Today, Google announced that it's first game studio dedicated to making Stadia games will be located in Montreal. This announcement came via a blog post written by Jade Raymond, VP of Google and head of Google Stadia projects. Raymond writes,
Stadia Games and Entertainment’s studio will produce exclusive, original content across a diverse portfolio of games in all your favorite genres. Stadia is designed to be one destination for all the ways people play games—and Montréal is where we’re going to start building them. ...
I’ve been making games for a while now, and wouldn’t trade the experiences I’ve had for anything. But we can do better. We can do more. At Stadia, we don’t believe in being “good enough.” We believe in being more: More ambitious. More inclusive. More accessible. More immersive. More engaging. We’re bringing that mentality to Stadia Games and Entertainment, and now with our first studio, we’re looking for the best developers on the planet to join us.
Google is currently looking to fill over twenty positions at the new studio, mostly senior and director-level roles. The company likely plans to solidify its upper level management team before filling out the more rank-and-file positions. Given the number of open roles and relative freshness of the Montreal studio, it's unlikely we'll be seeing any of its projects come to light for quite some time, but the language seems to imply that Google intends for this to be a large-scale studio working on multiple titles at one time.
Montreal may be the perfect fit for a new game studio looking to snag some seasoned talent. The Canadian city is already home to studios belonging to EA, Square Enix, Ubisoft, WB Games, and THQ Nordic, as well as numerous independent developers. Only time will tell if Google's foray into the gaming industry proves to be a success, but for now, we can probably expect to see at least a few big-name personnel hop aboard the Stadia train in the coming months.
What do you think of Stadia Games and Entertainment? Should they try to acquire and re-release Stadium Events? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
