Google didn’t just ditch Stadia, it's turned its back on cloud gaming for good

pocket-lint.com:

Google's dalliance with cloud gaming is well and truly over. After closing its Stadia service in January, it has now been revealed that its backend tech has been switched off too. That means the business-to-business version of the streaming platform has also ceased.

Google had previously offered Stadia technology to other companies, to run their own games over the cloud via the US firm's servers. Some big name brands subsequently used it for their own streaming options. Peloton, for example, used the system for its Lanebreak game on Bike and Bike+, while AT&T in the States offered several games for customers to play online for free.

However, that option also died with Stadia, it seems.

Axios journalist and former editor-in-chief of Kotaku, Stephen Totilo, was told by a Google exec that it was no longer possible after the service shut down: «We are not offering that streaming option, because it was tied to Stadia itself,» said Google Cloud boss, Jack Buser (and tweeted by Totilo). «So, unfortunately, when we decided to not move forward with Stadia, that sort of [business-to-business] offering could no longer be offered as well.»

Lanebreak is still available to Peloton Bike users so that must have moved to another platform, but Google is now concentrating on offering cloud services for online games, rather than streaming.

Stadia ran for just over three years, having launched in November 2019. While the technology worked well, with latency down to a minimum, Google was criticised for its business model. Rather than being the «Netflix of games», as previously hoped, users had to purchase games outright — often at equivalent prices to Xbox and PlayStation titles. On top of that, a subscription was offered that did provide