More Problems for Stadia

There’s some more bad news for Google Stadia this week: Product lead John Justice has left Google, followed by six other Stadia employees.

“We can confirm John is no longer with Google and we wish him well on his next step,” Google confirmed when asked about Mr. Justice.

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Since then, however, it’s come to light that Justice isn’t the only Stadia employee leaving Google. According to reports, six other Stadia staffers have left as well, each of whom has ended up at Haven Studios, the new company by former Stadia VP Jade Raymond. So the plot thickens.

Stadia, of course, has been under a lot of scrutiny since February, when Google revealed that it would halt all work on internal exclusives for Stadia and would focus the gaming service solely on third-party games. My take on this move was mixed and still is. I think Stadia is a fine service and is, in fact, in much better shape than Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming. But Google does have its reputation for killing products and services for a reason. So Stadia’s fate remains unclear. And this week’s news certainly doesn’t help.

Haven Studios is creating an original game for PlayStation after an investment from, wait for it, Sony.

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Conversation 12 comments

  • crunchyfrog

    05 May, 2021 - 1:09 pm

    <p><em>Google’s script:</em> As of<strong> (fill in date)</strong>, Google will be phasing out <strong>(fill in product or service</strong>) to help enhance current products and services and fund new and exciting products such as<strong> (fill in something in dev)</strong>. We at Google appreciate your support and look forward to cancelling more products and services that we never really took seriously anyway.</p><p><br></p><p>Long live search <em>-Google</em></p>

    • will

      Premium Member
      05 May, 2021 - 1:39 pm

      <p>The last line I is actually: "Long live $earch <em>-Google</em>"</p>

    • vladimir

      Premium Member
      05 May, 2021 - 3:05 pm

      <p>Obviously it may be that they will kill stadia but it would be much more painful than with others products they killed before. Stadia is a subscription service where people have invested a lot of money in games. It would be a really bad blow at google reputation.</p><p>Form the technical point of view the service is amazing, way above any other gaming streaming service. Even if i don’t like google, I wish it stays alive somehow and they manage to make it work also financially. </p>

      • doubledeej

        05 May, 2021 - 3:27 pm

        <p>They wouldn’t blink an eye at refunding the $20 that the world has spent on it.</p>

  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    05 May, 2021 - 1:45 pm

    <p>I give it six months, after which they announce the end date and present their weaksauce refund offer which amounts to pennies on the dollar that people paid for games on the service.</p>

  • christianwilson

    Premium Member
    05 May, 2021 - 1:45 pm

    <p>Speaking selfishly, I hope that this isn’t a sign of Stadia falling apart. I gave Stadia a try back in November and I love the experience. It also turned out to be a good fit for a family member who wanted a game console but didn’t want to invest in an expensive console. Google has great tech for cloud gaming and I want to see Stadia succeed as cloud gaming matures. I’m not a Google fan, but I’m rooting for them to stick with Stadia. </p><p><br></p><p>Objectively, I know very few game platforms succeed. Stadia has missed usage/customer projections, game sales pale in comparison to rival platforms, Google stopped first party game development, lost several key employees, and Google has become known for killing products that aren’t working out (I think people blow that out of proportion, but it is true). It does not look promising for a service that feels "next gen" in a way that isn’t just more horsepower. </p>

  • Lordbaal

    05 May, 2021 - 4:56 pm

    <p>They will kill it soon.</p>

  • jlariviere

    05 May, 2021 - 6:35 pm

    <p>I think there’ll always be a problem with <em>streaming</em> services like Stadia, and the others, as long as internet is as abysmal and Expensive as it can be. If the bandwidth utilized playing a game for one hour equates to the amount the game would take to download on another platform, then what do you do if you want to play for two hours? Unless you truly have unlimited bandwidth, the ability to play a game on multiple platforms is not really enough to draw me to play solely on Stadia and not other options. </p><p><br></p><p>And Yes, there’s the way Google keeps killing off stuff. </p><p><br></p>

    • bkkcanuck

      06 May, 2021 - 3:43 am

      <p>There will always be an issue with streaming gaming and that is latency. I remember having an issue a long time ago (but still applicable today) with having an oracle database on one server and running the application on another server (these were fully loaded Sunfire machines at the time on top of the line networking infrastructure)…. and we were still running into performance issues … so we decided to test running the application on the same box…. and it was twice as performant just because of that infinitesimal latency.</p>

  • tripleplayed

    05 May, 2021 - 8:13 pm

    <p>Still the best game streaming service I have used in terms of tech. </p><p><br></p><p>But buying a cloud only game? Eh no. If those games had a cloud license and a offline local license that tied into a store like Steam then I’d be interested. </p>

    • datameister

      06 May, 2021 - 12:41 pm

      <p>Game licensing similar to MoviesAnywhere is what is needed.</p>

  • datameister

    06 May, 2021 - 12:48 pm

    <p>So Google hired a bunch of game developers, then decided it didn’t want to develop games, so most of them left and formed a new game development company. Is that about the gist of what is happening here?</p>

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