Thursday, April 6th 2023
Ex-Stadia Boss Phil Harrison Quietly Exits Google
It was widely reported yesterday that Phil Harrison has left Google, where he served a stint as Vice President and General Manager of the now shuttered Stadia cloud-based game streaming service. An official statement has not been released by Google or Harrison regarding a change in leadership - according to an article published by Business Insider, the latter's LinkedIn profile indicates an end date in April 2023. Harrison's departure from Google coincides roughly with the final shutdown of Stadia services back in January of this year.
Phil Harrison was announced as a new vice president and general manager at Google in early 2018, but the company had not revealed any plans to enter into the games console market at that point in time. The hiring of Harrison was viewed as an early preview of things to come, given his past experience of leadership roles at both Sony and Microsoft video games division. He spent 16 years of his career at Sony Corporation, ultimately becoming president of the company's Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios (SCE WWS) until departing in 2008. He joined Microsoft in 2012, following short spells at Infogrames, Atari and Gaikai. At Xbox he was the executive leader of the European Interactive Entertainment team until 2015. Google debuted its Stadia gaming platform in 2019, and to no surprise, Harrison was announced as the product manager for this new endeavor.
Stadia's short lifespan and various related disappointments have been well documented since launch, and Harrison was tasked with declaring the shutdown of the service - he issued a message in September 2022, detailing the mid-January 2023 shutdown. He noted that the technology underpinning Stadia would have a future outside of the platform: "The underlying technology platform that powers Stadia has been proven at scale and transcends gaming. We see clear opportunities to apply this technology across other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts - as well as make it available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we see the future of gaming headed. We remain deeply committed to gaming, and we will continue to invest in new tools, technologies and platforms that power the success of developers, industry partners, cloud customers and creators."
Google would later make good on some of Harrison claims, when it announced officially that it would offer aspects of this technology to games publishers in the cloud gaming sector, as part of an extensive platform support package. However, third party partners are not being offered the cloud streaming component, known as "Immersive Stream for Games", which remains an internal exclusive chez Google - the speculation being that it is eternally tied to Stadia's fate.
Source:
Business Insider
Phil Harrison was announced as a new vice president and general manager at Google in early 2018, but the company had not revealed any plans to enter into the games console market at that point in time. The hiring of Harrison was viewed as an early preview of things to come, given his past experience of leadership roles at both Sony and Microsoft video games division. He spent 16 years of his career at Sony Corporation, ultimately becoming president of the company's Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios (SCE WWS) until departing in 2008. He joined Microsoft in 2012, following short spells at Infogrames, Atari and Gaikai. At Xbox he was the executive leader of the European Interactive Entertainment team until 2015. Google debuted its Stadia gaming platform in 2019, and to no surprise, Harrison was announced as the product manager for this new endeavor.
Google would later make good on some of Harrison claims, when it announced officially that it would offer aspects of this technology to games publishers in the cloud gaming sector, as part of an extensive platform support package. However, third party partners are not being offered the cloud streaming component, known as "Immersive Stream for Games", which remains an internal exclusive chez Google - the speculation being that it is eternally tied to Stadia's fate.
16 Comments on Ex-Stadia Boss Phil Harrison Quietly Exits Google
I know that google as a whole didnt seem to know where they wanted to go with stadia. One moment they were all in - setup development studios to make games unique to that platform then things just sort of went really really quiet like they were super unsure about what to do.
Well. At least they didnt make him take the fall for Stadia failing. Imagine wanting to do so much with the platform but having your hands tied by corporate who then shuts it down because not enough was being done with it.
Just buying other companies and rehashing products that others created.
Now, whether it's playable or not, probably depends on the game and the person. If you play something like Assassin's Creed, a single player 3rd person actioneer, it might not feel particularly distracting; an FPS, where you need to make quick decisions on the fly, would feel like shit. So the slower the pace of the game is, the more reasonable the delay would feel.
And this was on a service that on a routine ping test would be well within single digit latency, like 2-3ms to pign back. Put it on a typical cable connection and you can add another 50ms to basically everything.
50ms lag time is already supremely annoying. 100+ is nearly unplayable. That's the kind of latency that makes people rage on online games as they get obliterated by people they cant even see.
Games are just not the kind of thing that can be streamed remotely.Stadia wasnt profitable. Ever. They dumped WAY too much cash into it and nobody had any reason to jump on a google service where they had to subscribe to spend the same amount of money on things that already run on their playstation, xbox, PC, ece.That's really not a fair comparison, the switch fanfare was due to lack of software. The Stadia response was due to fundamental issues with streaming demanding software, and that was something google cant fix, short of breaking the laws of physics.
Ultimately, I shelved it about a year in, instead just logging in via phone to quickly grab a limited-time weapon or shader in Destiny.
Ironically, the controller is actually better now that it's unlocked for use with its BT link (you can activate almost any Stadia controller by following the official guide); it's great for playing certain kinds of games on PC and mobile. I fully expect Google to end up just marketing the controller at some point, modified to be capable of both Chromecasting and BT linking with a hold-and-press of a button (currently, you lose all Chromecast connectivity if you activate the dormant BT functionality). Would be a great companion option with a future "Google Gaming Pixel" Phone (in the same vein as the ASUS Gaming Phone), or gaming tablet.
In addition to that, what Frick wrote also stands and explains Google behavior last few years....Couldn't agree more.
However, Stadia failed due to the need to buy games to play it. It makes ZERO sense - the whole idea of Cloud gaming is to rent whatever you need and play wherever you want. Buying games, especially expensive AAA games, does not match that philosophy, and customer fear of Google devotion to any service for sure did not help.
Just imagine paying subscription for Office, and then needing to pay for each app in it in addition... Who would buy that?
If you ask me, it is stupid - but no one asks me :)
On the other side, you can see that XBox Game Pass is working like charm... Because you buy a PC/Xbox and then rent a games - but you still have console and option to buy game if you really like it. So, you buy hardware and rent software, and if something goes wrong, you still have hardware.
With Stadia, you rent hardware and buy software - and since you do not own hardware, ownership of software is useless. This part of their decision was shot in the head of Stadia on day one.
Truth to be told, I find renting models really, really problematic in every way - but that is other subject.