- Phil Harrison, formerly the head of Google Stadia, has departed the company.
- Harrison left about the time Stadia officially shut down.
- Google announced in September it would close down its cloud streaming service.
Phil Harrison, who ran Google’s now defunct cloud gaming service, Stadia, has left the company.
Harrison, a vice president at the company, quietly departed in January about the time Google officially closed the Stadia service down, two employees familiar with the matter said.
In September, Google announced it would wind down Stadia, which it launched in 2019. Back then, Google pitched Stadia as the future of gaming, giving users access to high-quality games without the need to purchase expensive hardware.
Still, Stadia struggled to gain traction in a competitive gaming market. After Google killed plans for Stadia to develop its own in-house games, the unit shifted its focus to landing business deals with other companies, while propping up the consumer platform with a steady stream of third-party titles.
Some of those proposed deals involved selling access to Stadia’s underlying streaming technology to support other companies’ gaming platforms and services. Google approached the game developer Bungie and even Peloton, Insider reported.
The unit struggled to land many lucrative deals, former Stadia employees told Insider. Harrison, who had vanished from public view since 2021, announced in September that Stadia would close its doors and refund users who had purchased games and hardware through Google’s store. Later, Google told Axios’ Stephen Totilo it had also entirely killed efforts to sell Stadia’s technology to third parties.
Harrison is a veteran of the gaming world. Before his time at Google, he was an executive at Microsoft’s Xbox game business and had also run Sony’s game studios. His departure from Google is a full stop on the company’s ambitious push into gaming, though Google says it still wants to act as a cloud partner for gaming publishers.
It’s not known where Harrison is headed. A Google spokesperson and Harrison did not respond to requests for comment.
Are you a current or former Google employee? Got a tip? Contact reporter Hugh Langley at hlangley@insider.com or via the encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram at +1 628-228-1836. Reach out using a nonwork device.
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