In a blog post, Google announced that it’s shutting down all of its Stadia game development studios. You can check the original blog post from here.
I am not surprised by this development. Stadia as a platform has not been well received, to say the least. The platform launched with big ambitions. Letting people enjoy gaming with any hardware sounds too good to be true, and it was. The service suffered multiple issues. Being a “streaming” service meant that the quality of service largely depended on internet connection and proximity to a Google server.
Apart from the tech issues, the service also did not have a proper vision. Was it meant for non-gamers? Gamers who somehow did not own a console or PC? Google itself did not know this, and it showed in its marketing of Stadia.
Google also created multiple In-house game development studios. They were going to create games that were specifically made for Stadia’s special hardware. Some games made by these studios did come out; however, they did not generate any buzz.
At the end of the day, Google decided to shatter these studios altogether. Los Angeles and Montreal game studios will be closed, however as standard Google procedure most if any of the employees will not be fired, although I think most of these employees will quit.
The Future Of Stadia
Google stated that they would instead focus on their relationship with 3rd party studios moving forward. To me this looks like a half baked answer. Most 3rd party gaming studios don’t care about Stadia and no amount of cooperation will change that.
We are living in a world where Microsoft & Sony offers streaming services that include tons of game with no extra charge. Asking people to pay 10$ plus 60$+ for a game is outrageous.
The service at its core is broken. Without a 180 in its direction I expect that in the next year or so Google will completely shut down this service.
