Stadia technology will return with Google Cloud, but only for live service games

The closure of Google Stadia, which took place definitively at the beginning of this year, put an end to a cloud gaming project which in the course of its short existence proved to be very valid from a technological point of view, less so regarding the choice of business model undertaken by Google.

There has been a lot of talk about the other ways in which the Mountain View house could have put Stadia’s infrastructure to good use, but so far there seems to have been no particular initiative from Google. However, things could soon change, according to what emerges from a new report by Axios in which he was interviewed Jack Buserhead of the Game Industry Solutions section of Google Cloud, which presents a truly curious scenario.

In retracing the events leading up to Stadia’s shutdown, Buser recounts a time when the Google Cloud team simply fulfilled its true calling, which is create support platforms that allow other companies to build their own products, without Google itself making them. Surely many can agree with this fact – especially if you consider the amount of projects started by Google and then abandoned -, however the conclusion drawn from this lighting not what many expect.

In fact, Buser’s words could suggest the idea that Google will exploit the Stadia infrastructure to allow other companies to launch their own game streaming services, however this scenario will not materialize, or rather not in this shape. Indeed, according to Axios, it appears that Google Cloud is starting to roll out a package of services which will allow developers and publishers to be able to publish their own live service games on an infrastructure similar to that of Stadia.

The focus on live services is important, since Google Cloud’s offering does will focus exclusively on this category, usually the most problematic to manage from an infrastructure point of view. With the support of Google Cloud, a live service title offered for streaming will be able to count on one centralized structure which is certainly less subject to disservices or other unexpected events which could spoil the gaming experience.

The decision to support only live services could also be motivated by the need to establish long-lasting partnershipssince this genre of games usually lasts for a long time, while offering the same offer to more traditional subscription game services could be more risky from Google’s point of view.

Thus the project known as Immersive Stream for Gameswith which Google had started some pilot experiments such as the use of Batman Arkham Asylum on the AT&T 5G network or a demo of Resident Evil Village entirely usable in the cloud, both offered outside the Stadia ecosystem. Immersive Stream for Games died with the shutdown of Stadia, Buser reiterated, and that kind of proposition is no longer viable. It will be interesting to find out what will be the eventual titles that will be based on the Google Cloud solutionsince it is undoubtedly very promising on the technological front.