Phil Harrison, the vice president and former head of Stadia, has “quietly left the company,” reports Business Insider. According to the publication’s sources, Harrison actually dropped out of Google back in January, and while it’s unclear where he’s headed next, critics of the British executive believe that his departure probably had everything to do with the failure of the cloud gaming platform that he was responsible for. Harrison, who was also involved with the PS3 and Xbox One’s less-than-stellar launches, confirmed that Google had given up on Stadia in a September 2022 post that explained how the company would be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store.
From a Business Insider article (alternate link):
Harrison, a vice president at the company, quietly departed in January around the time Google officially closed the Stadia service down, according to two employees familiar with the matter.
In September, Google announced it would wind down Stadia, which it launched in 2019. Back then, Google pitched Stadia as the future of gaming, giving users access to high-quality games without the need to purchase expensive hardware.
Harrison is a veteran of the gaming world. Before his time at Google, he was an executive at Microsoft’s Xbox game business and had also run Sony’s game studios. His departure from Google is a full stop on the company’s ambitious push into gaming, though Google says it still wants to act as a cloud partner for gaming publishers.