It's the final end of an era: Former Stadia boss Phil Harrison has left Google

pcgamer.com:

It was over, but now it's really over: A Business Insider(opens in new tab) report says Phil Harrison, the former PlayStation and Xbox executive who joined Google in 2018 to head up its Stadia gaming platform, has left the company.

Harrison's departure is hardly surprising. Despite big promises—overpromising(opens in new tab), in the opinion of Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick—and Google's financial muscle, Stadia never found its footing, much less delivered on its early promise. The first real sign of trouble appeared in February 2021 when Google closed its internal game development studio(opens in new tab), leading to the departure of its high profile leader Jade Raymond. Other executives(opens in new tab) and employees(opens in new tab) followed shortly after.

Google insisted a few months later that Stadia was "alive and well(opens in new tab)," but still failed to do anything interesting with it; in July 2022 it denied a rumor(opens in new tab) that Stadia was shutting down, and then two months later, shut it down(opens in new tab). In March of this year, a plan to switch Stadia to a licensed streaming platform was also scrapped(opens in new tab).

The Business Insider report says Harrison left Google in January, around the time that Google was officially closed. His LinkedIn(opens in new tab) page, however, indicates that he stuck around until April 2023. Whatever the case, this would seem to put the final nail in Stadia's coffin—a definitive end to an initiative that in its early days looked like it might have the potential to change gaming forever(opens in new tab).

Harrison hasn't yet commented publicly on his reported departure from Google or what he plans to get up to next. I've reached out to Google for comment and