As Google continue to turn its wheels in regards for its video game streaming platform Stadia, the tech giant is putting an end to one operation internally. While the platform is still continuing to grow, its first-party label is closing its doors. In a new blog post issued today, Stadia Games and Entertainment will cease to be this week.
The announcement comes as a surprise following the amount of investment already entertained for the internal developer for Stadia. Prior to the news, Google announced its second studio based in California with former Santa Monica Studio head Shannon Studstill now helming the team. Already, former Ubisoft Toronto & EA Motive lead Jade Raymond helms the operation in Montreal, Canada.
It is told that Raymond has already departed for Stadia Games and Entertainment, but her new endeavors is not disclosed in the post. Stadia will continue to operate as a service as Google pursues bringing its expertise in cloud streaming to other developers instead.
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.
Phil Harrison, Google Stadia Vice President and General Manager
In regards to the current projects that were underway at Stadia Games and Entertainment, all are expected to close shop as well. This includes its three studio partnership with Supermassive Games, Harmonix, and Uppercut Games. The pursuit for unique, first-party releases never advanced outside of the announcement as each project respectively was never presented.
Additionally, this is also a big turn of events for developer Typhoon Games. The Journey to the Savage Planet developer revealed to be facing an acquisition by Stadia Games and Entertainment back in December 2019, however, work to feed the platform’s lack of first-party content was not featured since. You can read the initial report by heading here.
What are your thoughts on the move to shut down Stadia Games and Entertainment?
Source: Google
