In December 2019, I purchased The Elder Scrolls Online for the first time on Google Stadia. At the time I didn’t have a strong PC, so cloud gaming was the way. With a stable wifi connection, I could play with zero latency, in 720p resolution. But sadly, Stadia didn’t make it. Why?
Google’s cloud-gaming service will be taken down in the United Kingdom on Thursday while refunds are finalized. When Stadia launched in November 2019, it had ambitious plans on succeeding, but due to its store policy users didn’t resonate with it. Stadia will be unavailable in the UK from 08:00 on January 19.Google gives refunds to everyone who bought content in Stadia. This goes for controllers, games, DLCs, and more. Google expects that refunds will be processed by mid-January. Google has marked the end of Stadia by releasing one final game, Worm Game, which devs were using to test the platform before it went public. Plans have been also announced to make Stadia controllers Bluetooth-capable, allowing them to be used wirelessly to play any game even after the shutdown.
What caused the flop? People do not want to pay the same price to could stream a game as they do to purchase it. Stadia avoided costly retail and delivery costs while charging users the same prices. We assume that streaming would be far less expensive, following the paradigm established for music, movies, and television. However, considering the tremendous production expenses involved in video games, offering a game streaming service at a lower price and turning a profit is unfeasible.
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