After the collapse of the struggling cloud gaming service earlier this year, Phil Harrison has left Google, where he was the Vice President and General Manager of Stadia. Google shut down Stadia in January and according to Business Insider, Harrison also left the tech company around that same time.
In 2018, Phil Harrison became part of Google and led the high-profile launch of Stadia in 2019, navigating the service through its increasing problems. Despite the slow and steady decline of the platform, Harrison remained on board.
The former Google man also announced that Stadia’s internal game development studios were closing in 2021 and went on to spread the word about Stadia’s imminent collapse last September, where he said the platform had not, “Gained the traction with users that we expected”.
Before introducing Stadia at Google, Harrison spent 15 years at Sony Interactive Entertainment, was part of Gaikai’s advisory board for cloud gaming, and headed Microsoft’s Xbox and Interactive Entertainment business in Europe from 2012 to 2015.
Stadia’s shutdown
Ahead of Stadia’s closure this January, Harrison mentioned that the underlying streaming technology would continue to exist at Google and be provided to “industry partners.” However, Google subsequently clarified that its white-label streaming offering had also been cancelled alongside the consumer-facing aspect.
Despite its promising launch with several unique titles for players to enjoy, Stadia was a failure that users never really paid much attention to. Just 14 months after its launch, Google closed down its in-house Stadia development studios and transitioned to providing a white-labelled service. Then in September, the search giant announced its decision to completely shut down Stadia.
For now, there is no news on where Harrison is headed next and his LinkedIn profile shows he served as Google vice president from January 2018 until April 2023.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
