Google's game service, Stadia, has had a rough start and the company is now shutting down its Stadia game studio that was tasked to "reimagine the new generation of games".

Stadia studio was short-lived
Google Stadia launched in November 2019 as a game streaming service that lets you stream games from Google's services to, in theory, any device. In theory because in reality Stadia has not exactly played out the way Google envisioned it.

Stadia has struggled to compete against incumbents like Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox. Google had planned to develop its own exclusive AAA games for Stadia and the company tasked its in-house Stadia game studio to "reimagine the new generation of games". The company also promised to launch games that were "only possible in the cloud". 

Google now confirms that it is shutting down the Stadia game studio.

- "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," said Phil Harrison, Vice President and GM, Google Stadia.


 Stadia Games & Entertainment was supposed to play a key role in Stadia's succes. Photo: Stadia launch in 2019

User's future is tied to Stadia's future
Google Stadia is not a subscription service like Netflix that offers access to an extensive content catalog. Instead, the user must purchase games individually, much like Steam or game stores on consoles.

Purchased games will typically be available only on Stadia so the user's future is tied to Stadia's future.

Later this year, Stadia will launch on Google TV and select LG TVs. It currently works on Chromecast Ultra, the Chrome web browser, and a small selection of other devices.

- Source: Google