less than half a year from today, reports Engadget.

two people holding black gaming consoles
Photo by JESHOOTS.com on Pexels.com

The cloud gaming service was only launched 3 years ago, with many ambitions. Google started it’s efforts with an own game studio. However, the entire service fell back behind the attached expectations and was never considered successful. The game studio already shut down last year, making this move no surprising consequence.

What is remarkable is the almost prophetic accuracy of http://stadiacountdown.com, a single purpose website built and launched by Jason Scott.

Stadia Countdown by @textfiles

The tweet dates back to November 2019, the day before Stadia actually launched, predicting a lifespan of 4 years for Stadia. As of today, the counter has 412 more days for Stadia to go. Google will kill the product earlier than that.

One thing noteworthy here is that Google products are already notorious for being very mortal. The above is based on Google Cemetery calculates average days for the life expectancy of any life and future product and came up with the ~4 years for the Stadia countdown. While this is kind of normal and necessary in the B2C market, the reputation the company builds is dangerous for its enterprise ambition.