The closure of Google Stadia also improved the White Label offering. Which does not mean the complete departure of the American giant from cloud gaming.
When Google shut down Stadia last January, Mountain View also scaled back plans for third-party access to its core cloud gaming technology. Google’s Jack Baser told Axios’ Steven Totilo that the company is no longer offering its Immersive Stream for Games offering as it was “tied to Stadia itself”. In other words, one supplier simply couldn’t put everything back together.
The closure of Google Stadia also improved the White Label offering.
However, only a few brands have used Immersive Stream for gaming and mainly as a promotional tool. AT&T allowed its mobile subscribers to play Batman: Arkham Knight and Control, while Capcom offered a Resident Evil Village demo that freed players interested in the game from downloading anything. Even Peloton has used this technology to offer their trainers the Lanebreak fitness game.
Contacted about this, the company has not yet commented. At the same time, the American giant does not completely ignore cloud gaming, but simply relegates itself to the rank of support. As Jack Buser said in an interview with Axios, it’s now about helping games offer live services like Destiny by offering a server platform, data management and analytics. This way, developers won’t necessarily need to invest heavily in online infrastructure or worry about scalability to keep up with the growth of their user base. Existing clients include Niantic, Ubisoft and Unity.
Which does not mean the complete departure of the American giant from cloud gaming.
The closure of Immersive Stream for Games did not come as a surprise. Although Stadia’s subscription model was no longer necessary, it suffered from the same limitations as many game streaming services. You needed a fast and stable internet connection and always had to deal with quite high latency and lower image quality compared to a game stored locally. This greatly limited the attractiveness of this technology, especially for players who have sufficiently powerful PCs or consoles.
At the same time, such a closure significantly limits the choice of industry. Right now there is only one real option for cloud gaming. Therefore, companies must either create their own platform or offer their games on existing services such as GeForce Now. In fact, it will probably be some time before we see new incursions into this area, like what AT&T and Capcom have been doing.
Google’s Jack Basser told me, “We don’t offer this streaming option because it was tied to Stadia itself. So, unfortunately, when we decided not to promote Stadia, such a [business to business] offer could not be realized. will also no longer be offered.
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) March 8, 2023