I'm sure you all know what 'business insider article in referring to so I won't link it here as frankly, they don't deserve the clicks. Especially when it's click bait and locked behind a paywall. Classy.
When I read the article i struggled to see A) what was new and B) Why it meant stadia was dead...
Maybe I am missing something but to me this all just seemed like old information rehashed. This article would have been right at home if it was published last year after the closure of Stadia Games and Entertainment. Coincidentally that also came out in February. Maybe business insider just scheduled it for the wrong year.
We already know that stadia is white labelling the technology behind Stadia. Not only do we know it, we have seen it out in the wild with AT&T customers playing Batman: Arkham Night in October last year. Phil, 'The Invisible Man' Harrison even told us in a rare blog post that they would be focusing on 'using our technology platform for industry partners' and helping 'game developers and publishers take advantage of out platform and deliver games directly to their players'. So why is talk of white labelling a surprise?
https://blog.google/products/stadia/focusing-on-stadias-future-as-a-platform-and-winding-down-sge/
Don't get me wrong i would love another statement from the illusive Phil Harrison just to out customers minds at rest if nothing else. Personally i don't think you can be quiet and shy away from social media as an executive in this day and age. I think that should be a standard part of the job description.
Maybe it is the percentage of people still working on Stadia that has people concerned. After all, one person estimates that stadia is on 20% of the focus now. ONE PERSON. Since when could you give so much weight to one persons estimate? Especially an unnamed source who may or may not still work at the company. For all we know this is a disgruntled ex employee. And lets be honest, who hasn't parted ways with a company and said a few negative words about them afterwards?
Even still, lets assume 20% is accurate. If that's 2000 employees (honestly i have no idea how many there are in that particular branch of Google) that's 400 employees to do nothing for a service that is dead? Come on. Doesn't sound likely does it. From either side really.
Speaking of Employees. there are currently over a dozen positions being advertised on LinkedIn for Stadia, Now this could be Google Steam masquerading as Stadia. Who knows. But there are positions open in both sides of the Atlantic. In Mountain View and London. Yes, London. where it is reported Phil Harrison has moved back to...
Even though people are using this article as definite sign of Stadia's demise, the article itself has a whopping sub heading half way down that states...
Now tell me...How and why, do you try to save a service that you are shutting down. I can't get my head around that. It's over. They don't care about it, but they're trying to save it.
If it was over, it would be 100% focus shifted to Google Stream. There wouldn't be an app on Lg TV's that launched 2 months ago. They wouldn't put a blog post out asking for feedback. They wouldn't advertise job roles. They wouldn't have new features coming. And they certainly wouldn't have 100+ games coming.
I know, I know, "But Pedder those games would been negotiated a long time ago!" That's true. But we already have evidence of games that WERE coming to stadia and ARE NO LONGER COMING TO STADIA because contracts were cancelled and funding was pulled. So if you're shutting up shop, why not do that for all of the games?
There's my opinion. This is old news recycled to get clicks. But i want to hear your opinion. Let me know below.
Thank you for reading.