The second life of Google Stadia?
Google is extending the life of the controller that belonged to Stadia, the cloud gaming platform that Google had to shut down due to the disinterest of players. New forays into the gaming market in sight?
According to some observers, the failure of Stadia would not have dissuaded Mountain View from persevering in the difficult video game sector. That the sector does not offer virgin prairies to colonize is now known even to the latest outsiders: Amazon and Netflix, who are experiencing several difficulties. Then, in 2023, the entire sector was characterized by record staff cuts . But given that profits are growing, also thanks to the savings enabled by AI, it is understandable why Big Tech persists in finding their place in the sun. And Google seems to want to move in this direction with its decision to leave its Stadia controller "open" to other connections for another twelve months, so that it can be used on different devices, given the brain death of its original platform .
THE GOOGLE STADIA PAD SURVIVES STADIA
The decision arrived at the beginning of 2023 with the announcement of wanting to grant its users the possibility of using the " self-serve " tool to connect the controller via Bluetooth to other devices, disconnecting it from Stadia and thus allowing its use with other platforms.
It was a beau geste on the part of Mountain View considering that, with the closure of its cloud gaming platform, those who had rushed to buy the gamepad would otherwise have found themselves with a plasticky mess to throw away.
Hence, in fact, the idea of giving the device a second life. A green idea in the wake of the storytelling of the period, but also a possible indicator that in Mountain View they are not yet completely convinced to hang up – and make users hang up – the controller.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
The specific page opened by Google warns that activation is definitive: after activating Bluetooth mode on the controller, the user will no longer be able to use Wi-Fi on Stadia. In Bluetooth mode it will still be possible to play by connecting a USB cable. But above all it informs players that "it will be possible to activate the Bluetooth mode, control the controller mode and the availability of updates until December 31, 2024", therefore twelve months more than the deadline set at the beginning of this year, which had set the deadline at the end of 2023.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/la-seconda-vita-di-google-stadia/ on Sat, 30 Dec 2023 07:09:01 +0000.