For a lot of people, it’s easy to look atGoogle Stadiaand deem it as a disaster. What was supposed to be a pioneer of cloud gaming and Google’s entryway into the games industry has become a popular punching bag and target of mockery in some circles. For instance,Stadia only recently received a search barnearly two years after Stadia first released, a very basic feature that one would expect would have been available from the start. Now, it’s been reported that it has lost another prominent staff member.
According to The Information, John Justice, the vice president and head of product atStadiahas left Google entirely. He had joined the company in January 2019, meaning he only worked at Google for nearly two and a half years. While his LinkedIn account hasn’t been updated to reflect his departure (at the time of writing), Google did provide a brief statement to 9to5Google confirming that Justice was no longer with the company.
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Justice was responsible for consumer experience at Stadia, sharing details for upcoming features for the service. He had also previously addressed how his team would no longer be announcing new features until they were ready since it had a tendency to overpromise. Earlier this week, aside from the aforementioned search bar,features like an activity feedand access through the Android web browser were announced.
His departure comes only afew months after Jade Raymond, who was head of game creation and had also joined in 2019, left the company. This was, in turn, the result of Google shutting down its internal game production, meaning it would no longer be making its own exclusives for Stadia. The decision only emboldened Stadia’s biggest critics and led many already declaring that the service is on it’s way out.
At this time, it’s not exactly clear what prompted Justice to leave or what he will be doing next. However, while some might see this as another failure on Stadia’s part, it’s far too early to tell if this will have any long-term ramifications. Chances are that Justice’s role will simply be taken over by someone else and it’s their actions that will have any sort of effect on Stadia’s future.
Google certainly has no intention on giving up on Stadia any time soon. As mentioned earlier, the service is still receiving new features and more major releases have been added to it. For example,Resident Evil Village, the next mainline entry in the series, will be launching on Stadia alongside the console and PC versions, as well asResident Evil 7.
