Google Stadia, the late 2019 streaming platform that promised to revolutionize games by allowing users to stream games without the need for a powerful PC or console, is changing course, moving out of the game creation business and will now offer its platform directly to game publishers in addition to offering Stadia Pro to the public.
The company is announcing the news today, Although Kotaku began to hear rumors from sources close to Stadia last week that the Google service was heading for a major change. A game industry source said Kotaku that Google was canceling several projects, basically all games scheduled to launch beyond a specific 2021 window, although they believed games close to launch would still be released. Today brings some clarifications.
Google will close its two game studios, located in Montreal and Los Angeles. Neither of them had released a game yet. This closure will affect about 150 developers, said a source familiar with Stadia’s operations. The company says it will try to find new features for these developers on Google.
Jade Raymond, the veteran producer who helped build Assassin’s Creed for Ubisoft and moved to EA several years ago before leaving to run game creation on Stadia, is leaving the company, according to Google.
Google will continue to operate the Stadia gaming service and its $ 10 monthly Stadia Pro service. It is unclear how many exclusive games, if any, will still come into service, although the company has indicated that it can still subscribe to new games and will bring more third-party releases to the platform. However, for many it will seem like a step backwards in the plan to make Stadia work as a bona fide competitor for console platforms.
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The company plans to start offering its Stadia technology to publishers, opening up the possibility for Stadia to become streaming technology for other video game companies. Google’s chief operating officer, former console executive Phil Harrison, will focus on pursuing these new partnerships.
“Wand we see an important opportunity to work with partners who are looking for a gaming solution fully built on Stadia’s advanced technical infrastructure and platform tools, ”wrote Harrison in a blog post today. “We believe that this is the best way to transform Stadia into a long-term sustainable business that helps to expand the sector ”.
Google initially offered Stadia in a $ 129 Founder’s Edition package, which included a custom controller, a Chromecast Ultra (used to stream games from Google servers to a TV) and three months of Stadia Pro, a subscription service that gave access to certain games.
Google promoted some interesting features, including the ability to allow players to pass control of a live streamed Stadia game and share game savestates, but many of them were not available at launch and remained in testing phases.
The best moments of the service may have been when its third-party ports showed the strength of the cloud gaming model, in which a game can run well on almost any screen device and a strong Internet connection. Ubisoft games, like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey it worked well at Stadia. Destiny 2Stadia’s support allowed players of that game to show up for an extra game or mission from their phone or laptop when they were away from their normal gaming equipment. When Cyberpunk 2077 was wavering everywhere else in December, it was working really well at Stadia.
Still, without offering an all-you-can-play service or offering killer exclusive games, Stadia struggled to establish itself. Meanwhile, Microsoft has increased its xCloud cloud gaming service as part of its Game Pass Ultimate package, and Stadia has become less and less attractive to the type of hardcore gamer who can create buzz for a new game service.
Google was apparently built for the future with the creation of primary studios and a leadership team made up of talented studio heads and creative directors, but these efforts were not enough to stave off the fate that many people feared hearing about this Google initiative : that she would lose internal support before she had enough time to realize her potential.
Stadia is not finished yet. Stadia’s technology can still succeed. According to many reports, Stadia plays excellent games. But as a game designer, Google seems to have packaged everything. Said a source familiar with Stadia’s primary operations, citing another tech giant widely disclosed video game failure: “Google was a terrible place to make games. Imagine Amazon, but with few resources. “