The drawing down of Google Stadia has reached what appears to be its expected and inevitable end. As first reported by Business Insider, and sourced here from Ars Technica, the consumer version of Stadia has been “deprioritized” by Google, and the tech will instead become a white-label service called Google Stream that will provide cloud game streaming support to game publishers and studios.
The report confirmed that “the focus of leadership is now on securing business deals for Stream,” with AT&T, Peloton, Capcom, and Bungie already on board with the new (old) service; in fact, AT&T was already secretly using Google Stadia to offer cloud streaming of Batman: Arkham Knight.
Of course, the writing was already on the wall regarding Google Stadia’s fate. The platform’s launch was more like a low-orbit bellyflop, and attempts to claim that things were doing fine were countered by events such as the closure of its first-party studios, execs quietly leaving the project, and numerous reports of some truly awful management decisions.
