Google Stadia Closes Internal Studios, Changes Business Focus - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 05 September 2021 / 4,795 Views
Google launched its video games streaming platform, Stadia, in 2019. The company announced it has decided to change its business focus with Stadia, as well as shutting down its internal studios.
Sources have told Kotaku said Google is canceling multiple upcoming projects, however, games close to release would still come out. The company will also close its two video game studios based in Montreal and Los Angeles. The closures impact about 150 employees and one source says Google will try to find new roles for them at Google.
Google plans to continue to operate Stadia gaming service and offer the $10 per month Stadia Pro membership. However, it isn't known if any exclusive games will still be released for Google Stadia or not. There are plans to begin offering its Stadia tech to publishers and partners.
"In 2021, we’re expanding our efforts to help game developers and publishers take advantage of our platform technology and deliver games directly to their players," said Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison. "We see an important opportunity to work with partners seeking a gaming solution all built on Stadia’s advanced technical infrastructure and platform tools. We believe this is the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry.
"Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially. Given our focus on building on the proven technology of Stadia as well as deepening our business partnerships, we’ve decided that we will not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E, beyond any near-term planned games."
Jade Raymond, who helped create the Assassin’s Creed series at Ubisoft, will be leaving Google altogether to pursue other opportunities.
"With the increased focus on using our technology platform for industry partners, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Google to pursue other opportunities," added Harrison. "We greatly appreciate Jade's contribution to Stadia and wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors. Over the coming months, most of the SG&E team will be moving on to new roles. We’re committed to working with this talented team to find new roles and support them.
"What does this mean if you're a current or future Stadia gamer? You can continue playing all your games on Stadia and Stadia Pro, and we’ll continue to bring new titles from third parties to the platform. We’re committed to the future of cloud gaming, and will continue to do our part to drive this industry forward. Our goal remains focused on creating the best possible platform for gamers and technology for our partners, bringing these experiences to life for people everywhere."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Stadia was a solution looking for a problem.
Well that didn't take long, did it?
RIP, Stadia.
Bye Felicia (Stadia).
It will be very interesting to see how Amazon is going to do in that area. The problem with Stadia is that you had to buy a game at full price to be able to play it ONLY if you had a good enough internet connection. They should have focused first of having a library like Microsoft, Sony or Steam and then offer the cloud play. I really wanted it to succeed, got the founder edition etc. Or maybe first offer a console/PC like experience and then extend it to the cloud.
I think Amazon is following Microsoft's way by offering a "Netflix" like proposition where you will pay for monthly channels and then access all games. Which is a bit easier to digest when you can only play the game online..
The problem is Google has no content and I don't think they could put together an impressive library like Gamepass for $10-15. More importantly, Gamepass gets games at launch and all that content runs on Xbox consoles and PCs.
Its evident Google wasn't that interested in creating content and the audience they attract would always be limited given its a just a cloud service. Furthermore, the library they could get would always be limited because its using PC hardware but not running Windows.
lmao
Doesn't make much sense. Google is a big evil company, spend some money on games.
Either way, fuck Google. Good riddance.
Interesting prospect. Terrible execution. They should've waited to launch Stadia at least by 2 years. It was clearly in beta for a long time with so many missing features and their internal studios were having to build from the ground up with no original IP's. 2 years would've probably given the development teams of both the service and the original games enough time to fully flesh out what Stadia could've been. Then again, having a business plan of a monthly subscription on top of buying each individual game was a terrible idea from the start lol which is why it was a hard no from me day 1.
Goodnight sweet prince...
Nothing of value lost. Glad you're dead joker laugh
I'm waiting for Phil to tweet that just the aura emanating from Azure was enough to blown away Stadia one of our true gaming competitors and now we go after Luna.
I still don't understand what happened. They came out of the gate on fire, with the worst version of Tomb Raider 2013, at full price, as a marquee launch title. I think gamers failed Google here, and really, the medium as a whole.
So Long Stadia.
They had internal studios!?!
I actually didn't know that.
This could be a golden opportunity for Sony. They should use the Google Stadia platform to create basically the equivalent of Game Pass with first party games but still forcing people to buy full retail game to play on PC.
Essay Pro