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Google closing in-house Stadia video game studio
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 2, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – Google on Monday said it is closing
its in-house Stadia video game studio, leaving the job of making titles for
play in its cloud-hosted arena to outside developers.
The internet giant set out to transform the video game world in late 2019
with the launch of Stadia, a service crafted to let people access console-
quality games as easily as they do email.
An in-house Stadia Games and Entertainment (SG&E) studio created to make
exclusive titles for play at the service will be wound down, the company
said.
“Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and
significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially,” Google said
in a blog post.
“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.”
Stadia membership of $10 a month comes with some complementary games, but
most of the titles in its library cost extra.
The in -house studio will finish games that are nearly complete as it winds
down operations, according to Google.
“It’s clear that Stadia’s technology has been proven and works at scale,”
Google said, citing launch of Cyberpunk 2077 on the platform as among its
successes.
“Having games streamed to any screen is the future of this industry, and
we’ll continue to invest in Stadia and its underlying platform.”
The company statement said Jade Raymond, a game industry veteran who led
the studio, “has decided to leave Google to pursue other opportunities.”
Google and others have been moving to make video games more easily
accessible to more devices through its internet cloud.
Amazon late last year unveiled Luna streaming video game service in the
United States.
Luna vies with Microsoft’s xCloud and Google Stadia in the shift to playing
video games directly in the cloud.
Each of the three internet giant’s have datacenters they can use for
hosting game play, with the option of enhancing features using artificial
intelligence.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0914 hrs