Google Stadia Announces First-Party Studio, Ambitions

Stadia's first public release is almost here, less than a month away, and frankly, I don’t think I – or the rest of the gaming world – is quite ready for it. But ready or not, it’s coming, and speaking with Gamesindustry.biz, Google's VP and head of Stadia Games & Entertainment Jade Raymond addressed Google’s “game plan” when it came to selling this… game… plan.

Because as it turns out, Google isn’t just interested in selling games, it plans to make them as well - which is why in conjunction with this interview, Google announced a brand-new first-party studio in Montreal, with the stated goal of pushing the limits of what is and isn’t possible on this new cloud-based service.

"It's very important for first-party games, in my opinion, to be games that wouldn't be possible on any other platform. I think that's what's really exciting and why we're building out the first-party teams. There are a lot of things that being cloud native enables that you're just not going to be able to see on other platforms, and I think that's the job of first-party, to really show that off and let people imagine what those things are."

What kind of things is she imagining? She elaborated:

“A fully physics-simulated game is one of the Holy Grails of game creation since Trespasser was being imagined 20-something years ago, and now we finally have a platform where we'll be able to deliver some of those experiences.”

And elaborated further:

"In terms of multiplayer, everyone is essentially playing in one big LAN party as far as the tech is concerned. There is no difference or constraints from an architecture perspective of how far the users are, or worrying about replication and all the other things that typically limit the number of people you can have in a game."

The whole interview is worth a look, but if you’re too impatient for all that reading, you don’t have that long a wait before you can try the whole thing for yourself. I’ll be counting the days anxiously.