History of video games/Platforms/Google Stadia

Development


Rumors of projects that would become Stadia date back to as early as 2016.

Around 2018 and 2019 rumors spread of a "Project Yeti" game console made by Google, and associated with Project Stream.

Stadia Games and Entertainment was revealed as a first party studio for the Stadia at GDC 2019. Several employees leading development on Stadia had previously worked on Gaikai or PlayStation Now.

Launch
Just prior to the announcement of the Stadia at GDC San Francisco in March of 2019 a gaming history exhibit featuring a number of products owned by the Video Game History Foundation was placed on display. This display included important retro gaming gear on pedestals with an empty pedestal for the new product coming soon, which would be Stadia. Though this generated important revenue from the foundation, as all the other pedestal items were commercial failures, some saw this mix up as a bad omen.

Google Stadia launched on November 19th, 2019. There were a number of issues on launch day, though many remained hopeful for the future of the service. Reportedly, the service would severely underperform expectations in the following year.

In late 2019 and early 2020 many developers expressed doubts about the Stadia, including a lack of incentives to port games, small user base, and the concern that Stadia might simply be discontinued. Reportedly major financial incentives were required to gain the support of major publishers.

Adoption & Struggles
In April of 2020 the requirement to own a $129.99 kit to play Stadia was removed to help people stay at home during COVID-19.

On October 1st, 2020 Stadia launched Crowd Choice, a feature allowing stream audiences to vote on the game roles of streamers. Later that October, Google tried offering free demos of Stadia games to build interest in the program.

In November of 2020 Google began allowing for cloud games to be shared between family members.

Due to app store policies, the launch of Stadia for iOS devices was delayed to December 16th, 2020 and launched in the form of a web app instead of a native app. As iPhone marketshare in the USA, Japan, and Canada was very high in 2020 this was an important market for mobile gaming.

In January 2021 some Google employees formed a union, becoming one of the few companies in the gaming industry with a union. The union had existed in secret for a year prior.

On February 1st, 2021 Google announced they were winding down their Stadia Games & Entertainment (SG&E) division to focus on supporting third party games only. This also included noted game producer Jade Raymond, the producer of the first few Assassins Creed games as well as the first Watchdogs game, also leaving Google. A notable struggle to retain Terraria as a Stadia game followed just days later for unrelated reasons, though it was ultimately retained by the end of the month.

In February 2022 it was widely reported that the service would switch focus from being a consumer focused service to become an enterprise focused service.

Discontinuation
On September 29, 2022 it was announced that Google Stadia would be shuttered on January 18, 2023, and that refunds would be issued to all official Stadia related purchases. At the time there was some concern among the gaming press about the preservation of Stadia exclusives. There was also concerns over e-waste generated by the discontinuation of the service, as the wireless controllers did not support an open standard for wireless communication.

After Discontinuation
Some saw the YouTube Playables platform as a successor to Stadia.

As of September 2023 improved support for the Stadia controller rumble was being added to Linux kernel 6.6.

Launch specs
Note that the following specifications are per Stadia instance at launch.

At launch each Stadia server blade contained a dedicated custom x86 CPU clocked at 2.7 gigahertz with hyperthreading, AVX2, and 9.5 megabytes of L2 and L3 cache. Stadia instances used a dedicated custom AMD GPU with 56 compute units clocked at roughly 1495 megahertz to produce a performance of 10.7 teraflops. Stadia server blades have 16 gigabytes of HBM2 RAM with 484 gigabytes per second of throughput.

Stadia servers ran a Linux based operating system. The Vulkan graphics API was used.

Major Ports

 * Human Fall Flat
 * Panzer Dragoon
 * SUPERHOT
 * Borderlands 3
 * Doom64
 * Octopath Traveler
 * Sekiro
 * Red Dead Redemption 2
 * Celeste
 * Crayta
 * Final Fantasy XV
 * Destiny 2
 * Baldur's Gate 3 - Did not launch while Stadia was on the market.

Exclusive Titles

 * Hello Engineer

External Resources

 * Google Stadia - Official website.