Is Stadia Dead?

Well… This post didn’t age well at all did it!? Google has in fact now announced that it is winding down Stadia and will discontinue the platform on January 18th, 2023. Users will get a refund for all their hardware and game purchases (but not for subscription fees).

You can read the response to this news from Pedder and Jack.

Original post below…

Is Stadia dead? No! Stadia’s heart beat is alive and well. Despite the perpetual declarations of Stadia’s death since even before the platform’s release, Stadia has continued to evolve, to release games (nearly 300!), to release new platform features and to expand to new territories (including an upcoming expansion to Mexico).

Some folks in the community (perhaps even some inside Google) wanted to define Stadia’s success with the expectation of it jumping right out of the gates to pick up market share numbers that rival Playstation, XBox and Nintendo. That obviously wasn’t in the cards, but Stadia has found its feet and is doing as well or better than any of the early players in the nascent but expanding cloud gaming space (aside perhaps from the established market player – XBox).

Let’s see how Stadia has evolved since launch

Games

Is Stadia dead? Well, Stadia has released 286 games on the platform as of August 1, 2022 – growing this library in a fairly regular way. You can check out the catalog in our list of all of the games on the platform.

The release of these games has been steady and curated by the Stadia team. The library comprises everything from top AAA releases to fun indie titles.

Stadia Pro is an optional $9.99 monthly subscription. As of August 1 2022, Stadia Pro subscribers have been able to claim 164 free games on the platform with their membership. Unlike other subscription models (e.g. GamePass), once claimed, these games never leave your library for as long as you subscribe. They are yours to continue playing even when they are no longer claimable by new subscribers.

Wondering what games are coming to the platform next? Check out our list!

Are these games getting played?

You bet! It’s hard to tell exactly how many active players or subscribers Stadia has at any given time (a guest author at Stadia Dosage did recently take a stab at estimating the Stadia Pro subscriber count, though). But, we can see growth directly in the leaderboard sizes for games on Stadia. While any one game is probably only played by a small fraction of the community, and most games don’t have a leaderboard at all, it’s nice to see that a number of these games have well above 100,000 listed Stadians with other games approaching that mark as well.

In addition, we can check out the daily player population for Destiny 2 on Stadia using the Charlemagne bot data.

Over the last year, this population has typically falls between 1.5% and 2.5% of the PC/Steam number.

You can see and interact with all this data (and a lot more – including social media, community, app download stats etc.) in our Stadia Stats charts.

Stadia Platform Updates Timeline

Is Stadia Dead? Well, Stadia has been consistently rolling out platform improvements since its release. Around, the second Stadia anniversary, a group of us started tracking these enhancements.

Year 1 

• Stream Connect (December 2019) – Share your screen in real-time with your teammates (launched with Ghost Recon Breakpoint)
• Stadia (Free) (April 2020) – Stadia Pro no longer required to play Stadia 
• Click to Play (April 2020) – Simply click on a URL link to the game. Launched with PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS
• Mobile Touch Controls (June 2020)  – Touch controls are available for every game on Stadia.
• State Share (July 2020 Beta / January 2021 out of beta) – Share game states with friends with the push of a button. First game to launch with State Share beta was Crayta. Hitman 3 was the first game to launch with State Share fully implemented.
• Crowd Play (July 2020) – YouTube viewers can jump into the live stream they are watching and play alongside. Feature was rolled out with limited access in July 2020 with Mortal Kombat 11. Further expanded access to Stadia users in December 2020 and July 2021.  
• Play Stadia with Mobile Data (July 2020)  – Play games using 4G and 5G, wifi no longer required.
• Crowd Choice (October 2020)  – YouTube viewers decide what happens during a live stream by voting on different in-game decisions. Feature rolled out with the launch of Dead by Daylight. 
• Free Demos & Games (October / November 2020) –  PAC MAN Mega Tunnel Battle was the first demo on Stadia. The following month, Destiny 2 became the first free game on Stadia to all players.
• Family Sharing (November 2020) – Share all of your claimed and purchased games with members of your family group to play on their own accounts.
• Stadia hits 100 games (November 2020) – Far Cry New Dawn launches as the 100th Stadia game on the platform.

Year 2

• Stadia on iOS (Beta December 2020 / Beta end June 2021) –  Play Stadia on your iPhone or iPad using iOS 14.3+
• Stadia expansion (December 2020) – Stadia expands to eight new European countries 
• Ubisoft+ ( December 2020 USA / June 2021 other countries ) –  Ubisoft+ subscribers can play a list of Ubisoft games on Stadia at no additional cost.
• Direct-to-YouTube live streaming (December 2020) – Ahead of Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, direct-to-YouTube live streaming rolled out to all users. 
• Stadia on Android TV (June 2021) –  Stadia app for Android TV OS devices launches, adding millions of more capable devices.
• Stadia hits 200 games (August 2021) – HUMANKIND launches as the 200th Stadia game on the platform.
• Direct Touch (August 2021 Android / October 2021 iOS) –  Direct touch enables players to interact directly with a game using their phone’s touch screen through tapping, sliding, and pinching the screen with their fingers. Available on Android with HUMANKIND.
• Phone Link (September 2021) –  Connect your Android or iOS phone to your compatible TV as a touch controller or use your phone to link your favorite compatible third-party controller.
• 100th Stadia Pro Game (October 2021) –  Mafia III Definitive Edition launches as the 100th Stadia Pro game.

Year 3

• Stadia app on LG TVs (December 2021) – An official Stadia app is released for recent LG Smart TVs.
• Explore Tab Updates (January 2022) – The explore tab gets an update with a trending section and feed for user screenshots.
• TCL unveils game-center on its TVs which includes Stadia Support (January 2022) – At CES 2022, TCL was one of multiple TV manufacturers showing off Stadia support.
• Stadia Pro Reaches 50 Concurrent Games (February 2022) – New Stadia Pro subscribers can immediately claim 50 free games.
• Stadia Play Days go free for everyone (March 2022) – No Stadia Pro subscription required for free play days/weekends on Stadia starting with Dead by Daylight.
• Stadia Free Trials Arrive (March 2022) – At the Google For Games developer summit. Google announces Free Trials. Over 100 free game trials released since.
• Google announces Low Change Porting program and partners (March 2022) – Google announced it is using DXVK and a WINE-like/light tool to allow Windows games to run on Stadia nearly unmodified.
• Complete Stadia Store Redesign (April 2022) – By the end of April, the Stadia Store got a significant glow up. While the previous design was functional, it felt bland. With a gray background and only some text, the only things that brought color to it were the screenshots. But alas! A new layout for the games pages added more visual flavor.
• Stadia App arrives on Samsung TVs (June 2022) – Samsung joins LG and AndroidTV manufacturers as a produce of TVs with a native Stadia experience.

Stadia Territory Expansions

Stadia launched in November, 2019 in 14 countries with a total population of 750 million people:

• USA
• Canada
• UK
• France
• Italy
• Germany
• Spain
• Sweden
• Denmark
• Norway
• Finland
• Belgium
• Ireland
• Netherlands

It expanded a little over a year later (December 2020) to 8 more European countries adding another 111 million potential customers:

• Austria
• Switzerland
• Poland
• Portugal
• Czech Republic
• Slovakia
• Romania
• Hungary

In mid 2022, the Stadia team announced their intention of expanding to Mexico (a country with 129 Million people) by the end of the year with further expansion rumored.

• Mexico
• More?

So, Is Stadia Dead?

Heck No!