Google has reportedly ‘deprioritised’ Stadia to focus on licensing streaming tech

Back in August, we learned that Google was hiring new Stadia employees to work on licensing its streaming tech out to game developers and publishers, in lieu of focusing on first-party games and bringing consumers on to Stadia directly. Now, it seems that plan is very much in motion, with Google reportedly being in talks with the likes of Bungie and Capcom.

According to Business Insider, Google has de-prioritised Stadia and is looking into other ways to earn money back on its investment into cloud gaming technology. Stadia is not shutting down and will remain in place for new and old users alike for the foreseeable future. However, rather than continuing to push Stadia towards consumers, Google is now more interested in business clients.

Google has been pitching Stadia's back-end streaming tech to multiple developers and publishers in recent months. In particular, Google seems to have Bungie and Capcom interested, as both could license Stadia's back-end technology to offer games on a wider range of platforms.

This would work similarly to Nintendo Switch games that are currently only available as a ‘Cloud Version'. Those games utilise various cloud gaming services on the back-end and not Nintendo's own solution. Google is looking to do something similar with Stadia, so for instance, if Bungie signed on, we could see ‘Destiny 2: Cloud Version' on the Nintendo Switch some day.

In this scenario, there would be no Stadia branding and the end-user would likely never even realise that the game is using Google's technology. In light of this news, Google took to its Stadia Twitter account to make it clear that Stadia is not shutting down and will continue to add new games to its catalogue and offer free titles to Stadia Pro subscribers.

KitGuru Says: Google is primarily a tech company and has very little experience in the gaming market. That inexperience became very apparent to all on-lookers as the Stadia launch came and went. Perhaps building the technology and licensing it out to business customers was always the way to go considering Google's history and expertise. 

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