After nearly three years on the market, Google today announced their plans to shut down Stadia.

First launched back in November 2019 with much hype and promises from Google, we now know Stadia's third birthday will be its last. In a blog post, Stadia vice president and GM Phil Harrison confirmed that Stadia will shutter January 18, 2023. Google intends on refunding all Stadia hardware purchased through the Google Store. They're also going a step further and refunding all game and add-on content purchased from the Stadia store. Unfortunately, Stadia Pro subscriptions won't be refunded.

"A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service."

Google Stadia was pitched as a cloud game streaming service unlike any other streaming service that had come before. Google boasted that it's servers could deliver low-latency gameplay on-par with dedicated hardware while also delivering 4K graphics at high frame rates. Unfortunately, none of that was true at launch. Though promising at release, the service was plagued with latency issues and no game launched capable of supporting a native 4K resolution or high frame rates. To make matters worse, Sony and Microsoft had already announced their next-generation consoles by the end of 2019 with 2020 release windows. In 2021, Google would shutdown any attempts at developing its own games. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer games have been announced for the platform lately. Now we know why.

While Google Stadia will disappear at the start of the new year, the technology that powers it won't. According to Harrison, Google intends on applying the technology to the likes of YouTube, Google Play, and AR. It'll also be made available to games industry partners. It is unknown if Google will attempt to remain tied to the games industry, or if this is the end of their participation.