Google’s consumer cloud gaming service Stadia was launched in 2019. In September 2022, they shut it down. They announced the closure in a blog entry saying, “A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.”
In the same post, they discussed the robustness and scalability of the technology underneath stadia. They disclosed plans of taking the technology beyond gaming and YouTube was part of that plan.
Now, according to a report by Wall Street Journal, Google is testing a new product that will let users play games directly on YouTube. The article has cited internal emails sent to Google employees. The new product is supposedly called Playables. This will give you a chance to play games through YouTube on both mobile and desktop devices. It’s an instant process that probably uses the same technology as Stadia, however, we cannot confirm that.
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Google tried to repurpose the technology behind Stadia earlier. They offered it to third parties like the fitness organization Peloton. Peloton could create gamified versions of their workouts via the cloud gaming platform. However, the services failed to garner too much popularity and it was eventually shut down.
Google has always been very serious about investing in the gaming industry. Google Play provides a massive platform for developers to explore the mobile gaming market. Even after shutting down Stadia, the company announced its commitment toward gaming. They still want to be the go-to tech-partner for live service game publishers. If the news about YouTube playables turns out to be true, it could be a revolutionary move.
