Google Stadia, the late 2019 streaming platform that promised to revolutionize gaming by letting users stream games without having to own a powerful PC or console, is changing course, getting out of the game-making business and will be its platform now offer directly to game publishers in addition to offering Stadia Pro to the public.
The company is announce the news today, however Kotaku started hearing rumblings from sources near Stadia last week that Google’s service was heading for a major change. A game industry source said Kotaku that Google canceled multiple projects, basically all games that would be released after a certain 2021 window, even though they thought games that were about to hit the market would still appear. Today brings some clarification.
Google will shut down its two game studios in Montreal and Los Angeles. Neither had released any games. That shutdown will affect about 150 developers, a source familiar with Stadia operations said. The company says it will try to find those developers new roles at Google.
Jade Raymond, the experienced producer who helped build Assassin’s Creed for Ubisoft and switched to EA several years ago before leaving to make games at Stadia, the company is leaving, according to Google.
Google will continue to operate the Stadia game service and the $ 10 per month Stadia Pro service. It’s unclear how many exclusive games will still be available, although the company has indicated it can still sign new games and release more third-party releases. to the platform. Nonetheless, for many, it will seem like a backlash from the plan to run Stadia as a bona fide competitor to console platforms.
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The company plans to offer its Stadia technology to publishers, which could make Stadia the streaming technology for other video game companies. Google’s head of Stadia operations, Phil Harrison, a long-time console manager, will focus on pursuing these new partnerships.
‘W.We see an important opportunity to work with partners looking for a gaming solution all built on Stadia’s advanced technical infrastructure and platform tools, ”Harrison wrote in a blog post today. “We believe this is the best way to build Stadia into a sustainable, long-term company that helps the industry grow. “
Google initially offered Stadia in a $ 129 Founder’s Edition bundle, which included a custom controller, a Chromecast Ultra (used to stream games from Google’s servers to a TV), and three months of Stadia Pro, a subscription service that provided access to certain games.
Google promoted some exciting features including the ability to give players control of a livestreamed Stadia game on the fly and to share game savestates, but many of them were not available at launch and remained in phases of testing.
Perhaps the service’s best moments were when the third-party ports showed the power of the cloud gaming model, in which a game can run well on almost any device with a screen and a strong internet connection. Ubisoft games such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey ran well on Stadia. Destiny 2Thanks to Stadia support, players of that game can drop by for an extra match or quest from their phone or laptop if they were far from their normal gaming gear. When Cyberpunk 2077 was doubting everything else in December, it ran reasonably well on Stadia.
But without offering an all-you-can-play service or offering killer exclusive games, Stadia struggled to gain a foothold. Meanwhile, Microsoft has ramped up its xCloud cloud gaming service as part of its Game Pass Ultimate bundle, and Stadia has become less and less appealing to the kind of hardcore gamer who can build buzz for a new gaming service.
Google seemingly built for the future with the creation of first-party studios and a leadership team made up of experienced studio heads and creative directors, but those efforts were not enough to avert the fate many people feared upon hearing of this Google initiative : that it would lose support from within before it had enough time to realize its potential.
Stadia is not quite ready yet. The Stadia technology could still succeed. According to many accounts, Stadia runs games great. But as a game maker, Google seems to have wrapped it up. Said a source familiar with Stadia’s first-party operations, citing the wide published failure to make video games: “Google was a terrible place to make games. Imagine Amazon, but with too few resources. “