Google Stadia’s short life was stricken by baffling decisions, but a replacement report suggests an especially eyebrow-raising one. Google apparently had an exclusive sequel to PlayStation hit Death Stranding lined up, but killed the project in 2020.
According to 9to5Google’s(opens in new tab) source, in 2019 Google greenlit a Death Stranding follow-up from legendary designer Hideo Kojima only to cancel it after the primary mockups arrived a year later.
While the initial game was built on asynchronous multiplayer where objects can appear in other players’ worlds supported your actions, the sequel would are purely solo. and also the source believes it absolutely was this single-player focus that led to the cancellation with Google firm in its belief that only multiplayer experiences were worth pursuing.
It’s worth noting that Stadia was led by Phil Harrison at the time, and as early as 2008 he was suggesting that single-player games had had their day.
“I just don't think consumers want to be playing games that do not have some reasonably network connectivity to them, or some reasonably community embedded in them, or some reasonably extension available through downloadable content,” he told Eurogamer(opens in new tab) when he was performing at Atari.
The timeline also seems to mesh with what Kojima was himself saying. In 2020 he did an interview with Livedoor(opens in new tab) within which he said he was “a little annoyed that a giant project has just fallen through the cracks” [machine translated].
Of course, it’s doubtful that a Death Stranding sequel alone would have saved Stadia from its fate. With its seven hours’ worth of cutscenes, it certainly wasn’t for everybody, and whether or not it were, it’s hard to understand if it might have arrived before Google decided to shut up shop.
Lost forever?
Assuming the source is correct, the large question is whether or not the project is lost forever, or whether any of it'll see the sunshine of day elsewhere. the nice news is that there are signs that the latter is true.
First of all, there are strong suggestions that a full Death Stranding sequel is in development. Back in May(opens in new tab), Norman Reedus — star of TV and also the first game — claimed that “we just started the second one” when asked about his role in Death Stranding.
Kojima himself looked as if it would virtually confirm this the very next day, tweeting a series of images of himself with Reedus and therefore the caption “Go to your private room, my friend” — a regard to the story of game.
Secondly, it’s possible that Kojima may have taken a number of the ideas to at least one of Google’s former cloud gaming rivals, Microsoft. At the Xbox and Bethesda showcase back in June, Kojima discussed a game he’d always wanted to make that might now be made exclusively with Xbox Game Studios.
“It’s a totally new game, one that nobody has ever experienced or seen before,” he teased. “I’ve waited a awfully very long time for the day after I could finally start to form it. With Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud technology and therefore the change within the industry's trend, it's now become possible to challenge myself to create this never-before-seen concept.”
We’ll need to see exactly what reasonably concepts this cloud-heavy approach could offer, But if it truly could be a game changer then we'd be left wondering what may need been for Stadia if it had prioritized things differently within the years when Google was still fully invested.
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