The good news for Stadia hardware owners is that the gamepad won’t become ‘wasteful’ after Google kills the service.
According to The Gamer, Google is making good on its rumored commitment to ‘save’ the Stadia controller, making it compatible with other platforms starting next week, starting right on January 18 when Stadia ceased operations.
The Stadia Controller will be usable on other devices through the release of a Bluetooth-enabled tool. The developers still seem to be working on some issues but haven’t shared much, but this means players won’t have to return the controller for a refund once Stadia is down, allowing them to continue playing the game and the device does not become useless.
The good news was briefly shared by the Stadia account on Twitter: “Next week, we will be releasing a tool to enable Bluetooth connectivity on your Stadia controller.”
Of course, there are many questions surrounding the new move from Google, such as whether this controller is compatible with PlayStation and Xbox. But Stadia’s team says they can’t share details about that yet, so it remains to be seen how far the device’s capabilities will go after Stadia officially ‘goes into the past’.