Google announced today that it is shutting down its in-house Stadia game development studios, with offices in both Montreal and Los Angeles to be closed. On top of that, ex-Ubisoft and EA veteran Jade Raymond, who was the head of the studios, is set to exit Google entirely.
This move isn’t exactly a sign that Stadia is a failure, but instead, Google is positioning it as a refocusing for Stadia to strictly be a streaming service for games from other publishers and not a platform for its own titles.
Here’s a snippet from Google’s long announcement piece, but we feel it’s the most important part for anyone with an interest in Stadia to read.
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.
As for everyday Stadia gamers, nothing is changing. All of your games remain intact and the company reiterates that it is continuing to bring more titles to the service from 3rd-party publishers.
Honestly, when I first glanced at the announcement from Google, I thought my premonition was finally happening and Stadia was beginning its shutdown. A refocus is just the first step, folks.
I’m waiting for the notice that Stadia will be shut down but will be replaced with YouTube Gaming.
Honestly, who didn’t see this coming? Gaming is probably the only medium that resists all-digital more than any other (with good reason, too).
It’s hard enough with digital purchases where you don’t “own” anything (and could lose access to everything if your account is stolen, banned, closed, etc… or if the service itself shuts down). But with a streaming service like Stadia… You’re paying to not even own the games, but just have limited access to them. Can’t use it at all if you don’t have an internet connection, for example (and frankly, internet service in the US is kinda bad… Maybe not as bad as a lot of other countries, but not as good as it could or should be).
Then there’s the matter of latency. I don’t know if they’ve improved upon this since launch, but I recall seeing initial tests of the showing pretty bad input latency even on fast connections (almost a full second between pressing a button and the character reacting). Even Google’s own press conference had lag…
If game streaming is the “future”, then I’d rather stay in the “past”. At least then I actually own the media I purchase and know it’ll work.
100%, Latency is still an issue and is why you don’t see really solid FPS games like COD, RB6, Overwatch, Battlefield, etc.
I tried the 3 month free trial and I actually like the service. Free tier is basically a free console and paid tier gives you free games + 4k hdr etc. I don’t game enough to justify the paid tier but I bought the jedi order game on sale for $15 and will continue to play it. While I had the subscription I played orcs mist die which I believe came from the stadia studio and loved every second of it.
Got the free Premium pack but only played it once in the 3 month free trial. I gave it away on Craigslist to someone else that would use it more than me.
No exclusive games, means no reason to jump from PS5, or XBOX. Close your eyes Stadia; it’ll be over soon
Except $hundreds of dollars lol
Google is giving up their own platform.
This is just the beginning. In another 6-12 months, Google will announce that they’re shutting down Stadia for good.
But there will be an option to transition to YouTube Gamer, where only half the features exist.
Writing is on the wall.
Whenever development teams get downsized everyone knows what’s coming 6 months later. Just ask In-box, Google+.
God I miss G+.
Stadia is awesome. It keeps getting even better. I can’t imagine ever buying another console. If anything, perhaps it will drive innovation in this space by competition. I’m going to continue to push for a Stadia’s continued success. Perhaps shutting this down will help Stadia be viewed less as a competitive gaming company and promote buyin from have developers.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/Q7ozWVYCR0nyW2rvPW/giphy.gif
I know, felt like a Google employee invaded Droid Life’s comment section.
Right, so, I guess you haven’t played X Cloud, it’s way better, has more games and for $15 a month you can get GamePass Ultimate, meaning Netflix style subscription for games on PC, all Xbox Consoles and it includes X Cloud for free.
Stadia is joke. Tell me, how is Call of Duty, Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch or any other competitive twitch-reaction shooter on Stadia…. oh, that’s right, they aren’t on Stadia. That’s because Stadia can’t support those games due to the fact of latency, because any real shooter OR fighting game for that matter, needs to have as close to zero latency as possible to give players the time to react. While you may not play shooters, MILLIONS do, the fact that Call of Duty accounted for the number 1 and 2 best selling games of 2020 proves it.
Anyone defending Stadia, isn’t defending Stadia, they are defending their buyers remorse and the $129 investment in a cloud console that will be vaporware in a year.
Does X cloud have these shooter games? Do they have latency? Google shutting down an in house studio isnt a deal breaker. Unless they were gonna develop a “Call of duty” “Grand theft auto” “Madden” “Mario” then they were going to fail at a big game studio. If they were going to produce play store level games including Borderlands & Fortnite, then development should stick to the android play store studio stuff and allow it on stadia. I never heard them mention a game that i would miss so this means nothing to me.
It has potential but still a long way to go!