One of the worst news of this 2021 regarding video games - because the rest are practically all bad news - is the closure of its own studios by Google Stadia, the new gaming platform created by the multimedia giant. Since its inception at the end of 2019, Stadia had on its team the well-known Phil Harrison, a strong man in the industry who was already in charge of leading Xbox and Playstation in his day.
He had the invaluable help, being a famous signing, of the well-known Jade Raymond, responsible for the Assassin's Creed saga, who at that time was at EA Motive, to set up two new creation studios, one located in Montreal and the other in Los Angels But just a few days ago, a change in strategy was announced at Stadia that included the cessation of its own video game production, which led to the closure of both studios, dragging the work of hundreds of developers (relocated, according to Google).
Google Stadia, threatened by Microsoft
And this brings us to a few hours ago, in which Kotaku has published an article from internal sources of the company that assure aberrations such as that 5 days before the closing, Harrison himself sent an email to everyone congratulating them on the work achieved and progress accomplished. But aside from this, it is the interesting subsequent conversation, in which Phil Harrison explained the reasons for this closure, blaming it on strategic decisions, the difficulties with COVID19 or the acquisition of Bethesda by Microsoft.
Without making it very clear exactly what was the exact question of the closure of the studies, if he specifically pointed to the purchase streak of Microsoft studies and the future purchase of Bethesda, as one of the factors that made Google decide to close the development of platform exclusive games , to focus on third-party content. What is not clear to us is the direct relationship between these two facts, since the article does not specify it.
Obviously, Google could not be afraid or cautious of Microsoft's movements since if someone can deal with these, it is a multimillion dollar company like yours, but it would condition them in the sense of wanting to invest in exclusives that could not rival these. It remains to be seen if more data is revealed in this regard.
source/ kotaku