Stadia Games And Entertainment, the first-party studio set up under Google to create Stadia exclusives as well as help publish games on the cloud game streaming platform, is no more.
Stadia head Phil Harrison announced on a new Google blog post the direction of the platform, which will not include Stadia Games And Entertainment.
Stadia Games And Entertainment, headed by industry vet Jade Raymond, had two studios- in Montreal, Canada and Playa Vista, California. They even acquired one indie studio to join the team: Typhoon Studios.
Raymond will leave Google entirely. Kotaku also reported, based on their sources, that up to 150 developers will be impacted by the closure. Google will assist them in moving into new roles within the company.
Stadia will still continue to operate, however. Google will continue to bring third-party games onto the platform. But now they are will to work share the Stadia tech with publishers that want to make their own streaming service instead.
“We believe this is the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry,” Harrison wrote on the blog post.
Stadia was being poised to be a proper gaming platform competitor with the likes of Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox, Nintendo’s Switch and the PC. The cloud game streaming tech works (if you have the internet connection for it, which isn’t the case in most parts of the world).
But Google’s attempts to follow other platform’s business models instead of the subscription model followed by any other game streaming service since is where it falters.
As of right now, there are no games developed by Stadia Games And Entertainment that’s been released. Though a few first-party games that are nearly done will still be released.
Stadia will be less of a console alternative moving forward, but maybe that’s for the better.
Source: Google