Ubisoft CEO says cost of porting games to Google Stadia is 'not that high'

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

In a recent investor call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot assured investors that porting games to Google Stadia isn't as costly a job as it may seem.

"The extra cost to put to make sure the games work well on Stadia is not that high," Guillemot said, according to a report by Gamasutra. "It's part now of our pipelines and we have a good relationship with Stadia to make sure it is profitable for us."

The technical details of Google's upcoming game streaming platform have been murky since its reveal. I previously assumed that Stadia would essentially stream the same PC version I could download elsewhere, but the process is more involved.

As Gamasutra points out, Ubisoft's smooth operation might be a special case here. The company was an early partner with Google on Stadia. Last year, some players got to try out a prototype version of Stadia (then called Project Stream) with a free copy of Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

It's reasonable to assume that a Stadia port would generally be a lighter workload than, say, a console port if a PC version already exists. At the very least, you don't have to worry about overworking Stadia's maxed-out machines running the game. Though challenges unique to streaming could present new considerations for ports in the future, like input delay in multiplayer games.

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Morgan Park
Staff Writer

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.

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