Google Follows Facebook to Bolster Cloud Gaming Portfolio | TechTree.com

Google Follows Facebook to Bolster Cloud Gaming Portfolio

Barely 24 hours after Facebook announced its acquisition of Spanish gaming company PlayGiga, Google has gobbled up Typhoon Studios as part of its effort to bolster its gaming platform

 

The race is on! Barely hours after Facebook announced that it was acquiring Spanish gaming company PlayGiga comes the news that Google is gobbling up Montreal-based Typhoon Studios, the indie developers behind the upcoming Journey to the Savage Planet game, a clear indication that the search giant has set its eyes on growing their cloud gaming service Stadia.

The acquisition in itself isn’t huge as Typhoon Studios has only 26 employees who are still waiting to launch their first game, which won’t be an exclusive to Stadia in spite of Google’s investments. What’s making news though is that this is the Mountain View monolith’s first investment in Stadia since its launch in November.

The Stadia was pitched as the simplest way to play games, requiring a decent internet connection, a Wi-Fi router Google’s Chromecast dongle or a Pixel phone or the Chrome web browser on a laptop or desktop. However, the gaming service didn’t really kick-off since launch as there were that many games that one could play, which caused Google to suggest that things would change by March next.

And the acquisition of Typhoon seems to be the first step in that direction as Google gets ready to beat the competition that the likes of Facebook and more recently Apple with its recently launched (on September 19) Arcade would be giving. The Stadia launch as with that of Arcade appeared more of a token gesture as both appeared to lack features that were promised when initially announced.

Prior to the launch of Stadia, Jade Raymond, who heads the games and entertainment division at Google had told GamesIndustry.biz that the company plans include building out different first-party studios for developing games. So, the decision to acquire Typhoon and its 26-member team appears to be the first step in that very direction.

Raymond also spoke about the types of content that could be available when Stadia integrates with Google’s other offerings such as YouTube. She went on to explain that the Google began ramping up its game development efforts from the Montreal studio which was announced in October. “It is a long-term view that Google is taking. For a big bet and a huge new IP that’s going to fully leverage the cloud, it may be several years,” she had said.

With the latest acquisition, Google seems to be fast-tracking the game development since rivals like Facebook seem to be already ahead in the race with its over 300 million subscribers and the additional agreements with sixty gaming publishers and over 300 console-based games that it has in its kitty at the present moment.

Looks like the advent of the 5G network is all set to start a new race for user attention amongst the content creators of the world and gaming appears to be the favorite option for the top three players in the market, which is looking to move beyond streaming music and videos over a network that offers between 10 to 100 times faster internet speeds.

Make no mistake! The game is indeed on!!


TAGS: Google, Google Stadia, Typhoon Studios, JourneyToTheSavagePlanet, acquisition

 
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