Google is shutting down Stadia, with the beleaguered cloud gaming service set to remain live for players until 18th January 2023.
Stadia's misfortunes are, of course, well-documented; despite initial praise for the service's streaming capabilities at launch in 2019, a slow, problematic roll-out meant Google failed to capitalise on initial consumer interest. The extent of Stadia's failings started to became clear when the company announced it was closing its first-party game development studios less that 14 months after launch, with subsequent reports claiming the streaming platform was missing its targets for monthly active users by hundreds of thousands.
And while Google continued to insist Stadia was "alive and well" as 2021 progressed, reports claimed it had "deprioritised" the consumer-facing side of its game streaming platform, having largely shifted its focus to selling the services' underlying technology to third-parties.