Google roadmap for Stadia includes over 400 new games

Ben Schoon | Nov 24 2020 - 6:52 am PT

Inevitably, it was always going to take time for a brand new gaming platform like Google Stadia to build up its library. So far, the collection is at around 100 games with more on the way, but what’s next? According to a Stadia exec, over 400 new games are currently on their way to the platform.

In an interview last week with MobileSyrup, Stadia Director of Games Jack Buser discussed the first year of Google’s new platform, what he’s proud of, and some of the talk that’s surrounded Stadia. It’s an interesting read, but perhaps the most important detail in the interview talks about Stadia’s roadmap.

Buser says that, currently, his team is nearly finished with planning for 2021 and that it will be an “incredible” year. The team is currently focused on mapping out 2022. But as it stands right now, Google has 400 new games heading to Stadia.

When will all these new games arrive? We don’t really know. Who are they from? Buser doesn’t provide specifics, but says that they’re from over 200 different developers.

What I can tell you is that we’ve built a roadmap of about 400 games in development right now from 200 developers. So when those games land, whether it’s in the calendar year of 2021 or beyond, is something that you’ll hear more from us in the future.

That’s certainly great news for Stadia as a platform, but obviously, there’s still a long way to go before Google catches up with the backlogs available on PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Still, having 400 games from so many different developers on the Stadia roadmap shows both how much Google is pushing the platform and how many developers are interested in giving it a shot.

Hopefully we’ll have a search bar by the time these games arrive.

On that note, Buser finished up the interview to address the constant question so many people bring up with Stadia: “Is Google going to kill it?” The answer, obviously, is no. Buser explains:

Are you guys in it for the long haul?’ And I can tell you, unequivocally, ‘yes.’ Just because the time horizons alone of our industry mean that we are looking many years out into the future. Gaming is one of the biggest businesses at Google. If you look across Stadia, [Google] Play and YouTube, it’s so incredibly important to our company. Which is why you see us investing so much time and energy to support all these hundreds of developers building all these games. We have a very exciting year ahead of us. And, in fact, we have a very exciting many years ahead of us.