Google shuts down gaming service Stadia in latest effort to cut costs

The Google It is shutting down digital gaming service Stadia, the latest ambitious project to be cut short as the company looks to weed out costs.

Google Vice President Phil Harrison wrote that the gaming service, which launched in 2019 and runs on phones and Chrome browser, “hasn’t gained as much traction with users as we expected.” Blog post Thursday. “We’ve made the difficult decision to start ending Stadia’s streaming service,” he wrote.

For Google, Stadia represented an opportunity to put its cloud-streaming technology to work and enable immersive gameplay “at scale,” according to Harrison. Stadia servers will be shut down on January 18th, Stadia Help page Says. The company hopes that Stadia will compete with other gaming services such as Sony playstation plus cloud broadcast, Amazon Luna and Microsoft Xbox Cloud games

Stadia’s closure is the latest move by CEO Sundar Pichai to cut costs next say He wants to make the company 20% more efficient. Alphabet’s stock price is down 34% this year and in July for the company mentioned The revenue and profit figures are disappointing. He said Pichai’s efficiency efforts could include reductions in the number of products and heads as the company recognizes a slew of economic challenges and slower growth.

Google recently canceled The next generation of the Pixelbook laptop and cut off financing To a 120-square-meter incubator in the house.

Stadia’s future has been uncertain for some time. Last year, the company said it is Solution The Stadia Games and Entertainment team, who developed their own original games for the service. Speculation swirled about the possibility of a broader service cut.

Google said it will return all Stadia device purchases made through the Google Store and all purchases of game content and add-ons in the Stadia Store. The company said it expects to complete the majority of the refunds by mid-January. Players will continue to access their game library and can play until January 18th.

Google said it will continue to support games in other regions and help developers build and distribute game apps on Google Play and Google Play Games. Harrison also noted that the technology used in Stadia will not be in vain.

“We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google such as YouTube, Google Play, and augmented reality (AR) efforts — as well as making it available to our industry partners, which is in line with where we see the future of gaming heading,” he wrote.

Watch: CNBC’s full interview with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai