Well, now we know why Google closed Stadia

pcgamer.com:

January saw the closure of Google's Stadia cloud gaming service and, while Google managed the process well(opens in new tab) and no-one was left out of pocket, now we know the big reason why. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has been in the headlines for saying it will oppose Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard(opens in new tab), and as part of that it released various statistics about the games industry, including the cloud gaming market. It makes painful reading for most companies in the sector apart from, funnily enough, Microsoft.

The CMA's provisional findings(opens in new tab) include a section on cloud gaming that includes statistics on how many people used various cloud gaming services. It doesn't provide exact headcounts but each service's market share as a percentage range, over the period 2021-2022, based on monthly active users, and the report makes clear these figures are based on information provided directly by the companies concerned. These percentages also reflect global use and not just the UK audience.

The breakdown follows. The xCloud designation incorporates various Microsoft services, most notably Game Pass, and it's that which probably lies behind the incredible growth seen here.

It doesn't look like Stadia got off to all that bad a start, but after that user numbers seem to have cratered. Notably, the 2022 Stadia figures only going up to July of that year means that the announcement of the service shutdown (which was in September 2022) has no influence on these figures. 0-5% is rough.

It's somewhat cheerier for Nvidia and PlayStation, until we get to 2022 that is, and even though both retain significant market shares of 10-20% you can see why Microsoft's growth here