Google said on Monday that it would stop the internal development of games for Stadia, making the cloud-based game-streaming service entirely dependent on titles from other game developers and publishers.
The announcement was made by Vice President Google Stadia Phil Harrison in a blog post entitled Focusing on Stadia’s future as a platform, and winding down SG&E. Launched back in 2019, the gaming platform originally came with an internal game development unit intended to attract users.
However, as it happens, the company now has to shut down the unit because of the high costs involved in developing games that attract users.
“Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially,” Harrison wrote. “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.”
The executive also announced that Jade Raymond, head of Google’s Stadia Games and Entertainment, would be leaving the company to pursue other opportunities.
Stadia saw a surge in users last year after the tech giant gifted two months of free access to its premium version to gamers sheltering at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally, it had virtually zero competition, but now more than a year after its launch, it can count Microsoft’s Game Pass and xCloud, Nvidia’s GeForce Now, and Amazon’s Luna as its fiercest rivals in the cloud gaming domain.
