Google Stadia Is Shutting Down On January 18, 2023

@bookfan8780: No surprise to most everyone it would seem, they had countdown clocks, office bets, at one point it was a running joke as to when Stadia would close, before some of the games finished development.

I tried the Amazon Luna, (prime member) and the entrance price was just a bluetooth controller $50. The controller was excellent for its price, and better then Stadia tech. AS in that, the LUNA controller connects directly to your internet, by by-passing MS frame, and then connects directly to amazon servers around the country. What this does is shave off about 20ms of latency, which gives an amazing experience even in fast paced games. If your like me, who has fiber optic, which is amazing anyway, it still shaves off time by bypassing the cross over, as the controller goes directly to the server.

Still though, I didn't bother with LUNA after 60days. It was fun playing high end games outside, out on the deck, or on any of our firetvs. Or on firetablets. But the selection of 200 games were just too indie or old, and the way I consume games would never work with a subscription model. Might be good for some, but just too niche for me. The controller still works just fine as a bluetooth controller for anything. I think amazon will keep LUNA around for a long time, just to hedge its bet for the future.

@tOrchie: the whole problem was actually they assuming people would be ok with paying a subscription and full price for each game, while Game Pass on the cloud does the same thing without paying for the game

@noodles227: There is a ton of inherent problems with cloud .... well anything cloud, in what we call 'broadband internet' here in the states. The FCC has been trying to define Broadband internet for more then 20 yrs but the power of lobbying telecoms state by state have killed that down. Broadband used to be defined at ten times faster then phone modem, now as 25 up and at least 3 down, but at perfect conditions. Without any consideration of latency/ping up and down. Nor does it address packet losses, spikes, or time of day congestion. So you have everything labeled broadband here in the USA including DSL, satellite, and wireless.

If you are sitting in Montana sharing a DSL ,on the 2 mile limit with 60 other neighbors, getting 3mb downloads at 100ms of latency, you are still labeled as getting 'broadband internet" in America. With little chance of getting up graded any time soon, and the internet provider is getting government subsidies for providing, "broadband". We desperately need to put money into broadband deserts and take money away from companies claiming to provide faux- broadband. Just need to get passed the politics.

America still has 100million of people with the ability to play cloud gaming and other cloud usages. Still a huge market for sure, but no one wants to write on the box, "less then 1/3 of you will have a less then optimal experience."

I think cloud gaming is the future in one form or another, but it is still a good bit off. It is good that companies are chasing this tech, as it will be used around the globe for many things. The USA does not want to be standing still holding up CDs/DVD saying, "we know this will come back in style".

Tencent: $32.2 Billion

Sony: $18.2 Billion

Apple: 15.3 Billion

Total Games Revenue 2021from newzoo.

@Legato-and-Vash: Streaming can work pretty well over 5G or even just mobile 4G LTE service too (though surely the latency can very from place to place). I first streamed a game on my phone over LTE and went Wow, this is surprisingly good, about 3 years ago. Recommend trying it that way.

Stadia would have still sucked and flopped in 5 or 10 years if it used the same business model, with individual purchases

@Spartan_418: I totally agree. I actually thought Google's demonstration initial attempt at streaming, Project Stream which I tried was quite good even at 1080p( I thought it even performed better than eventually XCloud) but then instead of as part of a subscription they decided to sell their games.

Their business model just wasn't working. If they had adapted Microsoft's XCloud subscriptions service they could have had a bigger fanbase.

Microsoft though had the advantage of leveraging their existing customer base from Gamepass and XBL Gold to XCloud offering the streaming service as an add on to the bundled Gamepass Ultimate sub rather than just a stand alone service which made the subscription very attractive and appealing.

You can enjoy the games on Gamepass Ultimate in multiple ways, installed and downloaded to get the best performance which appealed to the hardcore gaming community or via streaming which would attract a lot of casual gamers on multiple platforms.

Google's Stadia just couldn't compet especially without the excellent first party catalog that Xbox already was offering.

There are many reasons Gamepass Ultimate is called by many the best deal in gaming and it's multi-platform and multi-media(streamed or downloaded) accessibility is one of them allowing it to tap the billions of potential customers base worldwide playing on different platforms(console, PCs, phones, tablets, laptops and soon directly on TVs) that no other service or platform can emulate.

@Spartan_418: 100% Agree. Their business model was shit and if they had some sort of integration with your Steam Library or something, so you could play Stadia versions of games from your library with a small or preferably no fee, it may have had a chance to succeed. Them trying to package it as a platform and you needing to make separate purchases was doomed to fail.