Description
Former Google Stadia head and Google VP Phil Harriosn unknowingly left Google. Two employees who were privy to the news reportedly said Harrison quietly left Google in January, around the time game streaming service Google Stadia shut down after a major glitch in a competitive gaming market. But Harrison's LinkedIn profile suggests that he ended his journey with the search engine shark only this month. In 2018, Harrison joined Google after spending more than a decade at Sony and three years at Microsoft. At GDC 2019, he lamented the platform as "the future of gaming." When it first launched, Stadia gave gamers access to their favorite games, like Assassin's Creed, Cyberpunk 2077, and Red Dead Redemption 2, through Google's cloud service without the need for any high-end hardware components. It also hosted "login scripts" to display games added to the service. In 2021, Stadia fell apart because it failed to attract gamers to its services. Harrison wrote a blog post beginning the shutdown of Stadia gaming and entertainment. On September 29, 2022, he announced that Stadia would be shutting down for its own good in January and disappearing from public view. From that point on, Google began reimbursing gamers who purchased Stadia devices through the Google Play Store.
As of now, it's unclear who Harrison's next employer will be and it's unclear why he left. Google recently said that it's not a good idea to build a cloud gaming service on your own, though they will work with other gaming giants to support their Google cloud live gaming service.
