Google Stadia job listing hints at white label future for the platform

A new Google Stadia job listing seems to hint that Google plans to rebrand the service as a platform for other developers to hire.

The job listing, which was initially spotted by 9to5Google, is for a product manager role at Google’s California headquarters. There is one interesting section that seems to potentially indicate Google’s plans for Stadia:

“In addition to building our own video game platform, we see an important opportunity to make our infrastructure and tools available to partners who want to build their own interactive streaming platforms. Our goal is to build a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry across gaming and other interactive streaming applications.”

This segment describes something referred to as ‘white labelling’ which is when a business removes its own branding from a service or platform and hires it out to another business. Many home-brand products in stores like Asda and Tesco are white labelled, as they are produced by a third-party company and sold as a first-party product.

Offering Google Stadia out as a platform would allow third-party developers to host their own streaming services without having to build an infrastructure. For Google, it would mean that the Stadia platform remains at the heart of cloud gaming, but that it wouldn’t need to commit to first or third-party development or publishing.

Google launched the Stadia cloud-streaming platform in 2019, allowing consumers to play games over an internet connection. After falling short of initial sales expectations, Google started scaling back the platform, and in February of this year closed its first-party Stadia development studio.

According to the job listing, Google also intends to continue pushing the service out to even more devices. The successful candidate will need to “work with vendors to scale the ecosystem of devices which support Stadia’s hardware and software requirements”.

In other gaming news, a fan-made The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker mod adds Metal Gear’s Solid Snake to the game.

The mod also replaces Link’s hero sword with a reverse grip combat knife and replaces his bow and arrow with a USP.