Google Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus

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Google Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus

 

Screenshot: Google

 

Google Stadia, the late 2019 streaming platform that promised to revolutionize gaming by letting users stream games without needing to own a powerful PC or console, is altering course, getting out of the game-making business and will now offer its platform directly to game publishers alongside offering Stadia Pro to the public.

 

The company is announcing the news today, though Kotaku began to hear rumblings from sources close to Stadia last week that Google’s service was heading for a major change. One games industry source told Kotaku that Google was canceling multiple projects, basically any games slated for release beyond a specific 2021 window, though they believed games close to release would still come out. Today brings some clarification.

 

Google will close its two game studios, located in Montreal and Los Angeles. Neither had released any games yet. That closure will impact around 150 developers, one source familiar with Stadia operations said. The company says it will try to find those developers new roles at Google.

 

Jade Raymond, the veteran producer who helped build Assassin’s Creed for Ubisoft and moved on to EA several years ago before leaving to run game creation at Stadia, is exiting the company, according to Google.

 

Google will continue to operate the Stadia gaming service and its $10 monthly Stadia Pro service. It’s unclear how many, if any, exclusive games will still come to the service, though the company has indicated that it can still sign new games and will bring more third-party releases to the platform. It nevertheless will look to many like a draw down of the plan to have Stadia run as a bona fide competitor to console platforms.

 

The company plans to begin offering its Stadia tech to publishers, opening up the possibility for Stadia to become the streaming tech for other video game companies. Google’s head of Stadia operations, longtime console executive Phil Harrison, will focus on pursuing these new partnerships.

“We see an important opportunity to work with partners seeking 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 path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry.”

 

Google initially offered Stadia in a $129 Founder’s Edition bundle, which included a custom controller, a Chromecast Ultra (used for streaming games from Google’s servers to a TV), and three months of Stadia Pro, a subscription service that granted access to certain games.

 

Google promoted some exciting features, including the ability to let players pass control of a livestreamed Stadia game on the fly and to share savestates of games, but many of them weren’t available at launch and remained in testing phases.

 

The service’s best moments may have been when its third-party ports showed off the strength of the cloud gaming model, in which a game can run well on just about any device with a screen and a strong internet connection. Ubisoft games such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey ran well on Stadia. Destiny 2's Stadia support let players of that game drop in for an extra match or quest from their phone or laptop when they were far from their regular gaming gear. When Cyberpunk 2077 was faltering on everything else in December, it was running quite well on Stadia.

 

Still, without offering an all-you-can-play service nor offering killer exclusive games, Stadia struggled to get its footing. Meanwhile, Microsoft ramped up its xCloud cloud gaming service as part of its Game Pass Ultimate bundle, and Stadia became less and less alluring 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 consisting of accomplished studio heads and creative directors, but those efforts weren’t enough to stave off the fate many people feared when hearing about this Google initiative: that it would lose support from within before it got ample time to realize its potential.

 

Stadia isn’t quite done. The Stadia tech could still succeed. By many accounts, Stadia runs games great. But as a game-maker, Google appears to have packed it in. Said one source familiar with Stadia’s first-party operations, citing another tech giant’s widely publicized failure to create video games: “Google was a terrible place to make games. Imagine Amazon, but under-resourced.”

 

 

Source: Google Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus

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The beginning of the end of Google Stadia? Google closes game development studio

 

Google announced plans yesterday to shut down the company's dedicated Stadia Games and Entertainment development studio. The studio, revealed to the world in October 2019 when Google announced its game streaming service Stadia officially, was headquartered in Montreal and Los Angeles, and led by Jade Raymond, who is best known for her work as an executive producer at Ubisoft.

 

The announcement came hours after Kotaku published details on Google's plan to shut down the development studio.

 

 

Stadia is a game streaming service that enables subscribers to play a selection of games on nearly any device with Internet capabilities. The main appeal of the solution is that the customer's device does not need to be very performant or have the latest in gaming hardware to play computer games.

 

Time and money are the two reasons that Google gives for shutting down the studio.

 

Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially.

 

The studio has not produced a game yet but the announcement hints that "near-term planned games" could be released to the Stadia platform. Most game studio employees, about 150 according to the Kotaku article, will "be moving on to new roles" according to Google's announcement.

 

Google wants to focus on the platform itself and reassures subscribers that it is committed to cloud gaming and Stadia. Google plans to offer Stadia and the technology behind it to game publishers and developers.

 

Closing Words

 

Google had high hopes and plans for Stadia, and focused on bringing third-party games to the platform and creating exclusive games in-house to attract a larger audience. One of those two pillars shattered with Google's announcement, and it remains to be seen how successful the remaining part of the business and Google's new strategic direction will be.

 

One of the main points of criticism directed towards Stadia from the very beginning was one that is true for all digital subscription services with purchase options: if the service is shut down, customers will lose access to all their purchases.

 

The announcement highlights the fragility of the platform. Google is not the only company with difficulties in establishing in-house game development studios. Amazon, too, is trying to enter the market. The company pulled one of the games created by one of its game studios recently because it did not meet expectations.

 

Stadia could very well be around for a long time, especially if Google's plan to focus on partnerships with game studios and publishers is fruitful. The decision to shut down the game development studio on the other hand may be confirmation to some that the decision to stay away from Stadia has been the right one.

 

 

Source: The beginning of the end of Google Stadia? Google closes game development studio

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Google reportedly shut down its Stadia studios a week after praising them

A new report sheds light on Stadia’s final days

 

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

 

Google made the surprise announcement on February 1st that it would be shuttering its in-house Stadia game development studios. But the news wasn’t just a surprise to Stadia customers; it was a bolt from the blue for the Stadia development team, which, just a week prior, had been told that the studios were making “great progress,” according to a report from Kotaku.

“[Stadia Games and Entertainment] has made great progress building a diverse and talented team and establishing a strong lineup of Stadia exclusive games,” said Phil Harrison, a vice president at Google and general manager for Stadia, on January 27th in an email to staff obtained by Kotaku. The email promised more news on the Stadia studios’ strategy and goals for 2021. But instead of new development objectives, Harrison announced just days later on February 1st that the studios would be shutting down entirely.

 

The biggest question — both from outside observers and Stadia team members alike — is what changed. Harrison’s blog post announcing the shutdowns cites “exponentially” rising costs of “creating best-in-class games” as a factor, for example. But given Google’s $1.4 trillion market cap, it’s hard to imagine that as the sole reason for shutting down the company’s game development studios entirely, especially when they were given so little time to prove themselves.

 

In a Q&A with staff on February 4th, Harrison reportedly admitted that Google’s execs already knew the shutdown was coming when he sent the email praising the team’s progress. Kotaku also reports that Harrison variously cited Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda and the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic as factors in the shutdown.

 

Whatever the case may be, one thing is clear: by shutting down its studios before they even managed to ship any major first-party exclusives for Stadia, Google has shown not only its staff but also the world that it isn’t as serious about its gaming initiatives as it once appeared. And ultimately, that’s a disappointing thing to see, both for Stadia’s future and for the industry at large.

 

 

Source: Google reportedly shut down its Stadia studios a week after praising them