Google Stadia

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/wiki/Google Stadiawork

Google Stadia Premiere Edition hardware.

Google Stadia was a cloud gaming service developed by Google, running from late 2019 to early 2023. Instead of running games locally, it allowed gamers to stream games from a cloud server to a local client.

Hopes

Beating the next generation PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S to market, Stadia offered a vision to consumers where expensive hardware for games would no longer be required, just a controller. Hardware could be seamlessly upgraded in an unseen data center, keeping graphical and gameplay capabilities up to date. Being on a cloud server meant games could be played near instantly after purchase, and cheating was limited to what could be done with just the controller and raw display output. For publishers, it also meant near impossible piracy.

System Life

The market turned out to be not so kind to Stadia. Despite new consoles being hard to obtain and people having more time for gaming following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were a number of roadblocks that stopped the system from succeeding. Initially the combination of a required monthly subscription (later changed to freemium) and full priced games proved hard to stomach for many gamers, especially those who encountered issues with latency or connectivity.

Still, Stadia had its moments, such as being one of the only platforms where Cyberpunk 2077 was relatively stable at launch. For some gamers who wanted to play demanding titles with old hardware, Stadia offered an easy way to have near next gen console quality at a fraction of the upfront cost, putting that entertainment within their means, which is no small thing to those individuals.

Game preservationists were not jazzed about the inability to preserve Stadia titles, and others were concerned that their game library might be lost on a whim should Google ever kill Stadia. These fears bore out, albeit mixed, with games like Outlanders and Worm Game being lost, fortunately most other exclusive titles were later ported to other systems. Full refunds were issued for many purchases, though not for subscriptions.