While shutting down its Stadia gaming service on January 18th, Google announced plans to keep its console alive. It might not seem like much given the lack of access to an entire catalog of cloud-streaming games, but the console was really the highlight of Google’s major move in gaming.
Although full details haven’t been revealed yet, Google said on Twitter that it will “release a self-service tool to enable Bluetooth connections on the Stadia console.” Google has promised to share details in time for closing.
Currently, the Stadia gamepad can only be connected to the Google platform. Even these recently announced plans, when service is shut down on January 18th, the controller would have become a useless hunk of plastic, nickel and silicon destined for landfill. It now looks like you’ll be able to use the controller with other Bluetooth-enabled devices — PC and Android, most likely; Maybe Apple devices and even PS5 and Xbox Series X | S and Nintendo Switch.
We also have Bluetooth news: next week we’ll be launching a self-service tool for enabling Bluetooth connections on your Stadia console. We’ll share details here upon release. pic.twitter.com/6vYomngfmAJanuary 13, 2023
Beginning of the End
in Job (Opens in a new tab)Last September, Stadia general manager Phil Harrison announced that: “Although Stadia’s approach to streaming games to consumers was built on a strong technical foundation, it didn’t quite catch on with users as we had expected, so we made the difficult decision about getting started. Stadia streaming service terminated.”
Google seems to have enough money to get through its faltering early years
The news came out of the blue, not because Stadia was such a huge hit, but because Google seemed to have the money to get through its faltering baby years. Perhaps Google could have succeeded Stadia only through sheer grit, as Epic did with the Epic Games Store. Instead, facing competition like Microsoft Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia GeForce Now, Google has chosen to close the store.
Harrison also confirmed in the post that Google will refund “all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia Store.”
Another good news for gamers is that games like Orcs Must Die 3, which originally launched as a Google Stadia exclusive, have ventured into other platforms, so we won’t lose access to everything Stadia brought.
The best of a bad situation
The device will become a convenient and strange relic of the risk of launching a cloud gaming service
While it was good news Google wouldn’t let early Stadia users out of pocket, buyers would be stuck with perfectly fine hardware that would no longer be usable. As our very own Reese Wood said at the time, “Google clearly poured a lot of resources into researching and developing a Stadia console. All that effort now, unfortunately, is probably wasted.”
“At a glance, the Google Stadia controller doesn’t look that special. It has a similar silhouette to a Nintendo Switch Pro controller, or a slightly thinner Xbox 360 pad. But, in my hands, the Stadia controller feels… just fine.
“It’s a wonderfully comfortable controller. Its buttons and sticks are tactile quality. And I love the solid set of shortcut buttons in the middle of the pad that let you easily take screenshots, access Google Assistant for voice-based navigation, and more.”
It’s great news, then, that the console is getting a new lease on life. However, I doubt Google will start restocking the gamepad to simply sell it as a third-party console. The device would become a strange comfort relic for the risks of launching a cloud gaming service in competition with Microsoft and Sony.
in the fresh air
It’s great that Google managed to recoup everything it earned through the early adopters of Stadia, but it wasn’t obligated to make things good.
The slight rise and rapid fall of Google Stadia is a stark reminder that we have less control over the games we buy as the video game market turns digital first. It’s great that Google could get back everything it earned through early adopters of Stadia, but it wasn’t obligated to fix it.
Google could have easily shutdown the servers and walked away, doing no work to make its console usable for other services, or not working with developers to allow players to port their game and save files from Stadia to Steam — as it did. With Gearbox’s Borderlands 3.
Steam, Xbox Marketplace, PlayStation Store, Nintendo eShop, and Epic Games Store all seem too big to shut down, but there’s no guarantee digital store owners won’t one day run into financial hardship and shut down servers. On that day, you could lose access to every game you’ve bought over the years, with none of the security that owning a physical copy of the game provides. Although it is admitted that games rely more on online features, even a physical disc does not guarantee long-term ownership of the game.
Well, this good news about the Stadia controller has really led me down a dark and dismal path. What can I say other than hugging your loved ones and backing up your saves?