Cloud gaming enthusiasts will be disappointed to know that Google Stadia is shutting down next year. Phil Harrison, VP and GM of Stadia announced today that Stadia will fully wind up by January 18, 2023, and that all purchases made through the Google or Stadia stores will be refunded by mid-January.

First announced three years ago, Stadia was Google’s bold cloud-based entry into gaming as a whole. The service had tough competition from bigger rival services including GeForce Now, PlayStation Now, and Xbox Cloud Gaming (now part of Xbox Game Pass), but enjoyed moderate success and is host to nearly 300 titles in 2022.

Still, this is not a surprising announcement by any means: Google shut down Stadia’s internal development studios last year, and when Logitech announced its all-in-one cloud gaming console last week, Stadia was the most notable omission in the list of available services.

From Phil Harrison:

A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.

We’re grateful to the dedicated Stadia players that have been with us from the start. We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Players will continue to have access to their games library and play through January 18, 2023 so they can complete final play sessions. We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023.

Much of the Stadia team will be moved to other projects at Google, while the technology behind the service will be reapplied where useful to other Google products like YouTube, Google Play, and Augmented Reality (AR) projects.

How do you feel about Stadia’s demise? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: Google Blog