Google is moving away from its plans to build its own games for Stadia, halting project development and closing its studios in Montreal and Los Angeles.
Just over a year after the launch of the Stadia platform, the Google is starting to limit its activities to games. The company closes the two game development studios and cancels its work.
The Stadia is a streaming platform which is cloud-based and launched on November 19, 2019. Google launched the Stadia Games and Entertainment division in March of the same year, assigning its direction to former Assassin's Creed game producer Jade Raymond.
Raymond is now leaving Google. At the same time, the closure of the Montreal and Los Angeles studios will affect 150 developers. Google has said it will try to find new roles for these employees.
Google will continue to operate Stadia as service gambling, for Stadia Pro, at a price of $ 10 per month.
Big companies technologys, such as Google and Amazon, have in recent years made quite ambitious attempts to get into game development, but with little or no effect. Nothing at least that was worth the effort and investment. Amazon released the online shooter Crucible in May. It stopped growing in October. Amazon's MMO New World is coming this year.
Stadia is probably a victim of bad timing and poor planning. The launch of Stadia in 2019 became a difficult time, as that year the Switch entered the market strongly. Also several gamers have been patiently waiting for the releases of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S. And, moreover, there is competition within the cloud space itself-streaming, who reheated when the Microsoft made the xCloud service part of it packetu Game Pass Ultimate.
Google certainly has the money to take risks with companies like gaming, but knowing that it does not depend on Stadia's success to stay profitable, the company is able to abandon the business very quickly and easily (or reduce it).
