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Tag: Phil Harrison

  • Google Is ‘Winding Down’ Its Stadia Game Service

    Google Is ‘Winding Down’ Its Stadia Game Service

    After months of rumors and denials, Google is officially “winding down” its Stadia game service.

    Google launched Stadia in 2019 with lofty aspirations that were never realized. In late July, rumors surfaced that Google was planning on shuttering the service toward the end of summer. Google quickly denied the rumor, even poking fun at the source of the rumor.

    Despite the denials, Google announced it is shutting Stadia down. Phil Harrison, Stadia Vice President and General Manager broke the news in a blog post.

    A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.

    Harrison says the service will remain active through January 18, 2023, to give players time to finish their open games. That will also give Google time to issue refunds to eligible players.

    In the meantime, Google plans to use the technologies that helped create Stadia across other platforms and services.

    The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts — as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed. We remain deeply committed to gaming, and we will continue to invest in new tools, technologies and platforms that power the success of developers, industry partners, cloud customers and creators.

    Whatever the reason for Stadia’s cancellation, it isn’t going to help Google’s overall image. The company is known for launching and then unceremoniously killing off dozens of products. The company’s reputation for abandoning products is so well-established that it recently had to work to convince its cloud customers that it could be depended on long-term.

    With yet another terminated product, it leaves one to wonder if Google is failing to properly investigate markets before deciding to enter them, or simply lacks the commitment to see an investment through.

  • Google Backs Out of Game-Making, Shuts Down Stadia Game Studios

    Google Backs Out of Game-Making, Shuts Down Stadia Game Studios

    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.