Google shuts down video game studio and changes strategy for Stadia

Google closed the video game studio on its Stadia platform on February 1, 2021, and its director Jade Raymond left the company.

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Google can present it from all perspectives: it remains a scathing failure.

The California-based company announced on Monday that it was closing its own video game studio, leaving independent publishers to produce new titles for Stadia, its cloud gaming platform.

The tech giant launched at the end of 2019 Stadia, a service that allows you to play games of the same quality as on consoles remotely, without the need to download them or purchase expensive equipment.

He had also founded his own studio, Stadia Games and Entertainment (SG&E), to create exclusive titles.

“Creating the best quality games from scratch takes a lot of years and a significant investment.

And the costs are rising exponentially, ”the California group said in a statement.

“As we are already focused on Stadia technology and deepening our commercial contracts, we have decided to stop investing in the design of exclusive content by our internal SG&E teams.” Canadian Jade Raymond, producer of the first

at Ubisoft, and recruited by Google to run her studio, will leave the company.

Possible partnerships on technology

Stadia membership costs $ 10 per month, and includes some games, but access to most of the catalog requires purchasing each title individually.

“Clearly, Stadia's technology works at scale,” Google said, citing the launch of

one of the platform's successes.

"The ability to play streaming (remotely and continuously) is the future of the industry, and we will continue to invest in Stadia and its infrastructure."

Google plans to open up its technology to potential partners, in what looks like a sea change in strategy.

Late last year, Amazon launched a similar service in the United States, called Luna.

It competes with Stadia and also Microsoft's xCloud platform.

Each of the three cloud heavyweights has servers that house the computing power needed to remotely play without delay in in-game actions and reactions.

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