Google is opening up their first Stadia studio in Montreal

In a recent blog post shared by Google, Google announced that they will open up a game studio in Montreal exclusive to Google Stadia. According to Jade Raymond, Vice President of Stadia Games and Entertainment, Stadia Games and Entertainment’s studio will produce exclusive, original content across a diverse portfolio of games in all our favorite genres. While Jade touched on his career and experience of making games in the blog post, he also stated his views about Montreal’s gaming legacy.

“I was also fortunate to live in Montréal, a city with an amazing gaming legacy, having launched dozens of studios, thousands of careers, and countless incredible games. Today I’m thrilled to announce our contribution to that heritage, with the creation of Google’s very first original games studio in Montréal.”

Raymond also spoke to GamesIndustry.biz and unveiled some of the strategies about Stadia. Raymond stated that his first role was to create exclusive content for Stadia as head of SG&E. “We have a plan that includes building out a few different first-party studios, and also building up the publishing org to ship exclusive content created by indie devs and other external partners.”

While an exclusive game studio is great news, it needs success to back it up. It is so easy to see lay-offs every year due to lack of vision and financial capability in game studios. If a game fails, 50 employees or so gets laid-off, the company moves on and employees suddenly find themselves in a black hole. Although I’m pretty happy to see Google in game development, I think it is too early for this as the console ain’t even out yet. What will happen if the Stadia fails? What will happen if the studio fails? These are the kind of questions that are going back and forth in my mind. But a part of me is sure that Google wouldn’t do such a move without thoroughly planning it.