Google acquires Typhoon Studios for Stadia game development

Last month, Google announced it was setting up its own studio to produce original, exclusive games for the Stadia platform. And now that development team has been bolstered by the acquisition of Montreal neighbours Typhoon Studios – the team currently working on Journey to the Savage Planet.

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting Savage Planet’s release, but have no intention of getting a Stadia subscription, then worry not: this won’t impact the release on PC Xbox One or PS4, Google says. It would be a little late to cancel it now anyway, what with it due out on January 28 2020.

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But after that, Typhoon Studios will presumably be a dedicated Stadia company, and that’s quite a big deal. Although Journey to the Savage Planet will be the team’s first game, the studio was assembled by industry veterans behind the likes of Batman: Arkham City, Far Cry 4, Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed III. 

“We’re super-excited to be able to be working with this crew because they’re a team that has done amazing work on amazing games,” Jade Raymond, vice president of Stadia Games and Entertainment, told VentureBeat. 

“They have a very tight-knit team that managed to ship what looks like a pretty awesome game in a very impressive amount of time,” Raymond continued, referring to the fact that the team of 25 have managed to build Journey to the Savage Planet from nothing in just two years. “And this will give us a big head start in our Montreal studio in terms of having a team that’s ready to really push innovation. It’s our very first first-party studio that will help drive exclusive games for Stadia.”

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This is a big sign of intent from Google, though arguably it has bigger problems to deal with than its games catalogue at first. It’s early days, but currently Stadia isn’t quite living up to the lofty promises the company made earlier in the year, as Jade wrote in our review. 

“Google Stadia shows a lot of promise, and could be a great option for those who want to game without spending a fortune on a console assuming Google develops the service,” she wrote. “But with lots of missing features at launch, it’s got a long way to go to become a serious challenger to PlayStation and Xbox.”

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