Former Sony director Phil Harrison is apparently a former Google employee as well, reportedly departing the company at around the time the ill-fated Stadia was shut down in January. Neither Google nor Harrison has officially announced the departure in the months since.
The Stadia was supposed to revolutionise the way players interacted with video games and, instead, ended up being a spectacular failure, as the world was not ready for the all-streaming future the device envisioned.
Harrison has had a fairly chequered career, rising through the ranks at Sony with a career spanning from 1992 to 2008. He spent the next couple of years working at Infogrames / Atari as director (where he pronounced that gamers don't want single-player games) before joining the advisory board of Gaikai in 2010, the cloud streaming company Sony purchased in 2012. Harrison then did a stint at Microsoft, from 2012 to 2015, before bringing his expertise to Google in 2018 as vice president and general manager.
We'd probably slip out the back door ourselves once the Stadia news came down, but it is interesting neither Harrison nor Google itself has made any kind of announcement before or since. We would imagine they were hoping for the storm to die down a little. What do you think of Phil Harrison's stealth departure and of Google staying quiet on the matter? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source businessinsider.com]
Comments 32
Stadia wasnt bad, just the business model sucked it should have been monthly subscription not buying the games
Phil Harrison is the Grim Reaper of the video game industry,
Hoping that back to a Hot Dog Stand because he's one of the most incompetent executives you can find. He was with Playstation in the early days of PS3, Microsoft in the early days of Xbox One, and now Stadia for the whole failed run
Talk about a guy failing up. He's a talentless hack yet somehow still always gets hired.
@FenIsMightier Faceb... err I mean Meta sound like his cup of tea.
Let's hope he joins Epic
@WallyWest Doesn't that describe about 90% of people who fill these roles?
@northofthewall Hopefully, to Square Enix. They just need a little more help in completely self imploding lol.
The Roberto Martinez of the gaming world...
They don't want God of War or Spiderman - they want the Kinect. Stadia was a fool's errand and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Consumers are not going to pay full price for games that they know the provider can pull the plug on...as Google did literally within a couple of years. It should have been a rental service. The technology wasnt really at fault - the business model was.
Google graveyard + Ouya = Stadia (and then you have to buy games you’ll never own!?! It was just a matter of time)
Absolute fraud
He's going to reveal he's been employed by Sony all along, sent out into the world to wreak havoc at all their competitors before returning to the fold, mission accomplished.
Phil Harrison reporting to Sony HQ: Mission successful, searching for next target
Tbf to Stadia it had the best cloud servers so far, gamepass on mobile is only 720p and doesn't always run the best yet Stadia was 1080p fullscreen and ran perfectly. But it's business model let it down, it would of survived it if was purely a subscription based platform but no one wants to pay full price for a game you can only play by streaming and never will.
Nintendo next?
Lies of p starring phil harrison and phil spencer.where is he gonna go next 🤔.haha.word up son
This guy a Sony agent lol 😆 he about to head to activision next
Amazing that all the so called Sony fans here forget that this guy was instrumental in bringing the PS1 and 2 to market and helped manage studios like Guerrilla, Evolution, Naughty Dog etc in their early years. Sure his track record since leaving isn't exactly stellar but the Sony of today wouldn't be what it is without Phil Harrison.
@Shigurui I agree that he did great work for Sony in the 90s, but that was practically 30 years ago.
'man used to be great, but is now sh1t' is an entirely valid narrative.
When the next big flop in the making comes around, he'll be there to hype it up
The dudes like the grim reaper. I doubt he's the main reason any of the things he has been apart of was a failure, but the guy hasn't had the best luck. PS3 was push by Kutaragi, Xbox was by Mattrick, and stadia was a long shot and it seemed like it was forced out early without features.
@Arkantos2990 Don't forget his tenure at Nintendo during WiiU
please don’t hire him on any video game company
@Resurrected-X460 He didn't do tenure in Nintendo. He did one in Atari
@Kidfried More like Phil Harrison makes Jim "Generations" Ryan look like an angel in comparison
@Kidfried
The same can be said about Phil Spencer. Totally unsuitable for a CEO role. Well as a gamer. But he can still stay and continue to lead Xbox games studios
Basically an idiot who isn't a gamer, and doesn't have a clue. Obviously hasn't ever understood the industry. Just a talker who sells the dream in every interview and lands the role. Then slivers away when the ***** hits the fan.
I don’t know much about this guy, but if he was at Sony from 1992-2008, he was there during the runs of two mildly successful consoles, the PS1 and PS2. So not too shabby.
I really never cared for him he was the main reason the ps3 had such a rocky start. What's crazy is during that time I liked Peter Moore he was over the 360 . I had both consoles and if you remeber the Xbox brand was at its hight. Now I dislike both Jim and Spencer. But Moore was a good one he listened to the gaming community and what they wanted before that he worked at sega.
@Axelay71 - 'Basically an idiot who isn't a gamer and doesn't have a clue. Obviously hasn't ever understood the industry.'
Yeah, the kind of idiot who was a key member of the teams that delivered the PS1 and PS2 to the world, who also managed the devs behind franchises like Killzone, Crash, Sly and Motorstorm. Obviously clueless.
@Shigurui A key member that green lighted PlayStation Home lol 😆 😂 the games you mentioned.. Motorstorm, Killzone brilliant games but obviously Sony don't want to resurrect anytime soon. Harrison has always jumped ship when ***** hits the fan. Obviously clueless, the father of PlayStation ken kutaragi thought he was expendable obviously he wasn't either. Besides the games you mentioned Harrison hasn't done anything game changing.
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