Google is "positioning itself as a go-to tech partner for publishers of live-service video games" by offering its cloud gaming technology to outside companies. This is an interesting statement regarding the future trajectory of its cloud gaming infrastructure, given the scarcity of updates since the January 2023 shutdown of the Cloud giant's Stadia gaming platform.

Google Cloud's director of Game Industry solutions, Jack Buser, was interviewed by Axios in an article published earlier this week, he outlined the company's ambitions to move forward in a post-Stadia world. Google Cloud is seeking partnership with publishers, its technology is being offered to prospective clients as a support platform for live-service games. "Google is absolutely committed to games that are such a big part of our messaging," Buser said. "When we made the decision with Stadia, we were just like, look, we are committed to games as an industry."He continued: "It was at that moment when we basically had to make decisions about Stadia that we realized that, at Google Cloud, we are at our best when we're helping other people build this stuff, not necessarily building it ourselves." Axios outlines in the article that servers, cloud storage data management, plus "searchable player and game analytics" (via BigQuery) are all components of the support package. Google Cloud foresees that these services will be effective in dealing with a wide range of technical issues. Player population spikes can occur during high activity periods, and the company is positioning its support services as particularly adept at dealing with these bursts in activity.

The cloud streaming component, also known as "Immersive Stream for Games," is not included in the package. It appears to be eternally locked in with the shuttered Stadia platform: "We are not offering that streaming option, because it was tied to Stadia itself. So, unfortunately, when we decided to not move forward with Stadia, that sort of [business-to-business] offering could no longer be offered as well."Ubisoft, Niantic and Unity have been named as current clients. Google is seeking other big publishers to embrace its support services. Amazon and Microsoft are already well established with their own cloud services and server infrastucture. The 2023 Game Developers Conference is scheduled to happen at the end of March, it seems likely that the Cloud division is seeking to secure partnerships before that event, in anticipation of creating publicity.