Google is shutting down its Stadia, the latest ambitious project to cut costs as the company looks to shed costs.
Phil Harrison, a Google vice president, said the gaming service, which launched in 2019 and runs on phones and Chrome browsers hasn't gained the traction it's supposed to, and hasn't gained traction with users that we expect. He wrote that we made the difficult decision to end our Stadia streaming service.
For Google, Stadia was an opportunity to put its cloud streaming technology to work and enable immersive gameplay at a massive scale, according to Harrison. The Stadia FAQ page says that the servers will be turned off on January 18, the Stadia FAQ page says. The company hoped that Stadia would compete with other gaming services like Sony s PlayStation Plus cloud streaming, Amazon s Luna and Microsoft s Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Sundar Pichai has shut down Stadia after saying he wants to make the company 20% more efficient. The stock price of Alphabet is down 34% this year and the company reported disappointing revenue and profit numbers in July. Pichai said that the company's efficiency efforts could include product and head count cuts as the company struggles with a slew of economic challenges and slowing growth.
Google has canceled its Pixelbook laptop and cut funding for its own incubator, Area 120.
Last year, the company said it was disbanding the Stadia GamesStadia Games and Entertainment team, which developed its own original games for the service. There was a lot of speculation about the possibility of a broader cut to the service.
Google will refund all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store and all game and add-on content purchases at the Stadia store. The company said it expects to complete the majority of refunds by mid-January. Players will have access to their games library and will be able to play through January 18.
Google will continue to support gaming in other areas and will help developers build and distribute gaming apps on Google Play and Google Play GamesGoogle Play Games. Harrison said the technology used for Stadia won't go to waste.
He said that there was 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.