I am going to miss it now that it is shutting down. While the writing has been on the wall for Stadia since it launched, I was one of the few who was interested in the future of gaming. I enjoyed it even though I paid the entry fee.
Stadia has been hard to like. The first few months of the service felt very similar to a trial. I couldn't initially connect the Stadia controller to a PC or phone and the browser streaming wasn't as good as the Chromecast output.
The ability to share game clips with friends and have them instantly jump in to play with you was one of the features that was promised by the company. It was a rough start for gaming, but as the years went on I began to rely on Stadia.
Stadia is the main tool I use to play games. Stadia felt like a different place when it was at its peak on the PC version. It has made it possible for me to play the looter shooter on my steam deck. I used the free version of Stadia to fill in the gap because the game doesn't run on the steam deck.
Stadia has allowed me to play games like Cyberpunk 2077 on laptops and phones that would never be able to power such a title. You can play a game a few seconds after hitting a button on the Stadia website. The technology and simplicity of the experience is what makes it stand out from the competition.
Stadia was easy to use.
It wasn't the first to put games in your browser, but it was the first to make it work well. It has pushed rivals like Microsoft and Amazon to compete with their cloud gaming services.
The business model of Stadia was confusing. Initially you had to pay a subscription to use Stadia and then you had to buy games on top of it, which everyone thought would be the end of it. The type of publishing deals that Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and others can strike is more suited to Stadia than a subscription model. The idea of making its own games was given up on by the company.
Billions of dollars were spent convincing publishers to bring their games to Stadia. It wasn't easy to port games over to Stadia because the platform game developers haven't paid enough attention to.
I hope the technology behind the Stadia service is still alive and well. Phil Harrison, vice president, says, "We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of the company, as well as make it available to our industry partners."
Stadia was used to help launch the Witch Queen expansion, as well as to test Destiny 2 during the Pandemic. It's going to take more publishers and internet service providers to convince them to keep using Stadia.
It is possible that Stadia tech will appear on the Nintendo Switch. Control for the Switch is powered by the cloud version of Ubitus, and there are many other cloud ports. As it prepares to shut down its consumer service and abandon its plans to compete with publishers, it has an opportunity here.
Stadia will live on as a warning signal to the wider game industry, even if I am part of a small group that misses it. Stadia came too soon after the failures of OnLive. The world isn't ready for just cloud gaming, it needs to be an option until we have the infrastructure to support it The cloud gaming handhelds are being pushed by companies. It feels like it's too early for this kind of hardware.
Stadia will rise from the ashes of previous failures once the world is ready. I am confident that this resurrection won't be overseen by the internet search giant.
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