Stadia

Google Stadia expands to Mexico this year, its first new region since 2020

Ben Schoon | Jun 30 2022 - 8:30 am PT

Google Stadia is adding a new region for the first time in almost two years, with the service expanding to Mexico this year.

Stadia is coming to Mexico ‘later this year’

Google today announced several initiatives to expand its services in Mexico, with new programs and cultural development in the country.

Among those new efforts is support for Google Stadia and Immersive Stream in Mexico.

Mexico brings Stadia to 23 countries, and is the first expansion we’ve seen since late 2020, when Google expanded service to Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Switzerland.

In the rest of the cloud gaming space, both Xbox and Nvidia GeForce Now have made fairly major expansions in the past two years. Xbox Cloud Gaming is available in 28 countries, while Nvidia GeForce Now is supported in over 75 countries.

There’s no set date for Stadia to arrive in Mexico just yet, but Google says the service will be arriving “later this year.”

This news comes just as Stadia has also expanded to a new platform, with Samsung’s Smart TV lineup and the new “Gaming Hub” feature. In recent weeks, Stadia has also greatly expanded its list of free game demos, as well as announcing a few new games including Five Nights at Freddy’s. There are also signs that Stadia may soon support Nvidia GPUs behind the scenes, possibly hinting at a hardware upgrade.

9to5Google’s Take – A meaningful sign of life

It’s no real secret that Stadia has had a pretty rough go of it over the past two years. First-party studios were abruptly shuttered. Major game releases have been few and far in between, and overall the remaining excitement around Stadia feels as though it’s been draining.

But expanding to a new country, even if it’s one just across the border from the US, is the first meaningful sign of life Stadia has had in recent memory.

Of course, this doesn’t solve Stadia’s ongoing problems. Major game releases are still mostly absent from the platform, leaving many players dissatisfied with the platform. Sequels to existing Stadia games, such as EA’s Madden series and Star Wars Jedi series, are also not coming to the platform. Stadia is not only lacking new games, but bleeding the ones it does have.

Despite all of that, expanding to a new country is a good sign for Stadia, and we’re certainly glad to see it.