Google is backing away from making games for its Stadia gaming platform, shutting down the involved studios.
Google Stadia is a cloud gaming platform, allowing gamers to play on a variety of devices. Because its a cloud platform, users don’t have to invest in heavy-duty gaming equipment to play, relying on the platform to stream the game’s content to them.
To help the service gain widespread adoption, Google initially invested in its own in-house studios to develop games for the service. It appears the cost has the company reconsidering, as it is ending its own development efforts.
Phil Harrison, Google Stadia Vice President and GM, broke the news in a blog post:
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. 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. With the increased focus on using our technology platform for industry partners, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Google to pursue other opportunities. 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.
Harrison emphasizes that Google is committed to the platform and cloud gaming, and will continue to work with third-party game developers. It simply won’t be creating its own in-house games anymore.