Phil Harrison has officially left Google following Stadia shutdown

Google officially killed off its cloud gaming service Stadia back in January after less than three years on the market. While the tech behind Stadia had promise, there were issues with its business model and it lacked any compelling exclusive games. Now, the man who led Google's cloud gaming effort, Phil Harrison, has left the company. 

Phil Harrison has a very unfortunate track record when it comes to gaming platform launches. He was with Sony at the time of the PS3 launch, and while the PS3 did go on to become a successful console, its first couple of years on the market were rough due to a number of decisions made during the creation of the console. He then moved to Microsoft and was part of the group that launched the Xbox One, which also had a rough launch.

Most recently, Harrison joined Google to spearhead Stadia and usher in the age of cloud gaming. Unfortunately, Stadia failed to deliver on a number of announced features and the business model was far too ambitious, as gamers were not willing to pay full price for games that could only be streamed over the cloud with no native play option.

Harrison recently updated his Linkedin profile, showing that he has officially left Google as of this month. Whether or not he remains in the gaming industry remains to be seen. Business Insider has reported that he actually left the company a little earlier in the year, around the time Stadia shut down for good.

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KitGuru Says: While with the PS3 and Xbox One, Harrison wasn't the lead making final decisions, he was the main driving force behind Stadia. A lot of money was likely lost from this project, but Google will be able to recoup at least some of the loss by repurposing the hardware for other cloud offerings unrelated to gaming. 

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