After publicly announcing the closure of Stadia Games & Entertainment, ongoing reports revealed more details about what the studio was working on. Apparently, Stadia’s initial canceled projects now included a multiplayer action game known as “Frontier”, a sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet 2 and an exclusive game from the legendary Kojima.
A report of VideoGamesChronicle claims to have revealed some of the main projects that Stadia Games & Entertainment, SG&E, had in progress.
First, Google’s game studios apparently had a big action multiplayer game going on under the code name “Frontier”. The game’s development team was reportedly led by François Pelland, the former producers of Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Not much is known about the game, but the team working on it only learned of the cancellation in February, probably on the day it went public.
In addition, Google’s purchase of Typhoon Studios would result in a sequel to the successful Journey to the Savage Planet, which debuted at Stadia this month. Apparently, the game was “much bigger” in scale with fully animated cut-scenes. Again, the team here only learned of the project’s cancellation together with the public announcement.
Stadia Games & Entertainment was also working with some third party studios to develop exclusive games for the Stadia platform. It has been publicly known for some time that Harmonix was working with SG&E on an exclusive and, apparently, the musical game was “virtually complete”. In response to VGC report, Harmonix’s CEO stated that the game was not canceled, as well as denied rumors that the game was facing music licensing problems. The title apparently will still be released, even if it ends on a different platform with Steve Janiak saying:
Although Google has changed its strategy, we remain very excited about what we are working on for Stadia and, if the project is not launched for Stadia, we will take it to other platforms
Finally, the report also mentions that Google was working with Kojima Productions, the studio behind Death Stranding, Silent Hills and Metal Gear Solid, in an episodic horror game. Apparently, the studio was looking to innovate in the cloud gaming space, but Stadia’s VP Phil Harrison blocked the project comes to the fore. Notably, Hideo Kojima said last summer that he was “very upset” about the cancellation of a major project, but it is not clear whether this is the same project that Harrison blocked.
It is quite obvious that Google had several important projects underway with SG&E, only adding to the confusion that the company decided to close the process before any of these projects could come close to completion. If only things had happened differently.
More at Stadia:
FTC: We use affiliate links for cars that generate revenue. Most.
Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news: