There are currently 200 developers building 400 games for Google Stadia, according to an interview in MobileSyrup with the service’s director of games, Jack Buser. These new games are slated to launch over the next few years, not necessarily all in 2021, Buser said.
“Frankly speaking, my team is almost done with 2021,” he told MobileSyrup. “We’re thinking about 2022 right now — that’s our focus. 2023 is really kind of where we’re aiming our sights.”
Buser said Google will share more information about new-game release windows “in the future.”
Google has been playing catch-up since the debut of Stadia one year ago. Before launch, executives promised Stadia would have a handful of unique and ambitious features, including native 4K play, social and streamer-specific capabilities, and a large library of games. However, many of these didn’t go live until months later, and some are still missing entirely.
While Google has added more than 100 games to Stadia over the past year, its selection of high-profile titles is slim, especially when compared with Microsoft’s xCloud platform. That said, Google is working on securing sought-after games, and it’s added notable titles including Doom Eternal, Borderlands 3 and Hotline Miami to its library, while Cyberpunk 2077 is incoming.
Additionally, Google has two first-party studios in Montreal and Los Angeles, an exclusive deal with Harmonix, and a roster of veteran game developers and producers overseeing everything, including Stadia head Phil Harrison, Stadia Games and Entertainment leader Jade Raymond, and Playa Vista studio head Shannon Studstill. In late 2019, Google also purchased Typhoon Studios, developer of the charming sci-fi exploration game Journey to the Savage Planet.
The company has yet to unleash the full strength of its cloud-gaming arsenal, and if Buser is to be believed, Google hasn’t abandoned Stadia just yet. His comments come amid a flurry of deals designed to get more people playing Stadia, including a tentative rollout on iOS and an offer giving YouTube Premium subscribers a $99 Stadia Premiere Edition bundle for free through the end of the year.
