Google Is Handling Stadia’s Death Better Than Its Life
A Google Stadia video game controller with a Night Blue finish, taken on November 27, 2019. (Photo … [+] by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Future Publishing via Getty Images
Say what you will about Google Stadia’s ill-fated run as a game streaming service, but Google is handling its death very well. In fact, I’d say the care and attention they’re giving to how they’re wrapping up Stadia’s existence feels like more than they ever devoted to it when it was alive and attempting to grow.
What do I mean? Google has taken the unprecedented step of refunding not just software purchases and in-game purchases made through Stadia, which seems wise given that almost all of that content will become literally inaccessible. But they’re even refunding people who purchased hardware for Stadia, which could be thought of as more of a gamble. Microsoft wasn’t refunding anyone for their Zunes, after all.
Past that, Google is going so far as to not just refund hardware, but make that hardware still functional in some capacity. Google has just announced that they will be issuing an update for the Stadia controller eventually that will activate Bluetooth functionality and allow it to be used with other devices as a normal controller. So even after your refund for it, it could still function in some useful capacity. That’s pretty neat.
Again, this feels like more attention than Stadia got in life, or at the very least, more good decisions being made. I’ll say the three main problems with Stadia always were:
The model. People wanted Netflix, a subscription service for a library of games. No one wanted to be forced to purchase or repurchase individual games only accessible via the cloud (and now we know why). The exclusives. What exclusives? Google did not work out enough meaningful deals with third parties, and they shuttered their own in-house exclusive studio before it even got off the ground. Even Amazon Games has done much more than that. The support. It’s easy to see how the Stadia team and their resources just shrunk and shrunk over time and because Stadia was not a huge breakout hit, it did not receive the kind of investment or level of personnel that may have turned things around.
Maybe there was just no saving Stadia, which could be considered ahead of its time, with the world not ready for a purely cloud-based service with no additional, structure support like we see with Xbox. But it didn’t do a very good job of making its case either.
At least the death of Stadia has resulted in a lot of people getting money back, and now hey, a free Bluetooth controller.
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