Google Stadia Celebrates Shutdown With Controller Updates and New Games

This week marks the start of Google Stadia. On January 18, the service will end, and while there will be many rejected developers and hours of lost game work in its aftermath, Stadia's shutdown is proceeding as cleanly as it possibly can. Google has responded to requests to open up the Stadia controller so that it can continue to work as a standard Bluetooth device when Stadia shuts down by refunding every game purchase made on the site. On Friday, a community manager posted the following on the Official Stadia forums: "We'll be making a self-serve tool available for your Stadia Controller the next week to enable Bluetooth connections. Next week, we'll provide information on how to activate this feature." [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2560"] Photo Credit: BeyondGames.biz[/caption] One of the last things people wanted from Stadia's collapse was for the controller to have a second life. As a Stadia product, the controller used a novel strategy by bypassing the customary process of first connecting to the device you're playing from and then to the Internet. Supposedly, this was a method of reducing the lag that comes with game streaming by a few milliseconds. A Wi-Fi video gaming controller was destined to become electronic waste once the Stadia servers went offline because no one else used them. Technically, if you connected it to a computer through USB, you could use it as a standard controller, but no one wants a wired controller these days. Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Kyle Orland referred to the controller as "one of the highlights of the Stadia launch package" in our review of the service. He noted that it "boasts a solid, well-balanced weight; comfortable, clicky face buttons and analog sticks; quality ergonomic design on the d-pad and shoulder triggers; and strong, distinct rumble motors." All Stadia controllers display the date of manufacture on the back, and all known models were produced in 2019 during the original manufacturing run. As a result, these controllers have been accumulating in warehouses for years because Stadia sales have been much lower than anticipated. We'll be searching for a fire sale for the controllers, which were initially removed from shelves after the shutdown news. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="895"] Photo Credit: Google Support[/caption] Snake is a timeless game, and Worm Game is just a copy of it. The objective is to avoid hitting anything while playing this top-down game featuring a snake that can travel in four directions and grows every time you eat an apple. Actually, Worm Game is a perfect example of why Stadia was a poor service. The moment I started playing the game, it informed me that my 600 mbps connection was "not stable." The entire game was also hazy, similar to a low-resolution YouTube movie. A quick-reaction game like Snake feels terrible because of the lag that comes with game streaming, and you waste a lot of time trying to figure out when to hit a button to perform a tight turn. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Photo Credit: Polygon[/caption] This straightforward 2D game is probably only a few MB in size, and it can be installed on any device in under a minute or played instantly in a web browser without any download required. Instead, broadcasting it online would use gigabytes of bandwidth. Just look at Stadia's Worm Game in comparison to the version that is integrated into Google Search to see how much nicer it is.