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Google Stadia allegedly canceled a single-player Death Stranding follow-up

Google reportedly greenlit the pitch from Kojima Productions, but shut it down out of concern for interest in single-player games.

TJ Denzer

September 30, 2022 11:50 AM

Image via Kojima Productions

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As Google Stadia prepares to shut down for good, so too are we learning of various troubles and business dealings where Google may have stumbled along the way. One such was the canceling of what would have been an exclusive follow-up to Death Stranding from none other than Kojima Productions. Reportedly, Hideo Kojima’s studio was greenlit to develop a single-player experience in the Death Stranding universe, but the project was canceled due to a lack of faith in solo games at Google.

This alleged cancellation was shared by sources familiar with the matter in a report by 9to5Google. According to the report, Hideo Kojima’s studio proposed a follow-up for Death Stranding that would have been a Stadia-exclusive once completed. Initially, Google greenlit the pitch and development began. However, when mock-ups and early footage and screens were shown to Google in 2020, the company chose to scrap the project entirely. The reason is apparently that the game was meant to be a strictly single-player experience, forgoing the asynchronous multiplayer elements of the original Death Stranding to play as a sort of horror game. Ultimately, it was Stadia General Manager Phil Harrison that made the final call to scrap the game.

In the wake of Google getting ready to pull the plug on Stadia permanently, this is a bit of a headscratcher. In 2020, there were still plenty of compelling cases and evidence to show that single-player games could still be quite popular. Nonetheless, Google seemed to believe that there wasn’t enough market interest in solo experiences, leading to the cancellation. It seems like another one of many missteps in the saga of the cloud-based gaming platform.

Death Stranding was quite a popular game, good enough to warrant a proper sequel being confirmed elsewhere. While it probably wouldn’t have been enough to save Google Stadia on its own, it seems like one of many decisions that led to the underperforming service’s cancellation. As we move towards Stadia shutting down in January 2023, stay tuned for more updates and information as it becomes available.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.