TL;DR
- Google killed off Stadia nearly three years ago, but released a Bluetooth upgrade for Stadia controllers.
- After pushing back its deadline for installing the Bluetooth firmware twice, today is looking like the last official day you’ll be able to use Google’s flashing tool.
- Even after Google takes its tool offline, third-party efforts have preserved the Bluetooth firmware and allow you to host the flashing tool yourself.
Cloud-based gaming is bigger than ever right now, whether you’re using services like Xbox Game Pass or just streaming games on your Switch. But despite this clearly being a viable business model, Google just couldn’t figure out how to make it work, and now we’re quickly coming up on the three-year anniversary of the company shutting down Stadia. While that was a very public failure for Google, the company still tried to make the best of the situation by giving Stadia hardware a new lease on life — and if you haven’t taken advantage of that yet, there’s an important deadline we’re running up against.
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