Google Stadia and all of its associated projects are dead, which means it’s time for division head Bill Harrison to move on. Business Insider Harrison has reportedly left Google. The report says he left in January, but Harrison’s LinkedIn It was only updated in the last few days that he left Google in April. Harrison worked at Stadia for five years.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, not Google Gaming kicked Google’s gaming platform debuted by declaring to the crowd, “I’m not a big gamer.” As Stadia’s VP and general manager, Harrison should bring gaming credibility to Google. Harrison is an industry veteran, having previously worked for Microsoft and Sony’s game console releases, so his experience is setting up deals with game developers, uh, Exciting Sports community.
In the early days, Harrison was the face of Stadia. During the initial 2019 announcement, Harrison took the stage After Beg to announce Stadia to the world, describing the basic premise and how Stadia will be “the future of sports”. When things started to go south, Harrison stopped appearing in videos. He stopped tweeting, and generally disappeared. Harrison made news in 2021 when Google killed Stadia’s sole first-party game studio, the Games & Entertainment division, after 1.5 years. Harrison is reported He told the team they were “making great progress” a week before they were fired, which, according to Kotaku, was part of the leadership’s “not being honest and open with the company’s developers.” He also announced Stadia’s death in a blog post.
We can’t tell how effective executives are when we’re outside of a company, but Harrison joined Google with a bad reputation with gamers. His previous key executive roles oversaw the launch of Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox One and Kinect. These two are the consensus worst console releases from each company and preside over the life and death of Stadia. Not helping Harrison’s formidable reputation.
With Harrison gone, Stadia dead, and Cloud Pivot reportedly killed with Stadia, there’s nothing left of Google’s once-ambitious gaming project.
