Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding Sequel Was Allegedly Rejected by Google Stadia

Google’s cloud gaming service, Stadia, has been in the news for a couple of days now. Launched in 2019, it faced fierce competition from Microsoft’s and Amazon’s cloud gaming services. A few days ago Google announced its plans to shut down the service and discontinue it by 18 January 2023.

MAJOR TAKEAWAYS

• Google had allegedly rejected a Stadia-exclusive Death Stranding sequel from Kojima Productions, as reported by 9to5google, after initial approval.
• The reason, cited by Google, being the “solo nature” of the game, as they believed there is no longer a market for such games.
• Google plans to shut down Google Stadia on 18 January 2023.

Now it is making rounds on the internet, again, for rejecting Kojima Productions’ Stadia-exclusive sequel to Death Stranding. This news was broken by 9to5google first.

The website, citing a source, said the reason behind the rejection was because “company believed there was no longer a market for solo experiences.” The proposal was rejected by Stadia Games and Entertainment before it was shut down in 2021.

The planned sequel to Death Stranding was supposedly single-player just like the original title. Death Stranding, released in 2019, is an action game where the protagonist, voice acted by Norman Reedus, is ordered to deliver supplies to far-off colonies and repair communications between them. The game received critical acclamation across the board.

Earlier rumors had suggested that the Kojima Prod. game will be an “episodic horror game” and “Hideo Kojima himself was excited to work with the potential of the cloud.

The game even got a go-ahead from Google initially and the studio had started work on it. But “shortly after the first mockups were shown in mid-2020, Google scrapped the project entirely.” Phil Harrison, GM of Stadia, made that final decision.

The main reason behind the rejection was the “single-player nature of the game.” Google believed that the users of Stadia preferred multiplayer games over solo titles.

Knowing Death Stranding’s success, it’s quite baffling that Google rejected an exclusive sequel of the game for its cloud service. And that too from a reputed studio like Kojima Productions. Maybe this could have helped Stadia in its fight against other well-established cloud services. Or maybe not. That we will never know.

Was Google right to turn down this game? Discuss in the comments below!