Google Stadia has closed down its first-party studios and will be changing focus

In a public announcement made yesterday, Google Stadia has shuttered its internal studios located in Montreal and Los Angeles, neither of which had released any games yet.

Phil Harrison, the vice president and general manager for Stadia, wrote on Monday afternoon:

“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. With the increased focus on using our technology platform for industry partners, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Google to pursue other opportunities. We greatly appreciate Jade's contribution to Stadia and wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors. Over the coming months, most of the SG&E team will be moving on to new roles. We’re committed to working with this talented team to find new roles and support them.”

 

Harrison then went on to reassure users that this would not affect third-party titles on the service, and that Google will continue to bring new games from other developers to those who use Stadia and Stadia Pro.

Google Stadia originally launched in 2019. Given the shaky launch the service had due to its somewhat pricy buy-in and lack of must-have exclusive titles on the service, combined with the fact that Microsoft has slowly been building up a good relationship with its Game Pass and xCloud users, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Google has struggled to keep its foot in the door.

You can read the full announcement here on Google’s blog.

Be sure to read our list of the best free mobile games to play in 2021.