The latest rumors suggest that the plans to shut down Stadia may be further along than some would think, with Google aiming to close it down before the end of 2022.
According to Twitter account Killed by Google, which keeps track of all the services that Google closes down, it might not be long before Stadia’s time is up. It’s a “he said, she said” situation, to be fair, but according to the account holder’s sources, Google may shut down Stadia “by the end of summer.” The source also claims that there’d be no license transfer of any sort, which means that any purchases made on Stadia would effectively be nullified as the service closes down.
Kinda sucks to be honest, service works well enough (at least, from my experience) and video quality was definitely ahead of what I have experienced on xCloud. Google gonna Google I guess, sad but everyone saw it coming from a mile away!
Yeah, it kind of does. If I recall correctly, they released in 2019 so coming up on 3 years.
I wonder if part of it comes down to the hardware deployed in their data-centers, where it’s maybe coming up on their refresh cycle? I don’t know how aggressively they update datacenter systems. If so, then that’s one more straw to add to the pile on the service’s back.
They’d need to update their Stadia SDK with newer GPU specification and maybe work out backwards compatibility with the First Generation Specification. It could have possibly been interesting to see what their next hardware update would bring.
Surprisingly, the video image quality used by YouTube TV feels and looks below that of Hulu LiveTV and DirectTV Stream. The bitrate just isn’t enough for their live TV streams. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Stadia and YT-TV have no common tech used between them even when it makes sense to me that they should. As one says, Google being Google.
Good thought on datacenter refresh, that’s possible. I actually would have assumed that with the type of service levels /uptime they have they’d possibly be refreshing more frequently than that, but just found this and it looks like the trend might be toward longer life now. Not sure if the specs for this type of hardware might require more frequent investment though, as we know for certain that XCloud is on at least its second generation of hardware. Kinda interesting read though.
This is exactly why I’m always hesitant about the industry moving into a 100% digital future reliant in any way on data centers to stream, download, or authenticate games. Install from disc should always at least be an option, even if it’s not the most up-to-date version for single player play.
I think it depends who is doing it, like Microsoft/ Sony I have a bit of faith in sense neither is going anywhere in the games front
But when I see google/Facebook/Netflix etc doing it I am weary as most seem to pivot pretty quickly into oh it didn’t take off immedality into tens of millions users cancel it all.
Thankfully so far at least on Xbox even games that get delisted due to whatever I haven’t had a game pulled from my library. So I feel safe with those
I’m pretty much on the same page as you, and even in stuff where Microsoft has exited a market, like with ebooks, they refunded me for what I had bought when they shut it down and stopped having it.
On the other hand, I did see that Sony is removing some movies from people’s accounts in Europe sometime this next month even though they had bought them, seemed surprising that they could do that. Wondering if Studio Canal said they couldn’t host their movies any more or something.
For me, it doesn’t matter who, even Microsoft or Sony. There’s no telling who will be in charge 20 years from now or what the priorities will be. Microsoft themselves went from gaming first to gaming as a part of their platform, back to gaming first as a priority. Even with their gaming focus now, they still have BS DRM that prevents their systems from being usable without an internet connection. I trust people, I don’t ever put 100% trust in corporations.