Google Is Setting Aside Stadia & Rebranding It As Something Else

A Bloomberg report stated that Google will be quietly deprioritizing Google Stadia, its livestream gaming service that flopped pretty hard since its release in 2019 in places that aren’t Southeast Asia.

Since announcing the closure of Google Stadia’s internal studios last year, the company has “shifted the focus of its Stadia division largely to securing white-label deals with partners that include Peloton, Capcom, and Bungie, according to people familiar with the plan”.

“(Phil) Harrison and other executives set a goal to reach 1 million monthly active users by the end of 2020, which they missed by about 25%, according to a person familiar with the conversations.”

The company will have a reduced interest in negotiating blockbuster third-party titles. As such, the rebranding will label the service Google Stream instead, with the company planning to “salvage” the technology to stream games with low latency.

The big problem Google is worried about in the gaming space right now, apart from Google Stadia and its key members like Jade Raymond leaving the sinking ship? It’s apparently the company buyouts as of late involving Activision Blizzard and Bethesda.

“When Microsoft announced in 2020 that it would acquire the Elder Scrolls studio Bethesda, it ‘scared the crap out of Google executives,’ a former employee close to those conversations said.”

Let’s hope the rebranding works, because Google Stadia could be the big G’s big L. For a clear idea on how out of touch the Google Stadia inner workings can get, here’s a quote from one of its leads about video game streamers who are beneficial in giving games free PR. It didn’t go so well.