Stadia Games and Entertainment seeking to open studios in London and Tokyo

Last week, it was announced that the first studio for Stadia Games and Entertainment would be located in Montreal, QC. Today, we’re taking a look at two more locations that Stadia Games and Entertainment is considering for development studios — London and Tokyo.

Stadia Games and Entertainment was announced at GDC in March as the home for Google’s development of first-party titles and acquisition of second-party games exclusive to Google Stadia. The division is led by industry veteran Jade Raymond, who served as executive producer for Assassin’s Creed II and Watch Dogs, among other games. Thus far, Stadia Games and Entertainment has not announced any first-party games, but they have revealed the location of their first studio in Montreal, a hotbed for game development.

According to Google job listings, however, Montreal is not the only city that Stadia Games and Entertainment is eyeing for studios. Google Careers also lists “Executive Game Producer” positions open in London and Tokyo, along with an “Associate Producer” position in Tokyo. Both the Tokyo and London positions offer the same description for what is expected of a Stadia Executive Game Producer.

As an Executive Producer at Stadia Games and Entertainment, you will drive a large scale game studio in the development and launch of video games on Stadia. You will work with multi-disciplinary game teams and collaborate with external outsourcing partners and internal stakeholders to deliver excellent interactive entertainment on Stadia. This includes managing the game P&L, maintaining the game vision with the team, managing the publishing production team, coordinating with Stadia service groups, and presenting the game to executives. Your projects will often span multiple offices, time zones, and hemispheres, and it will be your job to keep all the players coordinated on the project’s progress and deadlines.

Looking more closely at the positions’ “preferred qualifications,” one that stands out for the London producer is “experience as a second-party producer.” A “second-party” game is one that was developed on behalf of another, bigger company. The best example of this is the Pokémon series, which is primarily developed by Game Freak as a second party game for Nintendo.

Similarly, both producer positions for Tokyo make multiple references to external developers and studios. For contrast, the job listing for an Executive Game Producer for the Montreal studio makes no mention of external studios. By that token, it seems likely that Stadia Games and Entertainment’s London and Tokyo presences will initially focus on seeking out external talent for Stadia exclusives, rather than developing first-party titles.

Stadia Games and Entertainment’s London operations, according to Google Careers’ listed location for the position, will be unsurprisingly based out of Google’s London office. As for Stadia’s Tokyo studio, no specific address is given, leaving open the possibilities of either Google’s long-existing Tokyo location or their newer Shibuya campus.

9to5Google’s Take

As someone who has enjoyed his share of Japanese video games, learning that Google is building a studio to develop Stadia games from that market is a very exciting prospect.