While cloud gaming appears to be slowly becoming a thing, today it’s experienced a minor setback.
Google’s cloud-based service Stadia has officially closed its internal studios and will no longer be developing in-house games moving forward. In fact, it never even got a game out the door.
Kotaku was the first to report on the news and this was followed by an official announcement from Google.
While the tech “has been proven and works at scale” the reasoning behind the decision is due to costs and the company’s decision to instead focus on supporting its partners over the long term:
“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.”
“We see an important opportunity to work with partners seeking a gaming soluti on 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.”
Industry veteran Jade Raymond, who signed on with Google for game creation, will be moving on to pursue other opportunities, while Google says it will find the rest of its talented team positions within the company.
Cloud gaming not long ago made its way to the Nintendo Switch in the west, with the release of Control. This was followed more recently by the release of Hitman 3.
At the end of its statement, Google says it remains “committed” to the future of cloud gaming, and will continue to do its part to drive this industry forward.
“Our goal remains focused on creating the best possible platform for gamers and technology for our partners, bringing these experiences to life for people everywhere.”
Are you at all surprised by this news? Let us know in the comments below.
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